The Air Force Initiative to Replace the A-10 Warthog Is Vaporware | Hacker News Reader

The Air Force Initiative to Replace the A-10 Warthog Is Vaporware

foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com

100 pointsourmandave136 comments

CAS is a job best done by relatively slow, but well armored aircraft flying low and slow. Pilots need to have time to develop awareness of both their allies and their enemies. Pilots of this type of mission are going to come under fire, which is something the air force is fundamentally unwilling to accept. Marines in planes, on the other hand, are likely to accept similar risk to marines on the ground if it reduces risk for all. Given that CAS pilots must work most closely with those on the ground, it makes little sense for them to be air force.

That being said, drones are probably the real A-10 killers. They can fly right down an enemy's throat without risking their pilot's lives. VR technology promises to give drone pilots a better field of view than any cockpit offers, and pilots could potentially switch control to a new drone when their previous drone is forced to return to base. This means one pilot could follow an engagement from start to finish, instead of multiple pilots trading off. This would greatly reduce the likelihood of pilot error and friendly fire incidents.

>CAS is a job best done by relatively slow, but well armored aircraft flying low and slow.

That was true, but it's not true any more. Modern targeting pods (like the Siper XR pods on the B-1) mean you can get the same situational awareness from much farther away. Between targeting pods and laser guided weapons the A-10 is obsolete.

Low and slow is dangerous. Aircraft defenses (lasers, flares, chaff, ECM) haven't been evolving as quickly as threats at low altitudes. Not by a long shot. You're fine against a dozen guys with rusty AK-47s and RPG-7s, but once you start fighting armies equipped with something like Pantsir or NASAMS you're in big trouble.

There's two points here:

Have fast planes with targeting pods proven more effective than A10s thus far in practice? (I don't know, I'm asking.)

How many potential enemies have high end AA missile systems? It's all very well to argue that a weapon system can't defeat X, but is X what we'll be fighting in practice?

The M1 Abrams turned out not to be especially useful in Iraq although it remains superb for defeating a Russian offensive in the Fulda Gap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap).

I think the US needs to figure out what its strategy is before it picks weapon systems. Since the end of the cold war we seem to have lost the plot both in terms of strategy (what do we want? how should we get it?) and tactics (how will we employ available resources to obtain desired results). If anything, our strategy seems to be dictated by our tactics which are dictated by resources which are decided by pork barrel politics.

This is hardly surprising -- when Senator McCain "schooled" Obama on the meaning of strategy (as Grand Tactics) he demonstrated that top policy makers literally don't even know the meaning of the word.

Recap: the A10 is very good for fighting counterinsurgency against people with relatively shitty equipment. Do we think we should be fighting a lot of such wars? Why? If the answers make sense, then sure, keep the A10.

A-10s having been flying with targeting pods (Litening and Sniper) and dropping laser and GPS-guided weapons for years. So how exactly has their presence made A-10 obsolete again?

Can't say I know very much about this, but if you can see and hit things well from a distance why go close? And if you don't need to go close, why do you need something that is built to go close over something that can carry more ordinance or fly for fewer dollars per hour or get there quicker? Surely it costs something (speed, flight range, maybe) to get the ability to go close and if you don't need that ability you can use that cost elsewhere.

Sometimes standoff is good and necessary. Stay out of threat range, not be seen or heard by the enemy as you follow them with your targeting pod, etc.

Sometimes standoff is pointless. Friendlies on the ground are in a knife feet with the enemy less than 100m away and they need air support. Now close, and slower to better maintain SA on who the friendlies are and who the enemy is -- and the ability to deliver weapons with lower Risk Estimate Distances and/or Collateral Damage Estimates is critically important. The GAU-8 does both. The F-16 gun is useless. A laser guide bomb in this scenario may present too much risk for fratricide.

A-10s can carry more ordnance, for a longer time over a target area, and need less tanker support to do so, than an F-16. And for less $/flying hour. It does cost speed. A-10s don't go anywhere quickly. But it can perform CAS in a standoff roll, or in a close-in fight equally well.

Making a presence does influence the tactical decisions made by the enemy.

Here's a simplistic example. If the enemy isn't aware that your side has CAS, he may believe that it's a good idea to attack your side in a certain way. He may get killed in the process, but that attack may result in some losses on your side.

If, on the other hand, the enemy is made aware of your CAS, he may opt to play it safe and not risk his assets by attacking you that way.

It's like when you play chess: some pieces control some areas of the board without doing anything. Just by being where they are, they restrict the opponent's actions.

Closer means less reaction time.

Because you can get situational awareness and targeting without ever having to get close to your target. A multirole fighter (or better yet, a B-1) with a pod can carry out the CAS mission just as effectively. You don't need a dedicated ground attack aircraft.

