
The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law - ourmandave
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-a-10-warthog-may-be-kept-out-of-retirement-by-law-1773923092
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maxerickson
This is something congress really shouldn't be doing.

For example, how much of the scope ambition and scope creep for the F 35 came
from congressional meddling?

Someone recognized for their expertise in infantry strategy and tactics should
be placed in charge of close air support procurement, given a preliminary
budget to try to meet and then be given free reign to figure out what they can
get from that budget.

~~~
GunboatDiplomat
What would be reasonable is the Air Force pulling its head out its ass and
just giving the CAS role back to the Army, since they hate it so much.
Seriously, just give the Army the CAS roles, and the Air Force can go zoom
around in their shiny supersonic invisible aircraft, and the soldiers and
marines on the ground can get the close air support they so need from an
organization not doing everything it can to stop giving them that support.

~~~
55acdda48ab5
The problem is that the CAS mission the A-10 performs is effectively
impossible against any modern enemy with modern missile systems and manpads.
The A-10 is for shooting up poor brown people we're messing with for no
particular reason, not for fighting a real war.

The solution here is to get rid of the A-10 and simply not do "nation
building" and counter-insurgency in poor countries. We don't need the A-10
because it's useless for any war worth fighting in today's world.

~~~
SEJeff
It really isn't. The A10 is basically a flying tank meant to be hit and
survive. The Iraqi army of desert storm was a "modern enemy" with pretty
decent soviet gear at the time. US gear was just that much better due to us
spending such an obnoxious amount of our GDP on our military. A manpad doesn't
have remotely explosive power of the AA that hit the A10 in this video, don't
believe me? See the pictures yourself:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7JM82fa5ZY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7JM82fa5ZY)

There are literally dozens and dozens of similar stories. The A10 is simply
put the most effective CAS tool the US Military has or ever had. CAS is a very
important part of US warfare and just because they might be against an enemy
with better anti-air doesn't negate the need for boots on the ground, which
require CAS for maximum survivability. Most likely the Stealth B2s or RQ-170
Sentinel would be sent in first to quickly take out as much of the AAA as
possible.

Disclaimer: I'm a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom II, and flew the Shadow
200 TUAV. I targeted several times for A10s and have heard the
BRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTT up close.

~~~
ecnal
>The A10 is basically a flying tank meant to be hit and survive.

Like Dale Storr's OA-10, which took a single Strela hit and went down? The
A-10 is certainly more likely to be mission killed by MANPADS and AAA than
other aircraft (which are liable to be destroyed outright), but those that
survive are not useful for combat--Kim Campbell's A-10 was grazed by a Shilka
and rendered combat ineffective; after she landed it in manual reversion, it
was shipped back to the US and required months of intensive repair. That's
great if your objective function is maximizing the number of airframes that
are eventually flyable again after being damaged, but godawful if your goal is
to actually use them to perform CAS.

>The A10 is simply put the most effective CAS tool the US Military has or ever
had.

I completely agree with this, but tools only benefit you /if you can use
them/. A-10s cannot survive in contested airspace, and if the not-at-all-
fearsome Iraqi Army spanking them so hard that they ended up with a 10,000
foot hard deck didn't clue politicians in on that, maybe a few videos of
modern SHORAD like the Pantsir which are available for $peanuts will.

>just because they might be against an enemy with better anti-air doesn't
negate the need for boots on the ground, which require CAS for maximum
survivability

The CAS you get is better than the CAS you don't. If your primary CAS tool is
the A-10, then being against an enemy with even the slightest anti-air
capability means that you don't get any CAS at all.

>Most likely the Stealth B2s or RQ-170 Sentinel would be sent in first to
quickly take out as much of the AAA as possible

