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F-35 To Face Off Against A-10 In CAS Test
An anonymous reader writes: Lara Seligman from Defense News reports that the capabilities of the Joint Strike Fighter are to be evaluated for close-air support (CAS) missions. She writes, "To gauge the joint strike fighter's ability to perform in a close-air support role, the Pentagon's top weapons tester has declared the sleek new fighter jet must face off against the lumbering A-10. The Pentagon's Office of Operational Test and Evaluation plans to pit the full-up F-35 against the legacy A-10 Warthog and potentially other fighter jets to evaluate the next-generation aircraft's ability to protect soldiers on the ground."
Airforce has been trying to kill the A-10 for years. Recently they tried to mothball them all and replace them with the defunct F-16 until the F-35 was ready ... congress killed that idea. The troops love the A-10 and the higher ups hate it ... do not expect a fair analysis.
Back in the mid 80s I was on a business trip to an Air Force Base in Utah (Hill, I think, but I visited a lot of AFBs back then). As luck would have it there was a demo happening for some VIPs and I got to watch. They had some old tanks set up, then these ugly-ass airplanes came in and shot them up. I'll never forget the BRRRRR of the gun, the tanks exploding, and about 30 seconds later tinkle tinkle tinkle. I asked the guy I was with what the tinkle was, it was the brass hitting the ground.
That was the first and only time I ever saw an A-10 in action.
Guarantee that you'll see a test which
-features some contrived anti-air defense that is somehow not good enough to defeat the F-35s rudimentary stealth but is good enough to be a credible thread to the A-10
-doesn't require the aircraft providing CAS to loiter, expend large amounts of ordinance, use the main gun extensively, fly low/slow or do anything the F-35 sucks at
-requires the CAS airfraft to sprint around at higher speeds than the A-10 is capable of
-reconstitutes the CAS mission to consist of dropping a small amount of ordinance from high altitude with no loiter
The F-35 will win, and the pork will continue to flow to the hundreds of congressional districts that get money from the F-35. The A-10 doesn't funnel billions of dollars to congressional districts- all it does is save the lives of troops. For that reason alone, it will be thrown in the trash and replaced with a useless but lucrative pile of garbage.
The a-10 is my favorite weapons platform. The AC 130 is my second favorite.
My favorite jet is the SR-71.
I'm hoping that we haven't learned yet what replaced the SR-71 , cause if it's just satellites and the x-37b - my childhood awe of a jet traveling over 2000 mph will be crushed.
My fingers are crossed that the aurora is really an asset. That would make my inner child very happy.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
The F-35 IS expensive _per_unit_. The A-10 does one job, and there are several other aircraft that do different jobs. So the A-10 sits on the ground while there is air-to-air taking place, waiting while another aircraft handles that. IF the F-35 does four different roles, replacing four different types of aircraft, that cuts the effective cost by 75%. It wouldn't be parked on the tarmac waiting for a time when CAS in needed with uncontested skies. It could, supposedly, when the skies while also bombing enemy airfields , then do close air support.
Let's see how it actually does in testing before we declare the result.
The astronomical cost of the F-35 means that 1) we won't make that many of them and 2) we won't deploy that many of them. In the event of a free for all fight, having four separate aircraft doing four separate things is a good thing. It allows the pilots and support crews to concentrate on fewer issues. The F35 is going to have to be air support, AWACs and air to ground fighter. The theory behind the F35 is that it is so smart, it can deal with all of the issues from a lot further away. The slow development cycle of the plane means that it won't have all of it's capabilities for another ten years or so.
The idea of having one airframe play multiple roles only works if you make enough to do the job (and that it actually does all of the jobs reasonably well).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The Chair Force has been trying to kill the A-10 since it was born; why would ANYONE believe that this test won't be designed to play to the F-35 strengths and A-10 weaknesses?
The tests will likely be engineered carefully:
- transit speed: likely they'll have a number of targets far apart, to point to the A-10 slow top speed. What they WON'T have is targets that are camouflaged or hard to find (like real life) because that would require loitering and slow passes.
