Almost. The discussion at the congressional level should be over what sort of capabilities the military needs and can be justified. So the pentagon can bring a mission and budget to congress and ask them to approve that mission and the budget for it. This is different quite than an unrestrained lump sum.
But the Air Force is already tasked with that. Their 'customers,' i.e. the Army and Marines, say that they're trying to retire the best means of providing that support (and the Air Force is notorious for neglecting CAS if they can get away with it). So the only answer (as things stand) is to force them to keep the CAS aircraft of choice on flying status and not try to replace it with a woefully inadequate replacement. Or hand over CAS to the Army. Which is probably better long term.
I'm coming at it from a perspective that separation of forces and procurement are broken. Given the way things are, I'm not hugely concerned that this bill is being written, but I'm still complaining about the way things are.
I fail to see how that is different than simply coming to congress with "We protect America now give us a trillion dollars of stolen money you pried from the citizens and do not dare ask us how we will spend it"
I think every damn screw the military buys should be heavily scrutinized by someone outside the military, maybe congress is not the right venue but the idea that the military should just be allowed to spend money however they see fit is moronic on a level I can not even comprehend
The military, above all other federal agencies, have proven they can not be trusted with the money they are given, they have simpley "lost" (literally unaccounted for) more money than most agencies have for their entire budget.
Because doing it in smaller pieces would enable more oversight than doing it in one chunk.
I agree that it is subjective as to how detailed to get at the congressional level, but the person running my arbitrary close air support mission can go to congress and explain how much support they can provide at a certain funding level. Congress can clearly reason about that and base decisions about increasing or decreasing the budget on what sort of capability seems reasonable.
In this case, Congress is mandating maintenance of the aircraft whether the military uses them or not. That's moronic.
What is moronic is the Airforce has spent over a Trillion Dollars on a plane that still does not work, and wants to decommission a proven air system so it divert that money into the failed F35 program, and wants to decommission a proven air system with out having a proven replacement.
The A-10 is not useful to the modern US military. If congress wants to fund something better great, but as it stands the A-10 is simply wasting Money. It's like congress is funding muskets from the revolutionary war.
Some designs are so good they continue to be used actively eg the 1911 or M2. Variants of the original AK-47 are still used, even in Russia(!) where it is considered a superior weapon in urban warfare because it can penetrate cover better than more modern, smaller bullets.
I think the A-10's future potential is unclear. It is theoretically extremely vulnerable to modern anti-air missiles, but the same thing could be said about the Hind helicopter, which was deployed successfully by the RUAF in Syria.
This isn't a case of replacing old tech with new tech, it's a case of the changing realities of war making a short-barreled carbine adequate for most needs. The M4 has been around since 1988, they'd had plenty of time to do the switch if it really were the better weapon.
If you mean the name sure we used the name M16 for a while. If you me the design then no.
The M16A2 is the oldest version still in limited use by US armed forces, it's significantly younger than the A-10 which first flew in 1972. This is a 44 year old front line combat aircraft.
PS: They really are different guns. The original version used a 20-round magazine, that's been replaced by a 30-round version. The long range accuracy was improved etc.
You're splitting hairs. If we're going that route, then the A-10 has had plenty of improvements as well. Laser targeting pods, inertial nav systems, computerized aiming, autopilot. The first A-10C emerged in 2007.
Aye, they stuck some lipstick on a pig. It's still less useful than predator and other drones.
The problem where it's to fast to be fuel efficient, to slow to get anywhere. It's got an abysmal mission range, terrible fuel economy, meaningful defense etc etc. Sure, if we where going to face a few thousand 1970 era tanks or supporting huge slow moving infantry lines then it's great. But, we just don't fight those wars.
You are preparing for a war that will never happen...
The world has gotten much much too small for it, and if it does the F35 is not going to be a factor because the ICBM's will have killed most of the population anyway.
A-10 is exactly the type of aircraft we need to fight non-nation state enemy's, Nation on Nation battles are going to be short lived and mainly economic not with Planes.
The Army and Marine Corps don't operate the A-10. Conversely, the Air Force isn't responsible for what the A-10 supports. Institutionally, the first two are structurallt biased to discount the burden and the latter to discount the benefit of the A-10. In principle, the DoD has structures that should be better at resolving that than going through the services independently, but there's also a good case to be made that the mission the A-10 does ought to be moved into the services (or just one of them) that do ground combat.
They've expressed interest in taking it over, many times. The Air Force won't hear of it, of course. They don't want to do the mission, but neither do they want anyone else to do the mission.
The Air Force has no more choice than they do about keeping the A-10; if Congress directs the function, dollars, and personnel to the Army, that's where they go.
Further, that the Army has expressed willingness to take 360-degree responsibility for CAS doesn't change the fact that theor current perspective on fixed-wing CAS options comes from a place of not having that responsibility.
Oh, they don't mind giving up the mission. The AF offered to let the army have the A-10, but only as long as they got to keep the money they've been spending on it.
