If you can’t send an A-10 into contested airspace, well then its just not good for anything is it? Because it is land based anti-air I worry about solely, I’m already assuming any flying enemies are gone, and I still considering it screwed.
As for helicopters, they haven’t fared well in Ukraine ,but they have other capabilities that a plane doesn’t have, and even other uses…I don’t see them outdated just yet, but does any helicopter come with a catapult seat yet? They sound scary to be in a dangerous environment.
Sure. The cannon on the F22 is there for the oh-shit moments.
But, in the future of warfare, we will not be flying a 450 mph plane with a dumb-fire gun hitting targets on the ground without it being peppered with anti-air rounds.
It works in that effect in COIN situations, but not against a real military anti-air (and I guess that has to be China, because Russia certainly doesn’t look like one)
Again, I think people fail to realize how utterly vulnerable the A-10 is to modern air-air and surface-air munitions. Luckily we haven’t had to test this out, but man it would be obliterated.
To me, the future of CAS is quick reaction from loitering drones, or high speed short missions from F35s dropping smart bombs on laser designated targets. I has 4 seconds of firing time. So 4-6 short bursts.
And like Janster has stated. We also have helicopters to help support with evac, helicopters can do much more than CAS.
The Ukranian army has proven that any modern military any slow moving air target is easy pickings. The A10 moves faster than a helo, but not by a ton.
Also, the tank-killing depleted uranium rounds are being phased out. They actually haven’t really been used in combat in the last 20 years, because during the Iraq/Afghanistan campaign they weren’t needed. Nobody we were shooting at were using armor.
I guess they are phasing them out, because of the upgrades to laser targeting, as well as the radiation risk and cost that the depleted uranium has.
With the upgrades to the A10’s targeting capability most air to armor strikes would be with guided munitions. The A10 can use other aircraft to lase targets for them, and you see that as the most effective way of taking out a tank. The guns are fun, but against a moving target well armored, they are nowhere near as effective as the mavericks.
Here is a cool interview with an A10 pilot
An A-10 pilots take on the future of the Warthog doesn’t have it doing CAS, but air support for the stealth fleet
the jet can bring in new weapons like the ADM-160 Miniature Air-Launched Decoy, which essentially launches decoys that crowd and confuse an enemy air defense picture and complicates “their tactical decision-making,” he wrote. A four-ship formation of A-10s could launch up to 64 MALD to wreak havoc on an enemy’s air defense, which could then increase the survivability of stealthy, expensive aircraft like the F-35 or F-22 fighters. The A-10’s comparatively low maintenance footprint and ability to launch from makeshift runways also allow it to be operated relatively close to the front lines, Grosso argued.
To al, the nay sayers, I would suggest downloading DCS, getting the 14 day free trial license to the A-10C module and see for themselves just how much ungodly mayhem the hog can bring. How much fun it is to duck behind a hill to dodge a SA-11, then pop gack up to give them some well aimed explosive packages.
In CAS, slow is good, but too slow is bad. Yes the gun has a hard time with modern tanks, but we all have seen how well those do if you shoot at their logistics tail, infantry support, etc. Imo the BMP-2 is the more important target on today’s battlefield. You also get ten hardpoints of modern PGM to play with. 500 pound laser jdam fucks a T-80 way the hell up.
Man, I don’t watch videos people link if they are over a few minutes. You think I want to try all the hoop-jumping of getting a modern flight sim to work?
Yes, it’s a far more definitive way of forming an informed opinion on the subject. This sim was built for the motherfuckers who fly the thing for reals. It’s also great fun.
If the US wanted they could easily build a less hideously overengineered and overpriced drone for CAS duties and have loads of them. Like a Bayraktar. Cheap, cheerful, decent loiter time, and expendable. Which A10s decidedly are not.
You could easily fit 6 or 8 short/medium ranged anti-armor missiles in there. How many AFVs do you need to take out per sortie?
