More like the USAF has never prioritized its role, despite it being so important.
They should just get over the out-of-date fixed wing rules for the Army and hand over the A-10s to them, or if they can’t bring themselves to do that, to the the Marines. Either one would be a fine steward of the plane.
Yep. It’s the dumbest shit ever.
The F-16 was originally supposed to take over the A-10’s role. I saw probably 2-3 shot down Falcon carcasses during Desert Storm, no downed Warthogs.
The Air Force has hated the A-10 from day 1. The only reason they did it because they thought they would lose funding due to the rise of anti-tank capable helicopters in the Army. We have been lucky that it has survived until now, as they’ve repeatedly tried to kill it off, going back to when I was in the Army in the early 90s and possibly even before that. The thing is a fucking beast. As mentioned on wikipedia “The aircraft is designed to fly with one engine, one half of tail, one elevator, and half of a wing missing”, and I believe there were tests in the trials where they did just that.
I still don’t understand the thinking in the Air Force where they think a fast mover like an F-16 could replace it in its role. I guess it goes back to that they probably dont really give a shit about that role.
You guys speak my language. @ddtibbs is right. The A-10 is a most beautiful plane. It is a plane purpose built around the idea of overkill, specifically the overkill of a big freaking gun.
I like that.
Air Force doesn’t have people on the ground needing close air support. Even though that is damned near the only reason having an Air Force matters much these days. Once you sweep the skies of threats it’s all about ground support and when it comes to troops in the mud, nothing does it better than the A-10.
F-35 will probably do just fine killing logistical targets, but a lot of enemies don’t have many of those these days.
It’s interesting watching airspace get split up for airspace/SPINS/FRAGS/etc. Last time I coordinated it live with actual live-fire I was 1.25 miles from one kill zone and the A-10s were working overtime, the F-16s were coming in to help, and the F-35s were not supposed to fly. I suspect that they will get all of those kinks worked out, but it won’t be as amazingly specialized as the Hog, which is just a total killer. :D
Also, just a shout-out for the AH-6 if you’ve ever gotten to fly it. What a little stud!
This.
Does the A-10 have its own Facebook page? If not, someone should make one.
Yes. A couple, one of which is “Save the A-10 Warthog”.
Gives me a sad.
The Air Force was born out of strategic bombing and came of age as the delivery system for atomic bombs. Its partisans did their utmost to effectively neuter the Army in the 1950s, trying to reduce it to as some called it a constabulary force to police the rubble after the Air Force had nuked the enemy into submission. The idea that strategic bombing alone can win wars has never really died in the USAF headspace, and coupled with the fighter mafia mentality seemingly has colored everything the service has ever done. Air superiority in their eyes means being able to hit strategic targets; historically, they’ve been at best indifferent about clearing the airspace over the actual ground battle. By now, the historical reasons for some of these prejudices have retreated into the mists of the past, but the effects linger on, amplified by tough budget battles. It’s a very nasty vicious cycle, too. The Army can’t get funding for or interest in short-ranged air defenses because the Air Force claims that that’s its responsibility, thank you very much. But the Air Force has little interest in actually fielding a force that really supports the ground forces’ needs.Ditto for ground support. Not letting the Army run its own fixed-wing CAS is justified on operational and logistical grounds, but it’s a sham, because it’s really mostly an excuse for the USAF to ignore what they don’t want to deal with and make sure funding isn’t siphoned away from their pet projects.
Costs are a big factor of course. And so is politics. The USAF is able to do what it does–lobby for its vision of winning conflicts via air power alone–because it promises a cheaper (in American lives at least) approach than anything the ground services can offer. But that approach has been of limited usefulness over the past two decades. Somehow, the Pentagon, the White House, and Congress have all forgotten that cost is relative to results, and long term low cost conflicts that accomplish nothing are hardly cost-effective.
Technically, the success of the A-10 is the it’s a big freaking gun, mounted in a platform whose ridiculous redundancy makes it nearly indestructible.
There are cases of A-10’s being brought home with massive damage and system failures, but which kept flying due to the stability of the airframe’s design, redundant backup systems, and the fact that the pilot is heavily shielded from fire.
The folks who are actually calling in the requests for close air support are often Airforce JTACs embedded with army and marines units…
Trust me, the Airforce guys do in fact care about CAS.
Well of course! It’s a flying tank, after all.
Really the A-10 is a perfect example of everything wrong with Air Force procurement vis a vis the F-35. The design of the F-35 is compromised and the costs massively overrun due to the fact the design is a confused clusterfuck. The contradictory requirements, ever shifting design goals, carrier based, bombing roles, etc. that kept shifting during design, with no accountability for budget bloat make the plane the expensive mess that it is. Even if they were to suddenly fix the flight requirements so that it could now fly in adverse weather, it still stands as the prime example of Washington gone wrong. The Jack of all trades, master of none, except it’s not even a Jack, it’s a 6.
The A-10 is a marvel of engineering. Designed from the ground up with a holistic approach for a clearly defined mission profile. Built like a tank, hit like a tank. Comparing it to the F-35 is comparing a hockey player to a soccer player. The soccer player falls down in a stiff breeze, the hockey player can have its teeth knocked out, spit them out, and be on ice for the next shift.
The engineer in me loves everything about the A-10. I loathe the F-35. There are a hundred ways the F-35 project was mishandled. The fact that it is having the knock on effect of pushing the A-10 out really irks me.
It’s not even a fair competition. Until the F-35 has one of these, the A-10 will always be the better aircraft.
Hint - not the Beetle…
The argument for the A-10
The A-10 got lucky in a way, it was designed to blow up Soviet tanks, right? That must’ve been pretty obviously an important mission at the time, not so much anymore but it was well-designed enough in the right ways to still be really useful.
The world back when the A-10 was designed must’ve seemed quite straightforward and yet by the time the A-10 was used it changed completely. I wouldn’t like to try and predict what type of specialised plane you’ll want 20-30 years from now. Drone swarm controller? Stealth fighter? Tank with jet engines? Space plane with railguns to strafe Chinese mech battalions from low orbit?
Not defending the F-35, but I’m not sure there was any way to make building the next generation of US air power not be a complete nightmare. It’s sort of a holding pattern design until it becomes clearer what’s really needed.
Or more accurately, there are people in the Air Force who understand CAS and support it. They’re just not in positions of power or budgetary authority.
Exactly. There have always been freaking heroes flying the CAS role for the USAF. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read about Spads (A-1 Skyraiders) saving people’s butts in Vietnam. These were guys flying low-and-slow in a prop-driven attack plane designed at the end of WW2. Others did the same thing in WW2 surplus B-26 (formerly A-26) bombers, that could get in with guns and bombs with a precision the jet bombers couldn’t.
Now the A-10 guys have been doing the same for our troops since Desert Storm.
The senior staff don’t care about CAS, but the people doing it do incredible, heroic stuff.
I suspect that another reason for the scarcity of support for CAS and its equipment and infrastructure at the high level is that such support implies an acceptance of the need for and probably inevitability of ground troops doing what ground troops do. That is never politically popular, as we Americans like to pretend that wars can be antiseptic and distant, and always under budget.