- few targets: sure, the F35 can probably put 2 or 4 guided bombs in a precise 2' circle. But it can't carry anywhere near the payload of the A10 (nor retain it's vaunted stealthiness if it carries external stores) to deal with target after target after target.
- There may a single gun-specific target that the F35 can cheerfully spatter with it's 4 seconds' worth of ammunition. The A10s 30+ seconds of ammunition will not be needed.
- Ground fire - not sure how they're going to test that, but that's a critical value of the A10, it was built to fly over (and survive) the most intensive Cold-War Soviet Armor Wave attacks. Iraqi ground fire proved this time and again that the A-10 was astonishingly rugged.
- Air to Air combat: unlikely they'll give the A-10 a couple of Sidewinders it would carry in uncertain airspace, but in any case, they'll have a "strike" by some Red Force aggressors to "prove" the A-10 can't hold it's own in air-to-air (never mind that in actual deployment, they should be being covered by...F-35s)
- Replaceability: The A10 in 2015 dollars is just under $20 million. The F35 is $100 million. Maybe have FIVE A-10s simultaneously completing courses while 1 F-35 has to cover them all as well? Yeah, ha ha ha, that's not going to happen.
This will just be a Potemkin USAF test to "prove" the F-35 is as capable as they say.
Tell you what: let the ARMY design the test. Then we'll see.
-Styopa
The F-35 will simply require different doctrine than the A-10. I really like the A-10, and it's apparently very good for the morale of the ground troops to whom it's providing support, but that's in-part because it's a known quantity to them. Right now the F-35 is unknown to them and to us; there aren't that many people that know how operates in these quarters and I would not be surprised if its procedures and doctrine are still evolving. Hopefully it won't be as poorly performing as Vietnam-era fighters lacking machine guns were, but we'll just have to see how things turn out.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
10 years from now they'll still be trying to fix it.
The A-10 does one job, and there are several other aircraft that do different jobs.
The A-10 only does "one job" because that's all it's been allowed to do. However it has on occasion gone outside the box with devastating results against a variety of primary ground targets not in a CAS role, and it could also be used against maritime targets in the same way. The A-10 has demonstrated devastating anti-aircraft ability as well, with at least one known air-to-air kill. This is an area that could easily be expanded: no known aircraft can survive the A-10's gun. It is the most powerful dogfight cannon ever put in the air.
That's the key: very few things used in war or on a battlefield could resist that gun. The A-10 is likely to be a formidable platform if it was allowed to do more than CAS. Let it hit buildings, vehicles, ships and boats, and aircraft. All the A-10 needs is freedom to shoot anything that needs to be engaged.
Sig for hire.
But it can't do _any_ of the roles well. The tradeoffs made to accommodate all different military branches needs have played havoc with doing _any_ role well. The repair and upkeep costs are astronomical, it's a fuel glutton, it's fragile, and it's clumsy.
^ This... and in war, you don't want "average" if you can avoid it, unless you have a massive numbers advantage...
The F-35 is the perfect example of jack of all trades, master of none. That is normally not a good idea in war.
My father's opinion, and he was a military aircraft mechanic for 35 years, from the A6 to the B2, is that the problem with A-10, F16 and F18 is not is that they are obsolete, it is that the standard mechanic cannot work on them effectively.
As he put it, after so many field repairs and variations, you cannot go to the book and read how to fix it like you can the B2 and other more recent aircraft. B2s can be fixed by going to the bin and getting the part or subsystem and replacing it. Very modular. Every repair has tools, parts and a timecard for repair time associated with it. Follow the instructions and you will be able to disassemble to get the part, replace the part, reassemble and test the part to ensure it is working correctly.
Older aircraft are much more oddball. It no longer looks like the factory spec. Parts have to be fabricated because they are no longer made. Hydraulic lines need to be bent because they don't route the same after taking damage and being repaired in the field.
Now, there are arguments pro and con for having well trained and flexible mechanics that understand how the aircraft operates and can repair it, and there is pro and con for having a weapon system where individual skill is less important and repairs can be done quicker. (providing spares are on hand)
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
WWII demonstrated that with Nazi Germany producing vastly superior tanks but because of their complexity, they were swarmed by cheaper, mass produced tanks.