And yet, A-10s are currently deployed to Middle East fighting ISIS and Europe to saber rattle Putin. Not very obsolete.

There are a myriad of incorrct assumptions in your argument, but I'll focus on one. Pilots flying multi-role aircraft have to train for those multiple roles. They have to remain proficient in multiple mission and skill sets, many of which do not overlap. Do you think multi-role F-16, F-15E, and B-1 pilots/WSOs get extra training resources (flying hours and sorties) over A-10 pilots, who only train for really one mission -- CAS? Newsflash…they don't.

It appears you think CAS is nothing more than finding targets in a targeting pod. It is not.

>And yet, A-10s are currently deployed to Middle East fighting ISIS and Europe to saber rattle Putin. Not very obsolete.

Which pretty much any other aircraft in the arsenal can do. And obsolete doesn't mean "useless". It just means there are better options.

>There are a myriad of incorrct assumptions in your argument, but I'll focus on one. Pilots flying multi-role aircraft have to train for those multiple roles. They have to remain proficient in multiple mission and skill sets, many of which do not overlap. Do you think multi-role F-16, F-15E, and B-1 pilots/WSOs get extra training resources (flying hours and sorties) over A-10 pilots, who only train for really one mission -- CAS? Newsflash…they don't.

You have a myriad of incorrect assumptions in your argument here, but I think the fastest way to blow hole in it is to point out the A-10 only accounted for 20% of CAS missions in Afghanistan. Pilots of those other airframes are certainly training for CAS - they're doing 80% of the missions.

>It appears you think CAS is nothing more than finding targets in a targeting pod. It is not.

Your whole argument boils down to "I know something you don't". Maybe you should expound, as the only supporting point you provided is simply wrong.

In COIN missions, when operating very close to the enemy, you often need to get close enough to for visual confirmation. The truth is, with guidance you can hit a dot at an arbitrary distance. But without visual, it's awfully hard to be sure what that dot is.

Visual confirmation allows ordinance to be fired at tens rather than hundreds of meters. The perfect replacement for the A-10, which (let's face it) is major overkill, despite being a truly awe-inspiring machine, is the turboprop South American anti-cartel aircraft the A-29B Super Tucano.

The other proposed replacements for the A-10's CAS duties are the F-35 JSF, and the Sikorsky S-97 Raider, which is an overpriced under-armed light attack helicopter.

The problem is that now that the A-29B isn't being built, the A-10 has to be decommissioned in order to justify the Raider and and the F-35 CAS.

And with Putin's "frozen conflicts" strategy expanding, it never hurts to have a aerial gun that can punch through Soviet-made tanks like tissue paper.

Why not C130?

There is a C-130 variant for ground attack, as well as kits the marines use to turn a C-130J into a ground attack craft. But the C-130 is very big and very slow, so you need absolute dominance of the skies and you need to make sure you've cleared out all the ground based AA.

85 ton B1 vs. 35 ton C130.

It doesn't matter that much if you are going 720 knots or 320 knots if you get shot by BUK missile traveling 2000 knots. Both C-130 and B1 can fly above small caliber Anti-air artillery range and above MANPAD range with ease. Nothing can fly above BUK, you would need stealth to operate at those environments.

The only threat where B1 is clearly better is if you get shot by Flack 88. But that's not going to happen. So B1 gets phased out as too expensive platform.

On the flip side, you're not any safer putting drones up against jamming technology, like GPS jammers and so on. China proved that tech when they put one of our stealth drones down in Iranian territory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...

There's certainly a middle ground between blowing up dudes with rusty AKs and fighting high-level proxy wars but honestly that barrier is paper-thin, nations like Russia and China will always be escalating that. It's always an arms race. Drones can react faster (for now) but humans can react appropriately.

Isn't the control latency a problem here? Firing a missile at a residence or car on the highway is one thing, but engaging an enemy who is engaging you back in a battlefield situation would seem to require that the pilot be experiencing and responding to the situation now, not a satellite roundtrip halfway around the world ago.

I have to agree with this, but there's nothing saying that drone operators can't be situated closer to the action. They can operate from a ship off-shore or even a nearby ground facility or plane.

Realistically though, a thousand kilometers of distance incurs only about half a millisecond of delay. The real issue is probably getting the latency of everything else in the chain down to a low level. e.g. One problem commercial VR systems are currently engaging is getting latency down to a level that doesn't make people feel sick. The standards for a military jet are probably a lot higher.

On the bright side, a CAS fighter flying at a few hundred kilometers per hour is probably a much easier first-step for drone replacement than a supersonic fighter. I'm not saying the A-10 is obsolete yet, but it's likley going to be replaced by drones before any other manned fighters are.

I think your half millisecond is an order of magnitude out. c = 3x10^8metres/sec. c=d/t. So t=1000×10^3metres / 3x10^8metres sec = (approx) 0.3x10^-2 sec = 3x10^-3 sec = 3 millisecs. Phew, tough editing work on a phone. 6 millisecs for a round trip.

