Slashdot Mirror
Air Force Says F-35 Glitches Mean the A-10 Will Keep Flying 'Indefinitely' (jalopnik.com)
The A-10 aircraft "is just too effective to get rid of," wrote one defense blogger -- especially in light of ongoing issues with the F-35.
schwit1 quotes Jalopnik:
Strategists have feared that the jet will be axed in favor of funding the F-35, but the U.S. Air Force recently confirmed that it plans to keep the A-10 flying "indefinitely." While the Air Force is theoretically supposed to be diverting the A-10's operating expenses to feed the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the people in charge are now planning to keep the plane running...
Air Force Materiel Command chief Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski told AviationWeek in a interview, "Our command, anyway, is approaching this as another airplane that we are sustaining indefinitely." While the beancounters and product planners are trying to push the A-10 off the board, Materiel Command is going to keep on keeping the planes in peak condition, which will give the A-10 it's best chance of proving its worth over and over again. And it seems to be working -- the A-10 posted a 5% increase in its availability rate from 2014 to 2015, and the Air Force seems to keep postponing its demise.
In Congress one representative has even suggested an operational testing "fly-off" between the two aircraft -- a jet-vs-jet competition to determine whether any more A-10s get retired.
Air Force Materiel Command chief Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski told AviationWeek in a interview, "Our command, anyway, is approaching this as another airplane that we are sustaining indefinitely." While the beancounters and product planners are trying to push the A-10 off the board, Materiel Command is going to keep on keeping the planes in peak condition, which will give the A-10 it's best chance of proving its worth over and over again. And it seems to be working -- the A-10 posted a 5% increase in its availability rate from 2014 to 2015, and the Air Force seems to keep postponing its demise.
In Congress one representative has even suggested an operational testing "fly-off" between the two aircraft -- a jet-vs-jet competition to determine whether any more A-10s get retired.
As background, here's how to avoid the sunk cost fallacy. In accounting one should evaluate the cost/benefits by weighing both choices going forward. Money spent in the past should be ignored in the calculations because that cannot be changed.
Human nature has a tendency to favor options that one has invested a lot of time or money in. But that's often a mistake, kind of like grading on effort instead of merit.
Thus, the question is, if we scrapped the F-35 now, would we get a better military for the same money than if we kept it. The fact that lots has been invested in the past should be ignored.
Table-ized A.I.
The F-16 is a lawn dart and the F-35 is the new lawn dart. The 16 has a horrible safety record. Look at this year alone! Hell, 5 bit the dust in the month of July! Single engine war planes are idiocy at it's supremacy. When you lose an engine in an F-15 or F-18 you go home. When you lose one in an F-16 or F-35 you grab the ejection handle. With all the complicated software and fly by wire systems software glitches are a killer in a war plane which are inherently dangerous due to extreme performance and it doesn't help that most of the pilots are young and cocky but relying on a single engine insures a high rate of loss. I think it's past time to scrap the F-35 and quit throwing good money after bad. We're to the point now anyway where the pilot is holding the weapon system back. They've got autonomous systems working up now and they are the future. Let's quit wasting money of yesterdays technology especially when it's yesterdays bad technology.
Nothing has ever proposed to do what the A-10 can do. The F-35 was just supposed to get sufficienlty similar results. Just not doing so flying so low and slow that the pilots can recognize individual targets, ensuring fire solely on the enemy. "Air strikes", as we learned in Vietnam, don't care who they hit, they just hit the target area. So cal in one too close, you are dead. Call in your own coordinates, not the enemy, and you are dead (yes, it's happened). But such errors with an A-10 are often less, as the A-10 pilot is low enough and slow enough to be able to visually verify a target. The tactics of the ground troop have adapted to the A-10. If they know they can call in support, they try to engage the enemy first. Get them into a defensive group. Close and moving. Then the A-10 mows them down. With explosives-based air support from an aircraft outside visual range, you call in coordinates of the enemy, and bomb them from afar. This reduces the kills, includes more civilians, and is generally worse than the tactics used with an A-10 nearby.
A-10 works with corrdinated ground and air attack. Most other air support is mutually exclusive with ground support (except on massive fields of engagement we haven't seen in 50 years).
Learn to love Alaska
The fact that lots has been invested in the past should be ignored.
Yes, it should be ignored for accounting, but it should not be ignored for accountability. The F-35 program has been a disaster, for mostly predictable, and predicted, reasons. It was a "kitchen sink" boondoggle, designed to be everything for everyone. It is even designed to take off vertically, like a helicopter, which inflated the cost and compromises its ability to do almost everything else. It was designed to fight "yesterday's war", while the future is obviously unmanned drones. But the USAF top brass are pilots, so they simply put on their blinders and ignore the future, so they can get the new toys and wear those snazzy leather flight jackets.
A lot of people should lose their jobs for this fiasco. But more importantly, we need to learn some lessons about project management and strategic planning, so things like this don't continue to recur.
2. Pork wing program or falling apart? If they are 'falling apart' then I do not think a program to remediate that would be considered pork.
3. A bunch were lost in 2003? Please enumerate. I know of only one combat loss of an A-10 in Iraq since 2003.
4. The A-10 has a slightly lower rate of blue-on-blue incidents than other aircraft performing close air support. In any case, the numbers of friendly fire incidents by aircraft of any type are astonishingly low compared to the number of sorties flown. Statistically minimal.
5. What WWII CAS aircraft exceeded the A-10 in speed? The big CAS birds of that war, Junkers 87 and the II-2 were both a couple hundred miles per hour slower. The P-47 was at least in the same ball park as the A-10.
6. How often is a CAS mission called for and time from base is a factor? Fine, in that case send a Strike Eagle. For all the other times, that loitering plane is ready to go no matter if it is sub or supersonic.
7. A-10 was designed to not need full size airbases. Strong gear. High engines. Soft tires. They are made to work from short, damaged and improvised fields.
So what are the really capable CAS aircraft existing today?
Why do grunts and marines commonly differ with you?
The F-35 has known unknowns, but a new project will have unknown unknowns.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."