The Plane Giving the F-35 a Run for Its Money

- The A-10's survivability is overrated. The Air Force conducted studies after both Gulf Wars and found that the A-10 was taking higher damage per sortie when compared in '91 to '03. That Iraq's air defense was in shambles didn't seem to diminish the fact that the A-10 was becoming more vulnerable to more sophisticated weapons. Technology has made cheaper weapons more effective since the 1970s in which this was designed. In a higher threat environment, the lack of sophisticated sensors, threat identification, and ECM is seen as not boding well.

- The A-29 is a fantastic plane. But it's giving the A-10 a run for it's money, not the F-35. In the low-threat COIN environment, it has all of the benefits of the A-10 with none of the drawbacks. That famous cannon isn't always idea against militants in the mountains when you're worried about spraying your own troops. That the A-19 can carry small guided weapons just like the A-10 gives it capabilities where it counts. And it's half to a third of the price to purchase and maintain.

So the A-10 is getting squashed from two sides: The F-35 can penetrate the high-threat environment, and provide CAS in a lethal SAM environment, while the A-29 can provide CAS/COIN against militants in a low to non-existent threat environment. There is no middle ground. It left when air defense systems gained the sophisticated tracking and accuracy that wasn't there in the 1970s and 80s.

The A-10 was a fantastic plane and well designed for the time in which it was envisioned to fight. But even I agree that it's time has passed. Like the F-14, it's sad to see it go, but I think it's the right call.

It's not remotely clever compared to the Eurofighter, Sukhoi Su-XX jets or similar recent generation multi-role aircraft, but for low speed engagement with flexible hardpoints and easy maintenance, it's hard to find many competitors. Which is weird, given the nature of most aerial combat roles for the past 15 years.

There are a lot of WW2 incidents of friendly fire casualties from ground attack aircraft, both from aircraft attacking their own guys to aircraft being downed from anti-aircraft fire from their own side. This happened to all sides in WW2.

This argument is useless without determining how many incidents like the example described at the beginning of the article occur, whether they could be avoided with an older plane, and whether the cost of the mistakes made by the newer planes outweighs the advantages they provide.

The enemy is well aware that all they have to do is win an endurance war against an inflexible bureaucracy that bleeds money and outlast the patience of a fickle populace. This was demonstrated recently enough in Vietnam. US strategy was losing, even though they won almost every fight in both wars.

It would take a lot more than this one cheap fighter to outlast the Afghans. At least body count was better this time.

Looking for technological solutions - low or high tech - is just more of the same misguided thinking. The case is lost in a totally different way - it's not technology.

So the F-35's lower hourly rate is almost the same as the Hornet's upper rate? Doesn't seem like that much of a deal.

The reality is that Canadian planes have not engaged in air-to-air combat since the Korean war, but virtually every conflict the CF participates in requires close-air support. That mission is currently fulfilled by CF-18's. The A-29, or a similar plane, could provide superior CAS capability for far less money. Then, as an added bonus, the successor to the CF-18 would not need to be compromised for CAS, as the F-35 is. Canada could look for a pure air-superiority fighter, and buy a smaller number of them because they would not be called upon to perform CAS. The end result would be an air force that's better at it's primary roles and far cheaper, and Canadian forces (and their allies) on the ground would be far safer.

Maybe I'm wrong?

Which is why the SF team unfortunately called the strike on them selves - this happened a couple of times I belive.

But let's give another anecdote about the A10. In Iraq, the A10, just like the B52 in Afghanistan, was responsible for killing two truck loads of British soldiers. Its pilot mistook the luminous arrow signs that indicated friendly forces for missile systems.

In Afghanistan, an American Apache mowed down a platoon of British troops after being called in as air support and mistaking the troops for the enemy.

The thing that links all these incidences is not low or high tech but the American military. Clearly its pilots, soldiers, staff are not trained properly. Just a bunch of reckless idiots. Much like the government that sent them.

If you need a turboprop attack plane to deal with a specific threat, you can fast track something cheaply because it's a widely known/used technology. The converse isn't true. You can't go back and decide you need a top tier $trillion fighter in a month.

Loiter time is important. Yet most military engagements in history are decided by speed and firepower.

Well yes that may be true.

However, it's more likely a battleship would sink a cigarette boat with a precision guided weapon a second after it becomes visible on the horizon.

By the same yardstick I assume Vice thinks a helicopter is da Vinci era?

~~

The turboprop ( geared propellor driven by a jet engine ) is still the most efficient means of aviation propulsion devised; it surpassed internal-combustion engines in efficiency in the early 1960s, with the Turboméca Astazou, and continued to improve.

Turboprops fall-off in efficiency with altitude and speed, but below around 20,000 ft and 400 kts they're the champions.