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The WWII-Era Inspired Plane Giving the F-35 a Run For Its Money
schwit1 writes: The US military almost adopted the A-29 Super Tucano, a $4 million turboprop airplane reminiscent of WWII-era designs that troops wanted, commanders said was "urgently needed," but Congress refused to buy. "It's a great plane," says recently retired Air Force Lt. Col. Shamsher Mann, an F-16 pilot who has flown A-29s. "Pilots love it. It handles beautifully, sips gas, and can go anywhere. If you want to get into the fight and mix it up with the guys on the ground, the Super T is a great platform." The Super Tucano provided the "low-end" air-to-ground attack capability the United States simply never had in Afghanistan-a capability the Pentagon's F-35 could never hope to replicate.
It's not a fly high-go fast toy. They've been trying to kill the A-10 for 30 years because they don't like it.
Kind of like the competition for the F35 design. I took one look at the prototypes and knew Boeing wouldn't win. Their plane was ugly, not sexy.
If I was taking on a steep, rugged, slippery trail in the middle of nowhere, I'd want something like a Jeep. Four wheel drive, high ground clearance, rugged tires, etc. If I was on a race track and was looking for high speed performance, handling and braking, I'd take a Corvette.
(feel free to change the marques of the off road vehicle and sports car to suit your tastes and/or nationality.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If we could only double the price of the F-35 I'm sure it would be..... better.
That's a Marine *cough* requirement.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Can someone offer an explanation as to why this plane has not been adopted? I don't know anything about it.
It'd be a real shame if it's really as simple as, "This is a great plane that's relatively cheap, and both military pilots and their commanders see these planes as serving a real purpose. Congress won't go for it though, because they want a super-expensive cool-looking boondoggle." But is it? Because this is one of those things where I'm suspicious that there's at least some kind of counter-argument.
The reason this is being killed is its from Embraer; and Embraer has no issue with selling to everyone, including potential adversaries. Congress wants them to use the T6 Texan II based system which is local(USA and Switserland instead of purely Brazil).
Besides all that all the A-29 Super Tucano's that the Air Force was going to buy were to be given to the Afgani air force.
Can we PLEASE cancel the F-35 and develop airplanes we can actually use? The F-35 reminds me of a sci-fi book where alien horde A has primitive ships, but a lot of them. They also are not too bright and throw more ships at every battle. Their enemies, alien horde B, keep coming up with new inventions and more amazing ships. Their ships get so expensive even losing a few bankrupts them and they surrender.
Given that a $4million unit cost, and availability of functioning models, makes it virtually impossible to piss away money as fast as you can with the F-35, I can't really argue with the notion that it 'gives it a run for its money'; but only if the expected use case is strafing hapless peasants with zero air force and maybe a technical with a couple of 20mm cannons for AA.
There's something a bit...chilling...about a procurement process so out of control that attempting to keep the cost and sophistication of hardware intended for beating down a force 75 years behind the times is a major political battle, and not even a winnable one.
A turboprop sure could be a fabulous close ground support aircraft. So could the A-10, and we already have those.
Trying to develop the F-35 into a jack-of-all-trades is proving to top expensive, too difficult, too much. We really should reconsider some of the multiple roles projected for the F-35, and keep the A-10.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The super tucano is a thoroughly modern plane that happens to use a propeller.
Who wrote this shit?
It's not a "WWII-era" plane just because it has a propeller. Is the Humvee WWII-era because it has wheels??
Both the superTucano and the A-10 are irrelevant against a modern IADS, and will be bled by modern handheld SAMs. Yes, you can eat the first one in an A-10, but you're still out of the fight for a week.
Whlie the armchair quarterbacks have been bitching, they've been replaced with reaper (think supertucaon without an ejection seat). When one of those gets shot down or crashes, well, we pull another out of a coffin, put the wings on, and 2 hours later we have another one for a hell of a lot less than the cost of training a replacement pilot.
A bit more than 40 years ago, the military tried to develop a one-size-fits-all aircraft to be used by all of the services to replace the F-4 Phantom. It was the F-111. It ended up being too big to launch from aircraft carriers and not suitable for dog-fighting, but people thought it was cool because of the swing-wings. An expensive plane that ended up with little real use. There is also a fascination with technology in the military, with the notion that new tech gives you a significant edge. When you have to develop new tech throughout the platform, it gets expensive and inevitably you find flaws and problems you just can't overcome. Not that this doesn't happen in the private sector either. Remember the Apple Newton?