Yes, you're right. Average human reaction time is on the order of hundreds of milliseconds though. If you can keep latency under ten milliseconds you're probably doing pretty good, and that's reasonable over distances of a few hundred kilometers. Having the operator thousands of kilometers away is only really necessary for extrajudicial assassinations, which should be put to a stop anyways.

I can remember playing Quake on a server with a latency of 40 ms and being an untouchable god because of it.

But for VR you can just have a ultra wide fov camera and then allow your pilots to look around that field with zero latency. The only latency would be with actual commands to the drone which shouldn't cause any problems with VR anyways.

There is significant lattency in digital videos streams and also the render pipe. I don't know how they stream video but it can't be mpeg.

Even with compressed independent frames that never spend on future frames you get the transfer window lattency so you need a lot of unjammable bandwidth. Line of sight transmitters? Ir lasers? Kind of a hard problem though as you might possibly want to not light up the whole country with your communications.

And commodity hardware can't push frames without a lot of buffering. I guess they might afford custom display hardware but it's a complex problem too.

I guess it would be easier to just send the coordinates where you want everything dead and get the popcorns. Bonus extra is everything that actually is a threat but I doubt that it's a actually a big concern when doing CAS, although I guess a A10 pilot might be able to spot schoolyards and kids if they are not under pressure.

The ping from US West to Tokyo is around 150ms on AWS, last I remember.

I read once that musicians need to be within about 20ms to collaborate in real time, and that sound travels through air at about 1 foot per ms. Fighter pilots can recognize an image flashed for 1/220 second (4.54ms) [1]. Etc. I'd call these operating parameters for drones, split between computing and communication.

1. http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm Test #3

You can put big guns on drones.

A-10 are anti tank, and anti dug in positions. If someone is running in the open ground forces can just shoot them. Further, a person running at 25 mph takes 27 ms to move one foot. So a little latency is not an issue. Remember, these things are spraying billets in a line on the ground. They don't need or really want pin point accuracy.

Yea, the GAU-8's precision is like 70% within some multiple meter radius at 1km anyways. I don't remember the specifics.

80% within 5 mils. 1 mil = 1 foot at 1000 feet. At 1nm (usual employment range), that's 30 feet.

"Marines in planes, on the other hand, are likely to accept similar risk to marines on the ground if it reduces risk for all."

Is this an issue of different cultures within different departments, or different objectives, or what? I would hope that combined arms in a modern military would break down divisions in combat behavior like this

All of the above. The USMC is designed to be quickly deployed in such a way that combat operations can continue to be performed with no support dependency (1-3 months, I don't remember). In order to make that happen they've duplicated a slimmed down version of a bunch of DOD components: air, armor, artillery, navy, etc. The moment one of those components underperforms in comparison to the fatter DOD version - it calls the whole endeavor into question, so there is considerable incentive to the folks at the top to make it work. Long story short: the USMC is a statically compiled version of kill.exe.

They rotate the pilots to ground operations as well, FACs - forward air controllers, so there is a pretty close link at the company level: the FAC knows the pilots in the air. Rifle squad leaders are required to be qualified JFOs, joint fire observers, so for every 13 infantrymen you've got someone who can direct fire support. The common practice in the infantry is for individuals to train in tasks performed by the next two levels in one's chain of command, so every rifleman is effectively trained to interface with fire support. This requirement for interoperability is often reflect in weapon design: tanks have comm boxes on the back, grunt phones, where an infantryman can grab the phone and direct the tank commander. This leads to the implementation of the "billet supersedes rank" philosophy, where you often have a lance corporal instructing an officer - and the instruction is cheerfully met with "Direct fire B2, fire for effect, aye aye lance corporal".

The effect of the culture can't be overstated, I've seen a lot of brave men from every branch, but in my experience as an infantry machinegunner - the USMC air wing operated on a whole other level of "Just make it happen". Judgement calls are made at a much lower level in the Corps, which can lead to emotion driven mistakes, but generally results in faster decisions by those with greater situation awareness.

Purely on the basis of training, equipment, and investment of taxpayer dollars, a pilot's life is worth a helluva lot more than an infantryman's life, and air force pilots are probably aware of this. They're like the modern day equivalent of noblemen as mounted heavy cavalry. They feel the duty to protect the peons with pitch-forks on the front lines, but they're not trained to do so recklessly. A platoon getting wiped out is a far smaller loss than losing a plane. Such are the economic realities of war. Pilot training no doubt reflects this.

I honestly don't know much about marine aviator culture, but I'd be very surprised if they don't see themselves as having more in common with marine infantry than air force pilots do. That commonality probably makes them a lot more committed to keeping ground forces safe when flying CAS missions. I could be wrong. I am speculating here. I'd welcome the opinion of somebody in a position to know better.

