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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."
It's a little late for testing with several of these deployed in Europe. Seems more like a marketing/PR stunt.
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I expect the A-10 will have a very strong showing, regardless of how they try to cripple it in the tests.
sounds like a comparison that the F-35 can't win. It is more expensive to fly, can't hang around for long period's like the A-10 and is relatively fragile by comparison. The only way I see the F-35 coming out on top is with some very carefully crafted scenarios to favour it and some creative weightings on victory conditions.
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.
I love the A-10. Don't scrap.
At this stage of the program, they will make the A-10 loose.
"See! A trillion and plus well invested!"
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.
...and love shiny new, big-budget fighter planes, I can only assume that the test will be rigged to show the F-35 in the best light possible.
Ask yourself: How many Air Force brass made their bones flying A-10s (or cargo planes, or refueling tankers) and the answer is going to be pretty close to zero.
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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.
I suspect that as the article says, there will be pros and cons of each. Obviously the A-10 has been very successful in this role, while the F-35 benefits from decades of technology advancements.
The A-10 is robust. The F-35 gives the pilot a much better view the of entire situation. The A-10 can put a lot of fire down in a small area as it flies low and slow. The F-35 can start applying fire earlier, while it's still further away. The A-10 is a proven system that has stood the test of time. The F-35 doesn't have to run away when an old Russian surplus fighter is detected in the area.
I really like the A-10 and generally I appreciate systems that have stood the test of time - newer doesn't mean better (aka the fundamental belief that means I'm a conservative) .
ALSO, when improvements are made, when someone "does it better", that's also new. SOMETIMES the new thing IS better is significant ways. We'll see what happens in the testing.
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 A-10 is obviously superior for close support. It was expressly designed for that purpose while the F35 is this insane jack of all trades plane that sucks at everything apparently.
They say in the article "the A-10 wins if nothing shoots back"... bullshit... the fucking thing can take a punch and keep flying. The F35 has a glass jaw.
When they say shoot back maybe they're talking about a serious anti aircraft missile... okay. But why are you doing close support in that kind of environment in the first place? US doctrine says you get air superiority before you advance your ground forces. Which includes pacifying ground based AA.
Then you listen to them talk about the amazing new helmet that the F35 uses... okay but there's no reason the A-10 couldn't use that as well. The A10 has been upgraded many times to take advantage of new technologies. Why not give it that new sensor package and helmet at well?
My issue with the F35 is that its trying to be everything to everyone and generally succeeds so far as I can tell at nothing. That's bullshit.
Now, I'm just as sad as everyone else that we dumped all this money into a shitty plane but buying them anyway when we know they're bad isn't going to make the situation any better. It will just get people killed.
We had a similar situation with the Phantom in Vietnam. Shitty shitty plane. It was fast and carried a lot of missiles... but it couldn't maneuver and if things got tight and close the stupid thing couldn't even fire because the missiles have a minimum range and they don't work if the enemy is close to the ground.
So an enemy Mig would just take the fight to deck and then turn harder to get behind the phantom... and then shoot it in the ass.
There was nothing the phantoms could do about that besides hitting the thrusters and flying away.
The f35 can't even do that.
I believe someone that tested it said:
"It can't fight
It can't hide
It can't run"
Which basically means its a flying fucking turkey. The phantom at least could run away.
Given planes should be specialized for given tasks and do that specific task.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
They keep lowering the bar. Next it will square up against a drunk guy with cataracts in a weathered Cessna.
Table-ized A.I.
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
I understand why you're a fan of the A-10. It's a good plane, the does what it's designed to do. Re-read what you just wrote:
> The A-10 has demonstrated devastating anti-aircraft ability as well, with at least one known air-to-air kill.
One kill. In decades. One. That's devastating capability? Once, a rubber band killed someone. Therefore a rubber band is a devastating weapon? Again, the A-10 is a good ground attack plane. It's not a fighter; it's not a bomber, it's not a frankfurter. It's a slow-flying ground attack plane that is very useful when you want to attack something small on the ground AND don't have to worry about any enemy planes shooting it down. It's utterly defenseless against virtually any aircraft armed with missiles, including 1970s and 1980s era Russian planes that are now owned by little tyrants around the world.