As for the A-29, pilots loved the A-10, which was essentially a flying tank. It had an armoured cockpit and was the first aircraft engineered to be shot at and keep fighting. What's not to love?
Yup! Best USAF ground attack aircraft ever made.
but a prop aircraft being smaller and lighter does not require long runways...
Navy?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The DOD is buying the F-35 and that's that.
Yesss massa!
I'm not sure what you think close air support is, but it isn't the B-52 strategic bomber.
Because the F-35 is a money pit that is under-performing. If it was able to deliver nobody would care.
Hey Marillyn, welcome to /.
Obviously you've never been taking incoming and wishing you had an A-10 on hand. All an F-16 does, or an F-35 will do, is quite things down for a few minutes before it goes away. With an A-10 you can actually catch some sleep.
My very first job was maintenance on A-10 Warthogs courtesy of the USAF. I can tell you know that I've seen a lot of bird maintenance, and the turboprops are stone cold reliable and very cost effective. It's a myth that militaries and drud interdiction forces need whizbang jets. Ask the Germans and the Japanese what good pilots in "slow" prop jobs can do. Modern turboprops are cheaper to make, fly, train with, and the maintenance and parts are orders or magnitude less expensive.
To this day, I prefer and choose to fly on turboprop planes if and whenever possible. My most memorable flights have been on prop planes, like flying over the Atlantic and Pacific on C-130s, island hopping in the Atlantic on Bombadier Dash 8 turboprops. Nothing says fun like turboprops.
The PA-48 Enforcer is a gorgeous plane. Basically an armored, tubo-propped P51 Mustang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A-29 Super Tucano is not a WWII Era plane! that headline is a flat out lie.
Also the A-29 would beat a F-35 for COIN. It is useless for any other mission.
Good GRIEF! The editors on Slashdot are now at the FOX News/MSNBC/Nation Enquire level!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The Super Tucano is no more a "WWII-era" plane than the F-35 is, it first flew in the late 1990s, and is derived from the 1980s Tucano. The F-35 began development at about the same time as the Super Tucano ...
About all that's "reminiscent" of WWII designs is that is has a prop ... but then the first pure jets flew in WWII too.
The DOD is buying the F-35 and that's that.
You are missing the F-35's major feature. It's just bad enough to be exportable. We (Lockheed) can sell these to any two bit government. It's good enough to elicit an "Oooooo! Shiny!" response from them. But it's not quite as good as the F-22. So if we should ever have to face them in air-to-air combat, we can still knock them down like flies.
Have gnu, will travel.
Only if by cost you mean the US GDP.
the Arrow!
They saw service in Viet Nam including shooting down Mig-17s.
Screw changing anything, just stick with the A-10 Warthog, a proven worthy opponent on the battlefield (and a beautiful, tough aircraft to boot!)
No, update the A-10. Include folding wings, sturdier landing gear and a tail hook so that it can be aircraft carrier capable. Then the Marines will be allowed to fly it. Note that the Marines believe that aircraft exist for one and only one reason, to support the Infantry. Marine pilots had to become qualified infantry officers before they were even allowed to go to flight school. The A-10 is a perfect fit for Marine culture, from privates to generals to the commandant; but the Navy so no because of it not being carrier capable.
It was modded as a joke, but turning out more and more true:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
Table-ized A.I.
Screw changing anything, just stick with the A-10 Warthog, a proven worthy opponent on the battlefield (and a beautiful, tough aircraft to boot!)
If the Resistance considers it good enough to fight Skynet, it's good enough for me too!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The total cost of the F-35 Program is 1 Trillion
The big dig cost 24.3 billion dollars. We could have used that money to refurbish a heck of a lot of our run down urban infrastructure?
When you spend money on defense you also have to determine the value of the assets you are protecting. If you reduce their value to zero through neglect then you don't have anything to defend.
Both the superTucano and the A-10 are irrelevant against a modern IADS, and will be bled by modern handheld SAMs.
An argument made in the 1970s when the A-10 was being forced upon the Air Force. And yet it turned out to be quite useful over the decades.
For the record, fighters do even worse against IADS. See WW2, Korea, Vietnam and various Arab/Israeli conflicts. The A-10 was designed with the lessons of these wars in mind. Nap of the earth flight, ruggedness, etc.