A mission the F35 is much better suited for in any scenario where the enemy has credible anti air. And if the enemy doesnt have credible anti air then it doesnt fucking matter if you need 8 F35 sorties to match the firepower of a single A10 sortie because you have already won either way.
Heh, come on man, it’s twice as fast. 420 mph is a hell of a lot faster than 220, out of you wanna talk more realistic cruising speeds, 360 is way faster than 160. And the thing is, when you are down low, that A10 is way more survivable than an Apache.
Honestly dude, we fully realize this. We don’t deploy any single weapons platform on its own. The US uses a complex network of combined arms. And in that network, currently at least, the A10 serves a valuable role.
I work with JTACs, and they’re the dudes on the grind who are calling in those aircraft, and I’ll tell you straight up that there is no shortage of love from those guys for the A10.
I love the Hog because I am a child of the 80s, which is pretty much why I love air combat in general.
But tech has moved in in 40 years. It’s all about invisible assassin aircraft and drones now.
Although: COIN/low-intensity/asymmetric warfare still rewards old tech in many cases, i.e. “we need something, ANYTHING that can float around up there for hours, and then smart-bomb a car or do some brrrrt for a FAC” scenarioes.
Although better sensors would probably not have helped avoid this incident. The pilots in question had been briefed that there were no friendly forces in this grid square, they didn’t recognize the vehicles, and even though they saw the orange recognition panels that all allied vehicles were supposed to be carrying, it seems that their priors (that there were no friendlies here) stopped them from considering the idea that orange must mean friendly (instead, one of the pilots decided that those weird orange things must be some kind of missile…)
And while there is a decent chance you’re right about pilot workload, nothing’s going to stop some humans from fucking up because what they’re currently seeing doesn’t match what they expected to see.
The evidence from the field is I think that only the A-10 test pilots ever managed to be that economical with their gun ammunition. Pilots in Iraq were spending 1000+ rounds on one vehicle.
I have to think very soon the CAS role will be supplied by artillery/missile smart weapons being fed by satellite or AWACs-style systems from way in the rear. Or, god help us, full AI sensor packages on same. A grunt with a laser has miles of range and presumably low detection if they get it all synced up to where the laser only needs to be on for a second during the terminal targeting phase. “Go kinda there, then kill anything your AI package recognizes as a valid target.” Probably not usable for enemy troops, but vehicles are fucked.
I’ve mentioned it before, it has to be at least 15 years since I saw a couple of kids on YouTube build a human-recognizing airsoft autoturret. I guarantee there are Mach 3+ weapons right now that can be fired over the horizon, find a field of battle, and identify targets, we’re just not using them yet. Just like with Boston Dynamic’s robot, exactly one day after DARPA received their first one, there was a machine gun mounted on it and a sensor package linked.
I think this is why there is so much love for the 'hog.
It is old style warfare still getting stuff done. I just don’t think there are many more things it can do. The A-10 pilot in that interview I linked mentioned using them as anti-air support kind of a new form of the wild weasels.
The A-10 will forever live on in DCS where you can concoct scenarios where it will succeed.
Nah, there were definitely pilots in Iraq who were taking out multiple vehicles with their guns. In the crazy run with that two flight where they killed a million vehicles, a bunch of those kills were with the guns, and it was only the guns that let them get that many kills.
The separate discussion about whether the future is drones, I think it almost certainly is, but we’re also a ways off from that I think. There are a lot of limitations you need to overcome in a fight where your enemy has a capacity to jam you, before you want to put all your eggs in the drone basket, at least until they get much more autonomous (which they are).
There I don’t see much role for the A-10, why wouldn’t you instead use a stealthy plane to infiltrate, lob, and get out of Dodge before the enemy reacts? If we want masses of ordinance, any of B-line bombers can deliver a shit-ton more provided they don’t have to actually enter the airspace. I guess you need something to make the radars pop up, but again a radar-obvious drone or even munition would be a much cheaper way to do it.
