My rant/fantasy regarding the A-10(A&B) Warthog.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Does the cost of operation include the cost for pilot training. Because these aircraft are being used for Close Air Support, which means the opfor is going to be shooting at them, and the survivability of the A-10 as opposed to virtually any other aircraft means you get the pilot back.It does you no good to have 5 times the number of aircraft, if they are going to get shot down 10 times as fast.

No they don´t include the cost of the pilot training and that´s pretty much the downside.
However, remember that when you´re looking at operational costs of thousands of dollar per flight HOUR, the cost of training a pilot suddenly doesn´t look so bad(because nowadays(with excellent simulators), a lot of it can be done cheaply).

And it´s extremely unlikely to reach "get shot down 10 times as fast" levels.
Armouring can only do so much.

Essentially, it IS way better having 10 A-10 instead of 10 Scorpion(for example), but it´s going to be very hard to say whether it´s better to have 10 A-10s or 30 Scorpion. Even just twice as many of the less capable plane can be a hard question.

Lets put this in context.

The A-10 was a design from the late 1970's which was created for a specific purpose and to fight in a specific environment.

The battlefield has changed radically since that time; mass armour formations are very unlikely to be fielded now, air defense has improved by orders of magnitude and costs have risen dramatically. If anyone were to seriously design a ground attack or air support aircraft today, it would be very different from the A-10.

Coming in low and slow to accurately identify the target is important, but coming in person is just suicide (Ukrainian SU-25's, the enemy counterpart to the A-10, is getting rough handling at the hands of Russian SPETSNAZ operators firing MANPADs, for example). Most modern weaponry also relies on some form of self or terminal guidance to achieve a pinpoint strike, meaning a straight on "gun run" is pretty much obsolete.

A modern air support weapons system might consist of a swarm of cheap spotter drones to provide coverage of the target area, coupled to a large aircraft like a B-1 orbiting at a stand off altitude and distance sufficient to be clear of most of the SAM threats and capable of launching one or a salvo of glide bombs or missiles at identified targets. The incoming PGM's should have a multiplicity of target mechanisms, from on board thermal or radar sensors to laser beam riders and GPS (different bombs would have different mechanisms), making C-PGM more difficult as the target would have to guess at how to jam or otherwise deflect the incoming projectile (and *we* could have fun by having a laser "sparkling" the target while a GPS bomb is coming in, for example).

For troops on the ground needing more immediate help, Fiber Optic Guided Missiles (FOG-M) are already in service in many nations, with some having ranges of up to 60 Km (using tiny jet engines as a power source). More common ones have ranges of 5000m to 15 Km, depending on the type, so you can shoot targets and guide the missile in via the TV camera in the nose (Day/Night or Thermal Imager). FOG-M's come in all sizes as well, from heavy weight ones with HELLFIRE or TOW sized warheads to tiny guided anti personnel missiles (how much would that suck?).

Other ideas are equally possible (maybe a giant armed Quad-copter), or the problem can be outsourced to the US Navy (railgun rounds coming in at Mach 6). Be creative!

fallsfromtrees wrote:At this point I'm surprised that the AF hasn't tried to get the Marines to give up their Harrier IIs. Maybe that's next on the list after they've gutted the Army's ability to provide CAS. And then insist that all the aircraft on Navy Carriers have to be flown by the Air Force - swabbies should only be concerned with driving the ships.

I believe they tried to (well not AV-8B's but before, when they 1st started) - Marines are Dept. of the Navy & both told'em to blow it out their ears. Never understood why Army did, except that the "Air Force" is actually the "Army Air Corp" and diverged from them.

pushmar wrote:AN inexpensive alternative tohe A-10 is the Embraer Super Tucano. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EM ... per_Tucano
Brazilian ground attack aircraft.

Anybody know if the Navy has any of these, for testing? I had something similar fly over my head yesterday with blue & gold NAVY markings on it (I was in traffic & saw from underneath, didn't get a real good look so not sure).

fallsfromtrees wrote:Does the cost of operation include the cost for pilot training. Because these aircraft are being used for Close Air Support, which means the opfor is going to be shooting at them, and the survivability of the A-10 as opposed to virtually any other aircraft means you get the pilot back.It does you no good to have 5 times the number of aircraft, if they are going to get shot down 10 times as fast.