Drones have their utility but they are not a complete replacement. Well maybe for the F-35, given that it will probably be required to operate at higher altitudes and such given the previously mentioned weaknesses of fighters in the CAS role. However for a low, slow highly maneuverable aircraft with a pilot with a head on a swivel and who understands infantry operations and can evaluate what he sees at a glance the drone can come up lacking. The drone is no "magic bullet". We also need a manned aircraft like the A-10 as well.
I'm interested in the F-35, and I have been reading about it. There is so much noise that it's hard to sift through all of it. It doesn't help that I'm not any sort of military expert.
I have read that the F-35 is disaster piled upon disaster, and I have read that the F-35 is "retiring risks" and converting naysayers into believers. I have read that the F-35 is incredibly expensive to operate, and I have read that it was designed for easy maintenance and that it will save big money in the long run on operating costs. I have read that the design of the F-35 was compromised by the need for a lift fan on the B variant, and I have read that the plane would have been just as wide without the B variant because of the design of the enclosed weapons bay. In short, I keep reading things and then reading the exact opposite from some other source.
Here's what I think I have figured out.
First, the F-35 had better work because at this point we are stuck with it. The old planes are old and getting more expensive to maintain, and in the long run the F-35 is the only reasonable option (but only if it works... if it doesn't do the mission, it is not a "reasonable option"). The Obama administration shut down the F-22 production lines on the theory that we only need a handful of air superiority fighters, and the money would be better spent on the F-35 (and the Growler, according to Wikipedia). It takes forever to make a new plane, and we really don't have a plan B (or "plane B") ready to go. Also, the USA as a strategy would rather spend more money on planes than lose the lives of pilots; it might be cheaper to buy upgraded older planes, but if the "fifth generation fighter" thing works out, and future battlefields increasingly have anti-air missiles, the F-35 might have lower losses in combat than older plane designs.
Second, the F-35 may not be horribly expensive. Right now I don't care about sunk costs... cancelling the F-35 won't get the sunk costs back. All that really matters is the "fly-away cost", the cost to build and equip a new plane, and the F-35 doesn't seem completely unreasonable there (it's now under $100 million for the A variant and trending down). One of the remaining risks is whether production can scale up enough to make F-35s as fast as everyone wants them made, but if that scale-up happens costs will fall further. Again, the big question mark is operating expenses and reliability. If the F-35 needs so much maintenance that it can't fly very often, then it was a bad idea. (And by the way, next time the Pentagon wants to make a new weapons system, then I will be very interested in the sunk costs of this one.)
Third, I'm a cautious believer in the ability of the F-35 to do the missions as long as it's not in the hangar being repaired. It can't win a dogfight with an F-16, but that was never its mission (send an F-22 for that). It basically needs to be able to carry sensors, computers, radios, and missiles, fly long distances, and be a little bit stealthy. I think it can do those things; and once you have the plane, you can upgrade it by improving subsystems. I know, half a century ago, the end of dogfighting was prematurely announced, but with modern missiles and with the stealth features, I think the F-35 will be able to defend itself.
Fourth, I'm not completely certain that the F-35 will be useless for close-air support. The fans of the F-35 claim that the A-10 can't be used effectively against people with any anti-air missiles including shoulder-fired ones; that much of the time in recent years, the A-10 was required to operate from high altitude to avoid being shot down by missiles. The F-35 is not going to fly low and slow over a battlefield and shoot things with a gun, but it could fly past and fire off precision guided munitions, which should work. One thing is for sure: the alleged upcoming test between A-10 and F-35 for close-air support will include simulated anti-air missiles, because if it didn't the A-10 would totally win.
Fifth, I
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It is when you equip it with cruise missiles and JDAMs...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The F35 isn't a money pit. It's a good investment.
"good" is relative, It doesn't mean "best". A more prudent investment would be one in our own infrastructure. With a trillion dollars we could have a "big dig" type infrastructure improvement in every american city.
The plane is coming in under cost.
1997 projected cost per plane: $113 million (in 2015 dollars)
2015 projected cost per plane: $178 million
sure you can bring it under cost if you keep moving the goalposts
I don't think those things invalidate my question.
Folding wings are for storage.
tailhook is for L, not TO.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
That doesn't even include the B-52, B-1, B-2 and other bombers that will be procured in the future.
Good luck buying any of those in the future.