The gau-8 fires projectiles at a velocity of 3500 feet per second. A jet traveling at mach 1400 miles per hour is moving at 2053 feet per second. So even if the jet was flying away from the a-10, the projectiles are still closing at 1500 feet per second. Similer to most high powered rifles, but much larger and heavier.
Unless said scooter and Ferrari are IN TRAFFIC.
All tools are superior in their intended use cases.
The a-10 gun aims DOWN 2 degrees, so to shoot another aircraft it must be intentionally mis-aligned with the target.
That same angle makes sure the A-10 can strafe without diving directly at the ground... which is why 0 angle deflection aircraft like fighters are lousy at ground strafing targets.
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The A-10 flies at about 420 MPH. Even 1980s fighter jets fly at mach 2, about the same speed as the bullets from the A-10 gun. An A-10 going after a fighter is literally the same ratio as a scooter going after a Ferrari.
Don't misunderstand, scooters are good. They are useless for chasing down sports cars, and an A-10 is just as useless for engaging enemy fighters. The fighters would (and do) fly by as if the A-10 is standing still.
Actually, even fighters from 1950's can fly at mach 2, BUT:
Even those 1980's fighters won't be flying at mach 2 at 95% of their time. They can only fly at mach 2 at high altitudes on straight line, full afterburner, wasting huge amount of duel.
Practically all dogfights happen at subsonic velocities. When you start doing high-g manouvers the velocity drops to subsonic very quickly.
> no known aircraft can survive the A-10's gun. It is the most powerful dogfight cannon
The bullets from the A-10's gun go about the same speed as the fighter. So if somehow, magically, the A-10 got on the fighter's tail and fired, the bullet probably couldn't catch up to the fighter. If it was fired off angle, it might hit the fighter at 30 MPH relative speed - not enough to dent the sheetmetal.
Survive that A-10s gun? No jet fighter in the last 40 years can be HIT by the A-10 gun unless the fighter is either a) parked or b) intentionally flying toward the A-10 without shooting it down.
This part is so incorrect....
The speed of bullets from GAU-8 is 1070 m/s.
Top speed of the worlds fastest jet fighter(mig-25) is ~890m/s flying on straight line on high altitude, with afterburner, but only ~333 m/s on low altitude.
Top speed of most modern jet fighters is in the class of 700m/s. (high, straigt line, full afterburner)
Common speed of modern jet fighters during dogfight is about 250-350m/s , 3-4 times slower than the bullets from GAU-8.
A-10 is actually quite good plane for shooting down slow low-flying aircrafts such as helicopters. It can use AIM-9 missile from slightly longer range, and from the close range the GAU-8 is very deadly. And because it can fly lower and slower it can more easily hit those slow low-flying targets than faster, higher-flying aircrafts can.
Reopen the A-10 production line.
Not really economically feasible. While it is technologically possible, supply chains are fragile things and once they are taken apart it is VERY expensive and difficult to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I speak from personal professional experience. I'm both an industrial engineer and an accountant and I run a manufacturing company. A large part of my job is putting together supply chains. Once you stop production on something complex like an aircraft there is SO much tribal knowledge lost that it would be FAR cheaper in most cases to start from scratch.
For the programmers out there the analogy would that it is like trying to duplicate an entire operating system with huge amounts of source code missing, none of the build tools, and the original programming team scattered to the four winds. Yeah you can do it but it's easier and cheaper to start over most of the time.
Even with the cost of retooling and reopening the A-10's production line, we could probably build five of these for the cost of a single F-35. Ignoring the cost of tooling and opening the production line, we can build ten or eleven A-10's for the cost of an F-35.
I think we could come up with something brand new but very similar for a LOT less money than trying to redo the A10. Plus we could probably update for lessons learned in the last 30+ years presuming the A10 continues to make tactical/strategic sense. If they kept the A10's philosophy of being tough and inexpensive then it might make sense. Although honestly I think the Army should be given control of their own CAS even for fixed wing aircraft. (Yes I know they reasons why this won't happen)
On the other hand as good as the A-10 reportedly is, there is always the danger of trying to fight the last war. Surface to Air missiles have improved substantially and the A10 reportedly isn't much use in contested airspace. The A10 is apparently very good at what it was designed for but it's unclear (to me anyway) how long that will continue to be the case. Maybe it will be like the B52 and it will serve for 50+ years but then again, maybe not. I don't pretend to know.
