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The F-35 was a bad idea. In theory it made sense: fast, high tech, and stealthy. Then reality settled in:

The plane can only really support a small handful of missiles, nothing close to the Arsenal the Navy's F-18 used to be able to haul into battle. It's fast, sure, but that comes at a cost to fuel efficiency, so while infantry in remote Afghanistan can get air support in less time than a pizza, "one pass, haul ass" means that if the air strike wasn't perfect, they need to call in a second strike group and wait again, not to mention the immense cost for the first few jets and bombs.

The military is trying too hard to make a one-size-fits-all solution, when there has been one for close air support since Vietnam: the rugged and powerful A-10. In fact, with more and more of the fighters being forcibly retired, special ops teams are rightfully concerned, since they could previously rely on the A-10 to make 10+ passes before having to refuel, giving ground forces a significant advantage.

The moral of the story is that more tech, more cost, and more complexity does not always culminate in more value. We have become so accustomed to the notion that things will always get more advanced, and therefore better, that we have forgotten to look to the past to replicate the same success in the future.

Note that the A-10 was designed post Vietnam and saw its first active service in the 1991 Gulf War, not in a jungle. It happened to do well. I find the engineering management of the A-10 quite interesting. The plane has done well, it is loved, but it's also had the most friendly fire kills of any aircraft of the modern era. There is a engineering case study review of the creation of the program, the multiple attempts and successful killing of the project in the 80s here (note that was for construction, taking our current planes out of service is a work in progress since they will be flightworthy through most of the 2020s): http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a530838.pdf

It makes you wonder what it would cost to built updated versions of the A-10 and F-18.

Pretty sure the F-18 has been getting updates - google f-18 stealth.

The EA-18 is probably the most interesting aircraft the air force has. At the rate technology is advancing, electronic warfare seems like it'll win over passive stealth.

The Navy operates the EA-18G, not the Air Force.

True, although the stealth capabilities are nowhere near the F-22 or F-35. Still, it helps to pack more than a couple missiles or bombs when the enemy inevitably discovers that you've dropped in to say hello.

Fairchild is long gone, having been bought years ago and lines closed and moved. You'd be starting almost at scratch.

The F-15 Silent Eagle is also interesting, and is a far better fighter than the F-18.

I really like the B-1R concept, too bad it'll never be built.

Your comment reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

The A-10 is a disaster that needs to be retired. It's completely incapable of facing modern air defences, so is useless against enemies like China or Russia, and has operating costs 30 times higher than a dedicated COIN aircraft like the Super Tucano, meaning you have a lot fewer aircraft supporting your troops than you should have, or end up spending way too much money.

Calling it a disaster is a bit much. I don't think anyone expects the A-10 to face modern air defenses from China or Russia. It's current use is similar to what it was designed for in the first place. Since it appears the US military does have an interest in something like the Tucano, it would stand to reason that the A-10s currently in service will be used for that role until a replacement is ramped up.

"It's current use is similar to what it was designed for in the first place."

No, it was designed to kill tanks, not personnel. Its 30mm cannon is complete overkill for that role.

Apaches are MUCH better for ECAS, and GPS guided bombs are fine for the general CAS role (with troops cuing the targets by laser cartography).

This is how I've understood the aircraft: "aircraft designed solely for close air support, including attacking tanks, armored vehicles, and other ground targets."

Essentially, a prime mission objective is to loiter over an area and provide air support. Something most fast-moving aircraft are not exactly made to do. If a request comes in to target a tank; the plane kills the tank. If a request comes in to target a truck; the plane shreds the truck, and whatever happens to be inside, to shreds. If a request comes in to strafe a defensive position; then the plane puts big holes in those defenses. As for personnel, the plane may not kill them but it sure as heck puts a good scare into them. Stories indicate friendly soldiers like seeing, and hearing, the plane in the area during a firefight. It has more uses than the bullets it fires.

Also, keep in mind that the A-10 can carry other weapons than just the cannon it's built around.

Now, is it expensive in today's world for that purpose? Probably so.

Apaches are nice too. I'm sure one day someone will consider them an expensive disaster as well.

The A10 is an example of "the right tool for the job."

Give it the wrong job and, sure, it will fail.

What the last decade plus had demonstrated, is that there is still plenty of work around at which it excels. And for which the military as yet has no comparable nor superior replacement.

Ongoing, critical work (well, if you insist on being in that theater, to begin with).

In the middle of building a house, you don't throw out your existing hammer two weeks before the new, improved model with the carbon nanotube handle maybe becomes available.

Developers aren't ditching their monitors because in 1 - 3 years maybe Oculus and the like are going to give us "infinite", 3D viewspace.