B-52 stopped being produced in 62
B-1 in 88
B-2 in 2000
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The A-29 is in now way "inspired: by WWII in anyway, shape, or form.
In WWII you did not have COIN aircraft at all. The ground attack aircraft used by the US where in large part fighters the USAC found that single engine attack aircraft were not as flexible as fighters like the P-47. 51, and 38. The navy did have the SDB, TBM, but for close support the F4F, F6F, and F4U where king.
The only thing WWII about the A-29 is that it has a prop. Guess what lots of airplanes still use props. Most WWII aircraft where taildraggers, "with a few exceptions" while the A-29 uses tricycle gear. All combat aircraft in WWII used piston engines while the A-29 uses a turboprop!
Frankly the whole story is bollocks from start to finish but the headline is still pure manure.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
See you admitted that it costs 1 TRILLION dollars.
Not sure if it supported vertical take off but it does support vertical landing.
The plane is coming in under cost.
Oh, Really?
The plane is also supposed to be having these various problems you mention because it is still in testing.
Oops. You're not supposed to be doing that anymore.
The plane is also on schedule
Right. Which schedule? The one they made last week?
Good. So we're spending trillions of dollars on technology we don't need. An excellent, fiscally responsible approach to defense spending.
For a troll, you're not so smart. Use arguments that are harder to pick apart.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You seem to be making the common mistake that an "F" designation necessarily means the aircraft is a fighter designed to mix it up with other fighters. That is not true. Sometimes tactical bombers get the "F" designation, F-111 and F-117 for example. The F-111 was designed for deep strikes behind enemy lines behind a defensive line of fighters and surface to air missiles. The idea was that extreme low altitude flight, computer assisted nap of the earth, would allow the F-111 to avoid SAM radar; and that high speed at these altitudes would help to avoid fighters which were generally less capable at low altitudes. That was the "intent" of the F-111, it was not an F-4 replacement.
Now the F-111 may have also had some fighter roles in mind, but such were more like intercepting Soviet bombers coming south from the north pole. Or in the Navy's version of the scenario intercepting Soviet bombers heading towards a carrier. Note quite a fighter-on-fighter scenarios.
And the F-35 is a royal piece of "shite".
For the price of one F-35, you can get 10-20 better planes, with better fuel profiles, which extend your operational range.
Adapt. The world's not waiting for you.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I am old enough to recall commie BS first hand (first ear?). I live in the west for quite some years now and frankly the only difference between Western media BS and the real commie BS from the old days is that in the West you can mostly chose BS that fits your world view with exception of these few moments where all go ballistic on something and present united BS, the way commies did. Quite frankly I listen to the news with disgust these days - too much Putin and asylum seekers (or whatever let the journalists to get off) pr0n. Too bad all these real free pr0n sites are so boring.
Is that with the aircraft intact or is it an expensive crater creator?
A pilot once told me: "a good landing is one you walk away from; a great landing is one where the aircraft is reusable"
Then the Army should tell the Air Force to take a hike and fly them itself.
That's a remark you generally hear from people who fly other people's airplanes.
sips gas, and can go anywhere
I don't really understand this statement: it has a much smaller range than the F-35 (by every measurement, even combat range), and is less than a third as fast. It has far more loiter time, but the F-35 isn't intended for that role.
I think the F-35 is a joke, mind you, and should never have been built (and I still hope that we don't end up buying any in Canada) but I'm not sure why the A-29 would be considered in any way a replacement. It sounds more like it's a replacement for the A10, and it's not clear to me how it's better than the A10.
What a remarkably apropos user name.
There are effective countermeasures against MANPADs. Some of the 70s-era stuff still works.
I'm always disappointed when straight-up strobe blinders aren't deployed, but I know the collateral damage is a problem. At least the make the MANPAD incorporate some sort of sensing and targeting assistance, which can then be challenged with always-on IR jamming.
But, admittedly, the standard ECM paradigm against all surface launches was to deny the targeting long enough to exit the area, or illuminate the launch and let something destroy it. With fast movers this is measured in seconds. LAS missions measure this in multiple minutes, and have a habit of coming back for more. It is a tough environment. The A-10 has the disadvantage of jet exhaust, the A-29 has a much lower IR signature. But A-10s didn't fall out of the sky with SA-7s stuck in them.