> "...but I'd be very surprised if they don't see themselves as having more in common with marine infantry than air force pilots do."

You're exactly right. AF pilot here, not a Marine, but it is my understanding that all Marine officers go infantry school first. The Marines are very good at Combined Arms - it's what they do.

But that doesn't mean they are necessarily more committed to CAS. CAS is pretty much all A-10 pilots do. They live and breath supporting dudes on the ground. Objective #1 for just about every CAS training mission is something along the lines of "Achieve the Ground Commander's intent."

One key difference is that Marine pilot mostly provide CAS for other Marines. AF CAS pilots mostly provide CAS for the Army -- a completely separate service.

So going back to Objective #1, a Marine pilot could very well personally know that ground commander. Went to various schools together, crossed paths, etc. The USMC isn't terribly big, all things considered.

An Air Force pilot has about a 0.1% change of knowing who that Army ground commander is. Question becomes, does this matter?

A Marine may say it does, and I won't argue with him. I will say this, as a A-10 pilot: I don't give a shit you who are. If you need CAS, I will give you everything I've got. Even if all you need is for me to stare at building with my targeting pod for three hours to to see if any bad dudes are hiding inside. That's how I was raised, and that's what teach brand new A-10 pilots.

In WW1, the aviators were drawn from the nobility. Until they all got slaughtered. Then the lower classes started getting accepted into the flying schools.

This is the background of the movie "The Blue Max".

That's a pretty strong statement to justify with 'no doubt'.

DOD has a zillion ways they support the families of KIA soldiers. Even just looking at economics, losing 10 soldiers isn't cheap.

> losing 10 soldiers isn't cheap.

It's cheaper than losing the plane, the pilot, the resources spent in training, maintenance, and preparation of the whole logistic structure.

Not to mention the asset and its capabilities. After all, a grunt with a gun is less of a threat than a plane carrying an entire arsenal.

An F-35 starts at around $100M, and that's the plane the air force is touting to take over the CAS role. Does it really cost more than $10M per infantryman killed?

ok but the F-35 isn't the go-to plane for CAS right now. On the opposite end of the spectrum you can get an AC-208 'combat caravan' for $150k in non-sequential bills and a late-model hyundai sonata (KBB value $15k).

Someone cooked up a model showing that the embraer super tucano would have been more effective in the CAS mission in afghanistan than some of the high power jets we used, in addition to 10x cheaper.

The USAF does not fly the AC208 or the Super Tucano in combat. There is no prize for hypothetical savings.

I would love to see such airframes flown, they would be much more effective in many roles than "super-airframes" like the F-35. But that's not the US military philosophy. We fly the best and most expensive, even if it's 10x as expensive as an airframe that's 75% as effective. It's a calculation that government debt is cheaper than having to face the public over killed and captured soldiers.

The writers arguing for this (not me, I don't have experience or expertise to have an opinion) say that cheaper airframes are more effective because of slower stall speed, ability to operate at lower altitude, and greater fuel stamina, all of which translate to better loiter characteristics.

Also have heard that ground commanders hate the high-altitude planes for CAS because they're less likely to correctly discriminate the situtation on the ground before unloading.

To your point -- yes, we don't operate AC208; I think iraq is the only one who does. (And if the sight of a hellfire stapled to the wing of a small turbopro doesn't make you want to run and hide, I don't know what will). But we also don't operate the F-35 in the CAS mission. neither plane is a good example of a CAS plane.

> On the opposite end of the spectrum you can get an AC-208 'combat caravan' for $150k in non-sequential bills and a late-model hyundai sonata (KBB value $15k).

Even considering that hypothetical scenario, there's also the cost of training everyone throughout the logistics chain and required to get the plane operational and in the air.

If you lose a peasant, you lose a peasant. If you lose a knight, you also lose the squire, the page, etc etc etc.

The tactical decision is going to consider a value pretty close to the cost of the plane and pilot though. The logistics chain can support a new plane and pilot.

The squire can help some new guy with his helmet, etc (I think this is considerably more true for modern military than for knights...).

well with improving optics and coordination who needs CAS drones, the things will be deployed anywhere on the horizon and either employ a rail gun or long term a laser to blanket an area. Railguns are frighteningly fast and don't require close proximity to their target to respond to a situation near instantly.

The latency inherent in drone control is at odds with the need to develop an awareness of the battlefield situation.

When your sensory data is out of date by up to 2 seconds, you're going to get a lot of blue-on-blue fire.