I'm sorry to get a bit emotional and strident, here. But a problem the U.S. military has, is -- in good part, for politics, personal power, and money -- bypassing more effective and economical systems for marketing that has yet to be substantiated. They have enough raw resources and innovation to eventually brute force and trick around the resulting limitations, but it costs a lot -- including sometimes lives.

I am describing the use case of using a wrecking ball when a sledgehammer would do, while your example is of using a sledgehammer when a wrecking ball is needed.

Nobody is suggesting the use of a decades-old aircraft against a modern air power. But when you already have air superiority, it is better to use dedicated aircraft like the Super Tucano, as you mentioned.

My emphasis is not to bring back the A-10, but to remember the effectiveness of that style of fighter and why it has a place on the modern battlefield, especially when the enemy is in inaccessible terrain and they lack the resources to achieve air superiority.

useless against enemies like China or Russia

Those are nuclear powers. The only possibilities of F-35s shooting at Chinese or Russian jets is "accidents" like the Turkish border incident. In the event of actual war they'll be destroyed on the ground by ICBMs, along with everything and everyone else.

Here's a long article on the Super-T:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/low-and-slow

I think the sad reality is that no western government will be buying Super Tucano, simply because it's not a jet. The image that buying a propeller aircraft sends is that your air force is second rate.

The US is buying some Super Tucanos, but they seem to be going more to Afghanistan than staying in the Air Force's arsenal [1]. Though the bigger problem is that the Air Force really resents having to do fixed wing close air support, and would much rather have the army just get helicopters for the job, even if helicopters have weaknesses in such a role, so they don't even like having to fly the A-10.

[1] http://dodbuzz.com/2015/03/06/afghan-military-to-receive-its...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-130_Hercules

Yes, essentially I was referring to the points of that article without having linked to it. Thanks for that.

Several years ago I worked on one Lockheed project (Not the F-35, but part of another large defense program) as a subcontractor (at a Lockheed facility). The most dated development practices imaginable. Waterfall, no source control (they brought in subversion near the very end of the project in order to meet govt requirements but only the 'architect' was allowed to commit anything (or even to use the 'svn' command)), SLOC used to measure "progress", even the office furniture looked 70s vintage. The project was one giant clusterf*k from start to finish, and I swore an oath never to work on anything involving "Lockheed" ever again.

I had my software installed in a Lockheed system. It was incredibly surreal - the amount of time spent assigning blame for problems was orders of magnitude more than the time spent solving problems.

One of their sysads, in a meeting with the Important People, blamed my system for extremely high network and disk load. He showed graphs that spiked and plateaued a few minutes after system load, pointed at the spike, then pointed at my face and said, "It's his software that's making this whole thing slow. Get him out of here and we'll build something that actually works."

I got unparalleled satisfaction when I got to say, "I haven't installed my software yet."

Multi-role aircraft aren't a bad idea, so long as each role somewhat overlaps the other in requirements. Many well designed aircraft do 2-3 roles very well (e.g recon/attack/fighter roles).

If you mix in another role that doest't match the hardware requirements of the first role that's when you are asking for problems. CAS, SToVL are such examples that won't blend with the first 3 without massive compromises. Full stealth is also a requirement that is rarely absolutely necessary, but adds to the cost and lowers performance of every other aspect of the plane.

When these compromises had been discovered the project should have been scrapped, the SToVL elements thrown out and a separate plane should have been procured for that role. Lots of components could be shared, just not the airframe.

I too believe the project is very near the edge now. It will survive as there is too much prestige invested, but if a few big players like Canada or Australia decide to get zero F-35's the unit development cost would skyrocket which would force other buyers to to back out. If was LM I'd be sending huge lobbying checks to Canada right now.

> The rational of having just the one type of plane makes sense if you're Ryanair (who only fly Boeing 737-800). Of cause they only have ONE role for all their plane. Having just one type plane take the role of multiple others just gives you all of the complications of each of these plane all rolled up in one, plus a series of its own unique issues.

In addition to that, they didn't manage to build just one type of plane. They actually built three types that look sort of the same and share a few parts (apparently not enough to actually save money).

> At some point someone is going to dictate that the F-35 is done, true or not. The US will fly them for a short while and the other nations, that can't afford new planes for another 20-30 years will be stuck with this thing.

I like the idea of building updated versions of existing designs as a hedge against the failure of this project. It looks like some of those are getting more interest:

Note that you can have multiple types of plane with very similar controls & software, IIRC that's one of the advantages of Airbus the systems are pretty uniform so once a pilot's qualified on one plane it's much easier to qualify on others.