How about the Army buys the A-10- from the Air Force? The Marines and Navy IWO can buy A-29s. The F-35 can then be delayed another 10 years, to great benefit.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
But only once.
The F-35 is about 3x as fast, has 2x the range, more hardpoints, more carry capacity and considerably more stealthy. Doubtless this other aircraft is far more suitable for certain support roles (the vids say low intensity environments) and a LOT cheaper but I doubt that there is much intersection with the sorts of roles the F-35 is envisaged for.
The A-29 has been selected by the USAF for use by the Afghanistan military. From the actual article (http://www.builtforthemission.com/jax/bftm.nsf?Open):
"As the aircraft selected for the LAS program, the A-29 Super Tucano will be used to provide light air support, reconnaissance and training capabilities to the Afghanistan military."
The Afghanistan military has a very specific set of needs. They need an aircraft for a very specific ground support mission, and they need an inexpensive aircraft, but to acquire and to maintain. The F-35 does not fit those criteria. They do not need a multi-role, multi-service fighter that incorporates stealth capability or supersonic performance. The title of the post is "click-bait." There was never any chance for the F-35 to be selected for this particular mission.
I dislike the "we could use this to fix our infrastructure" argument.
I would be closer to being rich if I got your salary in addition to my own. My guess is that our respective employers have a reason for paying you for what you do, and not paying me double for doing more of what I do.
We should spend money on infrastructure, but we need to be careful here and understand that there is a mission that needs to be completed.
My problem with the F-35 isn't that I don't believe in the mission, it's that the F-35 costs too much to not fulfill its mission parameters. I don't have a problem with a 1 trillion dollar fighter if we need one and it does what it needs to do.
If there is waste in that program, it needs to be dealt with, but we're going to need a fifth generation strike aircraft from somewhere. I like the A-10, but it does have its disadvantages as well. It is meant for busting Soviet tanks in Central Europe, and that makes it superlative at ground support, but it is extremely specialized at that. We either choose a new plane or keep the old one, but we can't do both. And my vote is for the new one, as long as it works.
Let's not get caught by history again. Yeah, we're fighting bush wars now. This isn't the end of history. It is very possible for us to fight a modern war against top level opponents in the future. China is working hard to become that kind of threat. They're behind, but they won't always be, especially if we keep looking back.
It is a stupid story based on previous generation tech. motivated by the usual f-35 hate which is mostly political and counter factual. The year is 2015 and bombs have an accuracy of a meter or less and can contain cameras with real-time feeds that allow for premature detonation or re-targeting should the target move or turn out to be friendly, or civilians are spotted moving toward the target. The entire premise of the story is false.
You would think that in this day and age, it would be better to load up an A-10 with high tech counter measures to incoming missiles. If the military could shrink down some of the lasers they're testing to incapacitate such threats, some of these older designs could become even more valuable.
You know how I know you have no idea what you're talking about?
You know how I know you have no idea what you're talking about?
You mean this?
https://medium.com/war-is-bori...
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I prefer the term lithobraking you insensitive clod
Isn't this article an avenue for the defense contractor to reach out to the public and whine that they didn't get their contract? I get it, turbo props are retro and they still work and they are cheap. But if you enter the political realm of defense contracting you'll be knee deep in sewage. It isn't about what works all the time, its about scratching other peoples backs and you'd better be able to make your contract look Tony Stark cool if you want to get it, like the F-35
In the 1970s you could take a thousand pilots, throw them at the enemy, and hope you got back half of them. You can't do that anymore.
The Army (generally) cannot operate *armed* fixed wing aircraft. All those exemplars are cargo, recon, or utility aircraft. http://www.afhso.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100525-080.pdf
geek. lawyer.
The A-29 is a thoroughly modern, well equipped aircraft which just happens to use a prop. I know one Brazilian airforce pilot who flies it and has nothing but praise for the plane.
After the dumb decision of shelving the A-10 in favor of the F-35 the USAF would do good in considering the Super Tucano as a COIN/CAS alternative. Hell, at $4 millon a pop you can even write them off as minor losses on the F-35 program
Ha, right. The American public cares very much about losing people. September 11th provided an idealogical reason to go to war, but the US public still expects the savages to be killed with negligible American casualties. An actual cheap-and-plentiful war would involve losses orders of magnitude above what the US has experienced since WWII.
Thus, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes, and a lot of force multiplying technology.
In the 1970s you could take a thousand pilots, throw them at the enemy, and hope you got back half of them. You can't do that anymore.