If you are firing on a target that is so close to friendlies that 2 seconds of on the ground movement can make a difference, then that is a danger close fire mission - which is rare. They also lead to additional safety checks and procedures before final execution. For example: normally an aircraft could just drop ordinance from any angle, but for danger close they align the friendly unit with the target - dropping ordinance once they've passed over the friendlies. While a drone can't really do that, the detached nature of the operator would actually be an advantage in that situation. If I had to choose between someone dropping bombs near me with a Google maps like interface or some dude rolling in riding 30 tons of angry aircraft, I'd choose the point and click option.

Former jarhead here, familiar with "danger close" ;)

My point was just that, though: 2s of latency on a danger close fire-mission is something that brings the pucker-factor up to a solid 9. At least for me, the (former) grunt on the ground.

Huh, I just assumed you were AF because you've made the same argument that they use for dragging their feet on drone deployment - the value added by retaining a large amount of human judgement in process that no longer requires it. I imagine the folks who got replaced by standardized tooling during the industrial revolution made the same obviously self serving argument.

Well grunts can disagree, I was an 0331 ten years ago, but you've got me curious about what experience has informed your thinking on this matter. I've only been down range of danger close fire missions twice, and in neither case were we moving around much. The first was when we were pinned down, and the other was when our foot patrol stumbled onto a numerically superior enemy with technicals. I'm hard pressed to think of a situation where a danger close is made any more dangerous by adding a two second delay. Even in a scenario where your FDL is breached and you're poking people to death, there is a clear delineation - you aren't running past your attackers. A flanking maneuver would confusing that delineation, but that takes a lot longer than whatever delay the drone operator faces.

>Pilots of this type of mission are going to come under fire, which is something the air force is fundamentally unwilling to accept.

O.o O Rly? and of the entire spec ops community down in Florida?

>Given that CAS pilots must work most closely with those on the ground, it makes little sense for them to be air force.

We literally have an entire command-control element built around reducing the latency between ground and air assets called the TACP (tactical air control party)

>drones are probably the real A-10 killers.

Alright, you earned some street cred back

6/10 comment

If there's a consensus on what's wrong with pentagon procurement, the bullet points are: (1) no 'feasability feedback' mechanism to reject wishlist items that inflate complexity or delivery date, (2) focus on 'joint procurement', i.e. one product that solves army / air force / navy problems, i.e. a flying submarine with wheels, (3) lead times are too long for bespoke products (by the time it's delivered your needs have changed).

A-10 was built based on CAS lessons that had been learned the hard way in Nam, where helicopters had to take the place of fixed-wing airplanes that couldn't do the job. (meaning it was built to do one thing well). It wasn't a swiss-army knife.

If you believe that it's not practical to build a swiss-army knife aircraft, then you probably weren't surprised by the crappy fighters we turned out in the 90s and 00s. The head airplane designer on china's F-22 killer basically laughed when he was asked about the F-35, and said 'the best thing that ever happened to us was when the US decided to put VTOL in their main fighter -- and not even in all of them.' China could never afford to do that but arguably the US can't either. A post-IOC F-35C had its wings fall off (yes) and the pentagon lockheed liaison's explanation was 'the pilot was too heavy, we're looking into it'.

Even more interesting than the A-10 is the F-16; it was a backburner project at lockheed and the pentagon tried to shut it down because they didn't want it stealing any PR thunder from the bigger badder F-15. These days the F-16 is doing every job because it's cheap, easy to maintain, lots of people can fly them. Lockheed just shut down the line for these but the aftermarket is booming.

"A post IOC F-35C had its wings fall off”

Stop making things up. The C variant won't be declared operationally capable for at least another year, probably two. No C model " had its wings fall off". A test aircraft undergoing lifetime fatigue testing in a loads fixture had some wing spar cracks. I don't mean to dismiss that issue, because it is serious, but that's hardly having the wings fall off.

ok, fair point.

http://www.janes.com/article/55987/wing-spar-cracks-found-on...

My impression has been that the A10 was developed as a jet propelled successor to the A1 Skyraider. It saw a similar long service life fullfilling similar close air support missions.

As with the A10 currently, the A1's use in combat was often different from the "last war" role for which it was designed and built: range, robustness, and ordinance capacity for sinking battleships translated to long loiter. It's long service life was probably also a function of development as a naval weapon system due to institutional culture and the practical advantage of carrier landing ruggedness.

martha mcsally of the arizona 2nd flew A-10s in kuwait and is the loudest voice in congress to keep them flying.

If the Air Force is so bent on getting rid of these wonderfully useful, tough machines, then perhaps they should entirely leave the ground support role to the US Marine Corps and the US Navy, both of which have a long history of providing ground attack support to troops.

The A-10 is the best damned aircraft at this role since the AD-1 Spad's were retired.

All the Air Force wants is glitter and fame, they aren't really interested in life on the ground. Give them their wish, take the A-10s and give them to someone who will use them to their fullest potential.

Traditionally in American politics (and doubtless in other countries too) if someone cuts your budget or doesn't increase your budget as much as you'd like, you can put pressure on them by announcing you're being "forced" to dump something useful and popular.