WWII demonstrated that with Nazi Germany producing vastly superior tanks but because of their complexity, they were swarmed by cheaper, mass produced tanks.
The reasons the Nazi's lost were FAR more complex than you are implying here. Furthermore the Soviet T-34 tank was among the best tanks in the world at the time and even the German's thought and said so. The German's ultimately lost because they picked a fight with a much larger country with deeper resources including more land, more people and more natural resources. The only reason the German's did as well as they did was because the Soviets were behind the curve technologically and organizationally early in the conflict. Once the Soviets got their shit together the German's were pretty much screwed. They probably would have been screwed even if they hadn't tried to pick a fight with the rest of the world at the same time.
So in a shooting war against an enemy that can defend itself, the fighters we have dont matter as much as the fighters we can build.
In modern wars you aren't going to have the time required to build an entire supply chain for a modern jet, even a relatively simple one. Even if you do chance are good The fighters of WWII were FAR simpler and they didn't have to contend with enemies that can literally strike from halfway around the globe. It's simply not an analogous situation to WWII.
The thing about multirole aircraft is you take a good airframe and kit it out differently for different things.
The 737 for example, good passenger jet, cargo plane, military transporter, large jet trainer and maratime patrol aircraft. But it's never kitted out for all five at the same time because that would be pretty silly.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The A-10 has demonstrated devastating anti-aircraft ability as well, with at least one known air-to-air kill.
The A10 shot down a couple of helicopters. That's hardly "devastating anit-aircraft ability". It's a great plane for shooting stuff on the ground of almost any description but let's not pretend it is some amazing air-to-air fighter because it is not.
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.
Having the biggest gun in a dogfight doesn't mean much. It is FAR slower and less maneuverable and those matter hugely in a dogfight. The 20mm cannons on other jets are more than adequate to the task of shooting down other aircraft (including the A10) and having a big gun isn't much use if you cannot put the rounds on target. The A10 *might* win an engagement here or there but I certainly wouldn't bet on it winning against a purpose built fighter.
Take an F-35 and an A-10, put them on the tarmac, and empty a clip from an AK-47 into each broadside from 100 yards. Start a timer and have crews commence repairs, wartime maintenance rules, first jet to lift off for the next sortie wins.
My money says the A-10 could be turned in less than 2 hours. The F-35 would probably be a write off.
For extra credit, evaluate each jet for flyability without repair (engine power, flight control authority, fuel, etc..).
The F-35 in the CAS role is like a ballerina in a heavyweight fight - everything will be great until the first punch lands, then it is all over.
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I love how you said "at 1400 mph". I guess if the fighter slows down, and places it's engines 2 feet from the A-10's muzzle ...
Calculate the velocity of the gun round 2,000 feet down range, after it's encountered air resistance, and compare that to even a 1980s fighter like the F-16. The F-16 is literally faster than a speeding bullet.
What we SHOULD HAVE done, is to revamp that A-10 production lines
What production lines? The A10 ceased production in 1984. There are no production lines to revamp. To get production started again you'd basically be starting over almost from scratch. Most/all the tooling is long gone. The assembly lines and supply chains are gone. The tribal knowledge from the team that built them is scattered to the winds and the original design engineers mostly retired or dead by now. There are drawings but I assure you that after 30 years there is a lot of missing information. Basically you cannot put it all back together again. It would be easier and cheaper to start over.
The MUZZLE the velocity of the A-10 rounds are just below and just above 1000 m/s. Then the hit air and immediately start slowing down. At high velocities, drag is approximately proportional to the SQUARE of velocity, which means that an object loses most of it's velocity in the earliest portion of it's flight.
At the design range of 4,000 feet, the rounds will be traveling at somewhere around 200 m/s or so. My ballistics tables don't cover that exact round at that exact distance, so I'm extrapolating.
As I understand it, "kitting out" the F-35 is limited by the fact that anything mounted externally compromises the stealth characteristics it needs to survive.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.