No. A small fraction of such casualties over a much longer timeframe forced the end to US involvement in Vietnam. You didn't naively think it was hippies protesting in the streets that ended it did you? It was casualties and the resulting loss of faith by mainstream America that did it in the late 1960s.
Nope. Navy has aircraft carriers with catapults and arrest kables. They don't need STOVL. Marine core does to replace their version of the Harrier. This is currently only in use by the marine core meaning that the Navy currently has no STOVL capabililty.
I hope you don't get all your info from hit pieces written by folks whose primary agenda is to drive clicks. Go talk to some Marines. They don't like the Harrier, it's slow, it's vulnerable, it has no legs, can't carry any kind of reasonable payload, and has a terrible safety record. Actually ask a Marine pilot, especially one who has flown both, which they would take into battle today given a choice. I bet you would get a similar answer to the one I got which was "F-35 any day of the week." You managed to pick the one airplane being replace by F-35 which is indisputably worse. Even without stealth and sensors the F-35 is vastly superior to the Harrier. You add stealth and sensors into the mix and the Harrier looks like the relic from the 1960s that it is. You want to have an actual debate on the merits? Talk about the F-18 C/D that is being used by the Marines. I'm not saying the F-18 wins, but I'm saying at least there would be a debate.
By the way, nothing in the article, as critical of the F-35 as it is, says that the Harrier is superior. It may say that about other jets, but not the Harrier.
How about this? If it's CAS, but unmanned, then the Army can have it; manned fixed-wing aircraft stay with the Air Force. Would that soothe Top Gun's fragile ego?
I think a lot of this self-destructive behavior by the Air Force is due to them knowing the days of manned combat aircraft is rapidly coming to a close and they're panicking (kinda like the demographically-doomed white right-wing).
The big advance of the F-35 isn't the physical capabilities. Jet fighters have reached the limits of what humans inside can endure a while ago. It's basically a refinement to (theoretically) lower costs and maintenance, and expand range.
The big thing is the software, which is supposed to give the pilots an unmatched situational awareness, and ability to respond. Metaphorically it's supposed to be like being surrounded by a mob wearing masks with tiny eye slits looking around for other people around them, while you can just see them all. Probably not actually like that, but that's the idea.
to give a historical example of how this is important, you can compare the MIG-29 to something like an F-16 or F-18. The MIG is physically superior in some ways, but was designed for "dumb" pilots to follow real-time orders from ground based radar and controllers, so the pilots can't get a good idea of what's around them. When Germany reunified, they had plenty of MIG 29s in the air force, but got rid of them for this reason - they just crippled the pilots too much, and upgrading the avionics would have cost more than new planes (the Eurofighter Typhoon, which has similarly advanced software).
I think starting with the current batch of planes, you're not going to see vastly improved physical capabilities, so they'll seem boring, in the same way that all modern mobile phones look like boring, featureless rectangles.
I have a number of devices that contain electric motors. There's a vacuum cleaner, a blender, a mixer... It would probably be possible to create a "multi-purpose household appliance" that would do every possible task with just one electric motor.
But the fact is that a device that does several different tasks does NONE of them well. My carpet shampooer isn't a vacuum cleaner, and there is no "multi-mission floor care device" that is both a carpet shampooer and a vacuum cleaner, even when they are superficially similar.
A USAF air-superiority fighter isn't going to do a great job as a ground attack aircraft. A ground attack aircraft isn't going to be a great interceptor. Hell, there aren't even any good fighter-interceptors. And the F-35 apparently sucks at ALL of these jobs.
The notion of "One Aircraft To Rule Them All" is an utter fantasy.
My question would be is it superior to the Warthog when you're talking ground attack, that's the benchmark. The F-35 can't match the Warthog either.
Whats the point of an A-29? It might have some good air to ground capabilities but it totally inferior to the A-10, which can take hits and survive has a bigger gun and carries more ordnance. The A-10 can also fly slow and fly from unpaved runways. The F-35 is great as a super fighter with secondary bombing capabilities (like the F-16). As a fighter outperformed only by the F-22. But its to vulnerable for close air support. Any unarmored aircraft is vulnerable in the close air support role. That goes for both F-35 and A-29. Although losing an F-35 is a lot more money. I don't see any use fore A-29. Simply get more A-10's back into service and upgrade them (or build new ones).