Local government wants more money? Threaten to close libraries. Air force wants more money? Threaten to retire a plane famous for its effectiveness in a recent conflict.

The thing is, the last A-10 rolled off the production line 32 years ago. Airframes have finite lifespans.

As mentioned in the article, the Air Force has already paid Boeing to rewing the A-10 fleet and subsequently extend the lifespan of the airframes out to ~2030-2040.

Then Build more Airframes...

Start up the production again, I would rather them scrap the F35 program, which is vaporware at this point, than the A10

It would probably cost more to start up the A-10 lines again than finish up the F35. There's a lot of tribal knowledge that goes into building an airframe and most of it has been lost for the A-10. You'd pretty much have to start from scratch.

> It would probably cost more to start up the A-10 lines again than finish up the F35.

It's not just about cost of the platform, but also the capabilities provided by it. So even if the F35 is "finished" it won't necessarily fill the void left by the A-10, so more A-10s might be a better investment.

From what I understand, the F35 did not gain effectiveness in proportion to its cost.

It's pretty difficult to call an aircraft "vaporware" when over 100 are in service at this point.

There are over 100 F-35 aircraft in existence right now. You might not like the program, but calling it "vaporware" is just flat out wrong.

Huh? F-35s are in production

F-35s will not be able to fire their cannons until the 2020's (last I checked), because the software has not been written.

Because the cannon is useless. It's only there because every time you point out it's useless people start yammering about the F-4, a plane that came out five decades ago.

Even when the gun is working, the A version is only going to have 120 rounds. Which is three seconds worth of ammo.

180 rounds for the A variant gun. Doesn't impact your point at all, just advising on the correct number.

2019

That said, the decision to declare Initial Operating Capacity with a software load that only has 89% of the aircraft's functionality is some politicized bullshit by the USAF.

That must be one fancy-pants cannon if it takes three years to write the software to drive it. How is that even possible?

Because you don't engage manually any more. As I pointed out in above, the A (air superiority) version has only 120 rounds of ammo, which is three seconds worth.

If you're using the gun you tell the computer "I want to shoot that guy", at which point you try to get him onto the pip on your display, which is going to move around depending on your relative velocity and distance. The computer actually fires the gun when it decides the round will hit. If you had to do it manually you'd most likely run out of ammo before you hit anything.

The air-to-ground system is similar.

So the software isn't just firing the gun. It's integrating data from all its sensors to figure out when to fire based on what you're trying to hit. I assume they have cut-outs friendlies as well, so you don't accidentally shoot your wingman.

Cannons have substantially nastier failure modes than the latest Twitter clone, and as such have much longer software development and testing cycles.

A look into a similar process with NASA: http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff

My incredulity is not because I think it's easy to write reliable software, but because a cannon shouldn't need more than "if button then fire." From the other reply, apparently it's way more complex than that though.

Additional complexity comes from the F-35's Stores Management System (SMS). In addition to the basic accounting tasks of keeping track of what kinds of weapons are loaded, and on which stations, the SMS keeps track of how much the stores at each station weigh and provides that information to the flight control system (FLCS). FLCS can then compensate for the weight distribution of the stores. The gun must integrate with the SMS.

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2010armament/TuesdayLandmarkADougHa... for some more information.

Yea, they are producing a non-functional aircraft, that under preforms, and can not keep pace with aircraft 20 years older than it...

Yea USAF....

the F35 is terrible plane...

In that case, if the design itself is still viable, it seems like it would make more sense to just produce more A-10s. Tooling up won't be cheap, but it might be cheaper than throwing yet more money at a wastefully expensive replacement.

(Also, I think that a bunch of the A-10s in service were recently overhauled, which according to the article added "many decades of service life". I don't know if that's literally true, but it does seem like a thorough rebuild of a military airframe might be more economical than doing the same for, say, a mass-produced civilian car.)

> In that case, if the design itself is still viable, it seems like it would make more sense to just produce more A-10s. Tooling up won't be cheap, but it might be cheaper than throwing yet more money at a wastefully expensive replacement.

One hiccup to that idea is that apparently the original A-10 blueprints were "lost" over the course of several defense-contractor mergers. I don't think that should be a huge hurdle to overcome though, since they've been able to modernize the planes and design and build major replacement components for them (like new wings). However, the Air Force brass would probably make a big deal out of the missing plans in their smokescreen.

I think they should just transfer the close air support role (along with the planes, personnel, and all associated budget) to the Army.

The newest B-52 is more than 50 years old, and they're expected to serve into the 2040s.

Airframes can last pretty much indefinitely with proper maintenance. 32 years is not anywhere close to the limit.