The RQ-170 is a phenomenally expensive unarmed recon drone that the US
operates a handful of. The B-2 is useful for striking an enormous number of
fixed targets, but is not designed or intended to be employed in a SEAD/DEAD
role against anything more mobile than theater-level air defenses. No SEAD
weapon in the world is capable of striking air defenses that it isn't fired
at, and as a result anything flying at low level is vulnerable to SHORAD whose
operators use the advanced tactic of parking it in a treeline and waiting
until they hear a jet to engage it.

~~~
SEJeff
First off, fantastic reply, thanks for taking the time to write it. The
typical US strategy is utter dominance of the sea, air, and night. I really do
see drones + tomahawks taking out much of the AAA in addition to long range
bombers like the B2. Even if stealth isn't effective, a hoard of Tomahawks is
going to give any advanced adversary a hard time. The newer Block IV Tomahawks
ones are smarter and quite a bit more lethal. The suckers can loiter for up to
30 minutes on station in a holding pattern and be set to all hit targets at
the same time. Hitting 4-5 targets is cool, but hitting 20+ at the same time
is quite devastating. In the opening of the war in Afghanistan if I recall
they launched a cruise missile every 12 seconds on average for 48 hours. Also,
they'll use drones (again like the RQ-170, or its classified and armed bigger
brother) to find AAA, where it is worth sacrificing a few to sniff out the
well hidden AAA. Hiding in the tree lines won't do much to hide from modern
UAVs (as I can attest as a former UAV pilot). With the Shadow I could see
footprints through wet grass at night with the thermals (as it detected a +/\-
0.1 degree C temperature variation).

So in summary, I think you're entirely right. The A10 was meant to be
survivable in contested airspace of yesteryear, but gen 5 and the coming gen 6
fighers along with modern AAA would obliterate it. Even not entirely modern
but very advanced AAA like maybe the S400, which Iran has, would knock out an
A10 no problem. But the US wouldn't willingly put boots on the ground without
utter dominance of the air first. You only need CAS when you have boots on the
ground, so I see it ultimately as a moot point. China isn't stupid enough to
go toe to toe to war with the US, as we'd both suffer heavy heavy casualties.
They're doing a better job of simply asserting their strength economically and
through cyber means, which they're better at than us.

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cyberpanther
And now we have two problems! Yes its a problem to keep an old plane flying
but it does the job. But the bigger problem is the turd costing us an arm and
leg to build that doesn't do the job. Its so idiotic things have to be done in
such a round about way. Just cancel the F-35 and spend the money on something
useful to society.

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GunboatDiplomat
The Air Force has proven they hate doing CAS. The CAS role should be removed
from the Air Force and given back to the Army.

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Pxtl
I think people are unfair to the air force on the A-10. Obviously
discontinuing it should be reconsidered, but they've made massive investment
in standardizing on a handful of modern planes instead of zillion
overspecialized vehicles. The F-35, for all its frustrations, is a staggering
piece of technology.

Plus, consider that this is a plane expected to take fire. Everyone loves he
story of the A-10 that kept flying with half a wing blown off... But imagine
being the crew. I'm sure they'd rather be in a vehicle that wasn't hit in the
first place, or controlling it remotely.

That said, the biggest failing has been ignoring the new role of NATO in the
ME.

But yes, there should be a joint project for a fixed-wing CAS gunship drone to
replace the A-10. The Avenger weapon is overkill, you could build a vehicle
half its size around a Vulcan. Do the same role as an A-10, but without
risking crew and the other a smaller, modern, cheaper vehicle.

~~~
justin66
> The F-35, for all its frustrations, is a _staggering piece of technology._

It's staggering alright.

~~~
Pxtl
It's an invisible supersonic vectored thrust vtol jet fighter. That's
goddamned science fiction. The fact that it even exists is remarkable... which
makes the debacle of its development unsurprising.

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Havoc
They seem to be very popular with both pilots and ground crews so I say if the
people risking their lives are comfortable with it then more power to them.
I'm not going to arm-chair-general that away and neither should the law
makers.

(They should be planning ahead though for replacement because that comfort
won't last forever).

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london888
There should be parts of the armed services that are stuck in various decades.
So you could join the 1980's air force for example, but you weren't allowed to
use any equipment made after 1990. For each conflict the Pentagon would decide
which decade's forces would be most effective.

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onetimePete
Why not scrap the USAF instead? It all breaks down into mission support and
drones in the long run? So why not scrap the organization that warps the
strategic decisions ? Give everything ground mission related to the army,
break everything that is strategic, as in supply, and the useless ICBMs of the
sky to the new drone Department.

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discardorama
How is it that a bunch of elected people without much military knowledge
"know" more about these things than the men/women in uniform, with decades of
experience?

~~~
the_ancient
The Airforce does not want the A-10

The Army and Marines are begging to keep it

I trust the Army and Marines more than the fucking Airforce

~~~
dragonwriter
The people that actually have to support and operate it don't want it, the
people whose mission it supports but who don't bear the support burden do want
it.

In each case, there are structural biases that favor those decisions even if
they aren't right on balance.

~~~
dingaling
The Army has indicated repeatedly that it _is_ willing to bear the support
burden for tasks that are important to it.

For example, the Caribou and more recently the C-27 light transports that were
taken from them and reallocated.

In 1960s the US Army was investigating organic fast-moving CAS aircraft, they
tested the F-5A, G.91 and A-4 but were told that it was unacceptable. They
even faced restrictions on arming the OV-1 Mohawk for which they paid every
cent.

They want it, they will pay for it but the blue-suits have the document that
says 'no'.

~~~
dragonwriter
Still, they don't have the experience of supporting it, and there's plenty of
evidence that that prosuces a bias to discount the burden. That said, I've
addressed the Key West agreements elsewhere in this thread: they aren't a
constraint when we're talking about Congressional options.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11601834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11601834)