Exactly – the A-10 is a relatively cheap aircraft (for a jet armed with an AU-8 30mm!) the main issue with cost is in repair and replacement. The most dangerous position on the battlefield is CAS, you are in the air, with NO cover, exposed to anyone who wants to shoot at you and your generally in range of everything (sometimes even in pistol range) a Cessna with a mini-gun strapped under the wing wouldn’t last a minute. A-10s however have been documented as returning with an entire wing missing from the wheel well out and even one with NO tail at all past the engine nacelles (blown clean off by a SAM!) so the true value of the A-10 is in getting the pilot back home after flying threw a meat grinder & his plane gets scrapped (not him).

aairfccha wrote:

Ensign Re-read wrote:bovine-scat "multi-mission" concept and the F-22/F-35 capability to do it. (NOT!)

Slight disagreement here as well, multi-mission can work (A-4 Skyhawk, Phantom II, Panavia Tornado) but the all-mission approach apparently followed with those two aircraft is a recipe for failure. Even more so when the required compromise is meant to excel in one particular role and is saddled with stealth and VTOL design requirements.

Right, the multi role can work, (though the A-4 is a bad example – it was a short range attack aircraft not a fighter) the F -16 has been used quite well in ground support roles, but is less successful than the A-10. A flight of 4 F-16s with Rockeyes can (and did) do the job, but 1 A-10 could have done better. No the A-10 is not a “specialized” Tank buster. It is the best aircraft, ever, in that roll and with tanks being the hardest targets on the ground, is designed around that capability, but this does not take from its ability against other ground targets, it can shred any vehicle with its AU-8, it can carry Rockeyes for area anti-personnel and (if scattered troop formations are anticipated) it can carry light gun pods.

Tenshinai wrote:...the cost of training a pilot suddenly doesn´t look so bad(because nowadays(with excellent simulators), a lot of it can be done cheaply).

Yea, maybe cheap to you (the high brass) not to the extra pilots that end up getting captured, tortured and beheaded so you can save a few bucks to stuff in your (the brasses) pocket. That just lost you the argument as far as I’m concerned.

MAD-4A wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:...the cost of training a pilot suddenly doesn´t look so bad(because nowadays(with excellent simulators), a lot of it can be done cheaply).

Yea, maybe cheap to you (the high brass) not to the extra pilots that end up getting captured, tortured and beheaded so you can save a few bucks to stuff in your (the brasses) pocket. That just lost you the argument as far as I’m concerned.

Mad-4A - I don't think you read the post correctly? Today's technological simulators have reduced the overall cost of pilot training, thus minimizing the effect of converting to a new aircraft.
As to close air support, any armed aircraft is better than none.
Warthog - Apache - Stinger.
All good aircraft.

TN4994 wrote:...As to close air support, any armed aircraft is better than none.
Warthog - Apache - Stinger.
All good aircraft.

Agreed as well.
I continue with my stance, in the LONG RUN the exact aircraft choice is not _AS_ important (but NOT unimportant) as having top brass that CARE about the CAS mission, and will not settle for a cursed multimission aircraft (F-35, F-this, F-that, F-etcetera).



ERR

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MAD-4A wrote:Yea, maybe cheap to you (the high brass) not to the extra pilots that end up getting captured, tortured and beheaded so you can save a few bucks to stuff in your (the brasses) pocket. That just lost you the argument as far as I’m concerned.

Or the presence of more CAS aircraft with much lower maintenance requirements allowing far more mission time shortens the total timeperiod of the fight/battle/war and you end up with fewer casualties in total.

This is something you simply cannot know in advance as different situations will have different optimal solutions.

And having the best plane for the role does not automatically lead to less casualties, as the best plane might be too expensive to have ENOUGH of them to be as effective as is needed.

So in effect what you just said was simply that pilots are worth more than soldiers on the ground.

And since there´s far more soldiers on the ground, i can easily argue that you have no trouble trading a few thousand people on the ground as long as you don´t have to lose one of your precious pilots.

But hey, obviously ground pounders are just target practise for you uber flyboys anyway, right...

a Cessna with a mini-gun strapped under the wing wouldn’t last a minute.

The Cessna Dragonfly already proved you severely wrong on that claim. 160000 combat sorties in Vietnam, 22 planes lost.