Stress cycles and aluminium are your limitations. The A-10 flies a pretty dynamic mission. Now B52s, which mostly fly high and straight, are a different story (takeoff-landing cycles affect wings). The newest B52s were build in the early 1960s. They'll be flying through 2040, an 80 year lifespan.

Ultimately it's wing fatigue that takes them down.

And, again, as the article points out the A-10 fleet has literally just been rewinged, extending their expected lifespan to ~2040

The key words in the post I was replying to being "indefinitely" and "proper maintenance". Yes, if you rebuild your Ship of Theseus, it may well last forever. But that raises other questions which have been debated for some time.

Aluminium has specific concerns in that when it fails it has a strong tendency to do so catastrophically and with no warning, unless you've been very closely examinging for developing stress fractures. I've had personal experience with this, and there's a rather well-known video sequence of a fire-suppression air tanker undergoing an unscheduled dewinging above California a few years back.

Cumulative entropic stress throughout the airframe does ultimately raise concerns over predictability of structural integrity. The more dynamic your flight patterns, the greater those stresses are, and more unpredictable.

I suspect the problem has been that the AF doesn't want to give up the ground supt role (or maybe just the budget associated with it), but they do want to give up the plane.

The Air Force wants the cash to help make up for the abysmal F-35 program. The USMC and Navy should have control of ground attack resources. Let the Air Force play with their missiles and laser death rays.

Or, I'm gonna go out on a limb here -- how about open up fixed wing close air support to the Army? The Marines are already free to run whatever they want, but they've banked on the F-35 as well.

Since the end of the USAAF and the formation of the USAF, it's been sacrosanct that the Army isn't allowed to do fixed wing aviation. It may be time to look at changing that.

The Army is allowed to do fixed wing aviation, but only with a dry weight of 5000 lbs. or less.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_West_Agreement most often called the Treaty of Key West in my readings.

I bet that will turn out to be a massive tactical misjudgment by the air force once we really start switching to drones, at which point 5000lbs or less is no longer a limitation at all.

Interesting opinion. The usual interpretation of USAF history is that it never really wanted CAS aircraft at all. Flying high and fast is what the USAF has prized as a general rule. CAS is necessary and important but not sexy or what you want to fly if you hope to climb the rank ladder.

Wouldn't the Marines want the aircraft to be carrier-based, which the A-10 is not?

Well, LHA and LHD-based, anyway. And also short improvised landing strips. The marines wouldn't have anywhere to base the A-10. They'd have to fly out of Air Force bases.

...What about all those lovely Naval Air and Marine Corps Air Stations?

We tend to not have those were we need them. Is there a Naval air base near A-stan?

That's not what you said originally though. You said that the Navy or Marine Corps would be forced to use Air Force facilities.

And there can be an air field within striking distance of Afghanistan, if necessary, as I'm sure you know. A CVN or an LHA.

>That's not what you said originally though. You said that the Navy or Marine Corps would be forced to use Air Force facilities.

Yes... and if there's no naval base near the theater you're interested in, then...? We're not fighting wars in San Diego.

>And there can be an air field within striking distance of Afghanistan, if necessary, as I'm sure you know. A CVN or an LHA.

You know better than that. You're not going to base A-10s on a ship.

Why base A-10s on a ship (not that you could, anyway) when you could have more capable multi-role fighters on the ship?

chair force amirite

Perhaps this is an Airforce/Fighter Jock fetish with speed? The A-10 isn't a super-fast super-maneuverable sexy jet, and they'd rather have more F-22s/F-35s with all of the checkbox Nth-generation bells and whistles (stealth, super-cruise, etc)?

It's like an MVP product that serves customers vs a product loaded with features that only the developers wanted. The A-10 is boring and simplistic and old tech. Forget the fact that the F-35 is expensive, buggy, not the best in any category, and gets owned by earlier generation jets.

This is exactly it. The Air Force brass is all fighter jocks these days.

The top Air Force brass is a former A-10 pilot. I'm pretty sure he understands its strengths and weaknesses. http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/Biographies/Display/tabid/225/Arti...

Flew an A10 for three months in training. AFAICT he then flew F16s for the rest of his operational career before transferring to command.

what I took away last time the A10 came up around here was that the AF brass (as well as the brass of every branch of the US military) were too busy fantasizing about future wars with China to appreciate the practical usefulness of the A10 in modern warfare.

I think the real explanation is more prosaic. The USAF is a giant bureaucracy, and giant bureaucracies take care of themselves before they take care of other giant bureaucracies. In this case, the army.

Give them to the Army Air Corps. The pilots need to work more closely with soldiers on the ground than other pilots or air control, and the army are the last people who want to see these planes go.

Then the Air Force Generals can get stars in their eyes about fast jets and stealthy bombers without the hassle of a little flying tank.