No, WWII demonstrated that if you can not put fuel in your tank it does not matter how good it is. Germany was swarmed by cheaper, mass produced tanks but they lacked the fuel and personnel required to operate a larger force. They made the most out of the resources they had and were surprisingly effective. They could not handle many losses so they had equipment that, despite being expensive, allowed them to make the most out of their limited resources.
The United States is in a similar situation to Germany in some ways. The US can not tolerate lost soldiers - the political cost is too great. For the administration to convince people that military action is required, they have to be able to keep their soldiers alive. Keeping soldiers alive is best done by using advanced equipment. So it is difficult to look only at price and the job done when evaluating military goods - there are more factors to consider.
WW2 went on for 6 years, and you got roughly two generations of planes. I suspect a modern war against a proper opponent might not go on long enough to actually produce new models - you'll fight with what you've got at the start.
P.S. I'm not talking about the scenario where it's over in a few hours.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Eh, not quite.
The thing knocked together to replace the Blenheims and Wellingtons was the Lancaster. It was an all-metal fusealge made in the traditional British design in that it was there to dump as much ordinance on top of the enemy as possible (which seems to have been the primary British military doctrine over the centuries).
The thing knocked together out of Balsa wood and glue was the Mosquito. It was initially an abortive attempt to mean an impossible military spec, but kind of the brainchild of its designer who realised that in many configurations, wood had equivalent strength to weight ratio as contemporary alloys if you made the wood composites right. The "non strategic materials" bit was part of the original military spec.
It was sort of originally designed as a fast bomber, but they abandoned the spec and just decided to build a really awesome plane, and it actually entered service as a photo reconnisance plane.
The mossie is actually an excellent example of a multirole aircraft: start with a good airframe and see what it can do.
It didn't have the payload to compete with the Lancaster in the favourite British miitary pastime of blasting the ever living shit out of an enemy, nor did it have the defensive capability to go into fighter infested area (no turrets so a squadron couldn't put out a wall of flak like the turret bombers), though it could get in fast, drop a small payload and get out.
It could kind of go up against enememy fighters in that a well disciplined squadron could defend itself, but it couldn't dogfight 1-1 with any of the British fighters (this was tested).
It was how an excellent airframe (good range, very fast, high service ceiling) with great flexibility, so it was adapted to a hugh number of roles, everything from unarmed recon to toting round a 57mm cannon which made it something akin to a flying torpedo boat. The flexibility also allowed all sorts of ancialliary kit to be loaded like various kinds of radar which made it well suited to rather varied roles.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I got to see an AC-130 up close at LRAFB once and...dayyymm, that sucker is just bristling with firepower, like the flying fortresses of old. If we aren't gonna build more A-10s then I say the replacement is obvious as 1.- The AC-130 is a hell of a lot cheaper than an F-35 techno-turkey, 2.- The AC-130 is a hell of a lot tougher, 3.- the AC-130 can loiter a lot longer, and finally 4.- the AC-130 can carry a lot more firepower.
As for TFA....sigh, how long will it take before the DoD admits the F-35 is a giant techno turkey and pulls the plug? If the fighter jocks have to have their stupid stealth give 'em the F-15 Silent Eagle, which can run rings around the F-35. To me the saddest part is reports are the Chinese knock off is actually better than the original (which ain't saying much) thanks to not having to have the retarded vertical take off crap for the marines. What we need to do is give the marines an updated version of the Bronco or Dragonfly, which should be small enough they should be able to launch 'em off of just about anything, give 'em a baby flat-top to carry the things and kill the VTOL crap along with the F-35 once and for all.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Did not see this happen during DS, and subsequent generations of marines did not see this during OEF/OIF.
The A10 sucks for CAP. Given a choice for no CAP or A10, would probably choose none unless it was determined we will die in any case. Those idiot A10 bastards shot at my unit twice, then disappeared during the actual assault phase.
God bless them fuckin F18s.