FWIW, and since this is on-the-ground perceptual anecdata maybe that's not much, A-10 training flights in southern Missouri (i.e. out of Whiteman AFB, with possible attack runs over Ft. Wood) have picked up appreciably during recent months. Over the last month, if I spend a day outside, I definitely hear/see a pair of Warthogs at some point. There were years for which that was not the case.

My favorite aircraft ever - I loved it at air shows [1 - 1978] as a kid and later when my son and I played the A-10 Cuba [2] video game together.

[1] https://www.oceanaairshow.com/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Cuba!

a-10 cuba, good times

I almost started to say I don't understand the military's obsession with fixing things that aren't broke, but then I remembered defense contractors, campaign contributions, defense spending, and egos.

Actually, the A-10 is "broke" in the sense that it can no longer perform its mission in a modern air defense environment. The current fleet is also old and wearing out.

That said, there are plenty of military commitments that involve CAS in environments with minimal to non-existent air defense. The sensible thing to do would be to replace the A-10 in kind with a fairly cheap, modern version while working on a more expensive, more survivable complement. That makes too much sense for the Five-Sided Playpen, though.

>Actually, the A-10 is "broke" in the sense that it can no longer perform its mission in a modern air defense environment.

I'm sure that the A-10 can still perform its mission in a modern air defense environment, mainly due to the fact that the bulk of today's missions involve an enemy with limited resources, limited industrial capabilities, and limited technical skills.

> The current fleet is also old and wearing out.

I'm sure the US is quite capable of putting up a military aicraft program for a mark 2 version of the A10 thunderbolt, one which is focused on tackling the maintenance/cost issues of the current version and even increase the reliability of the whole airframe. The last four decades in the aviation field were very fertile with regards to technical progresses.

> I'm sure that the A-10 can still perform its mission in a modern air defense environment, mainly due to the fact that the bulk of today's missions involve an enemy with limited resources, limited industrial capabilities, and limited technical skills.

To answer both you and robotresearcher, the US has not faced an opponent with a modern air defense system since Vietnam. The closest was Serbia, and NATO specifically held off on low level missions for a while there because of the Serb AD network.

> I'm sure the US is quite capable of putting up a military aicraft program for a mark 2 version of the A10 thunderbolt, one which is focused on tackling the maintenance/cost issues of the current version and even increase the reliability of the whole airframe. The last four decades in the aviation field were very fertile with regards to technical progresses.

That's basically what I said in the next sentence. I'm not sure what your point is here.

Here's an article from the same author that presents a different view: http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-usafs-rationale-for-ret...

I'm no military expert, but it's fairly convincing.

From the article:

> In other words, the same "inhospitable environment" that Pentagon leaders are pitching to justify the A-10's final farewell, are exactly the same conditions the jet was designed to survive in some 40 years ago.

I disagree with that assessment. The top-end of air defense capabilities is much better than when the plane was designed. The A-10 is vulnerable to the same systems that have continued to evolve to combat ever more advanced attack helicopters.

That said, I agree with his assessment that the USAF is more interested in replacing the red-headed step-child of the force with a sexy new fighter jock platform than in actually providing an effective CAS platform for the Army. That's why they'll never do what I suggested and replace the A-10 with a newer, similar CAS aircraft to pair with a sexy, high-threat-environment ground attack aircraft.

> it can no longer perform its mission in a modern air defense environment.

In recent experience, the enemy doesn't have a functioning air defense after the first few hours. The fancy planes and cruise missiles blew it all up. Then the A-10 is free to work relatively safely for the next several years.

Ego's a big part of it here. The Air Force has historically demonstrated disinterest in programs that aren't "sexy," which is high-end fighter aviation in a nutshell. It's not just fixed-wing close air support that's hurting. It also manifests in the USAF not buying enough tanker, airlift and other assets to do the job.

The "sexiness" isn't just because of their egos; sexiness fuels recruiting, which is ultimately how the air force is effective.

Granted I'm not sure what isn't sexy about the GAU-8 firing; probably the craziest gun attached to an aircraft ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX6s6dryF9M

It's more a matter of the A10 being the craziest aircraft attached to a gun, ever. The aircraft was basically designed as an answer to the question, "how do we put this cannon where we need it in a hurry?"

It's also the size of a VW Beatle. People think the gun is just the barrel but the ammo belt and drive are enormous.

An argument could be made, when considering the Air Force's costly desire for sexiness, that we will also be paying for the 2003 campaign of Shock and Awe for many years to come.

Job creation

As a foreigner.. I don't get it. Is it all about pork/creating jobs in various states rather than over-all value to the country?

yes and the US Air Force is too much in the pocket of defense contractors and out of step with forces that actually wage combat in the current conflicts. They drag their feet on effective and low-cost solutions like the A-10 and drones and want spend all trillions on vanity "air-superiority" aircraft, for winning hypothetical dog fights with next-gen China/Russia fighter jets.

It is amazing how terribly managed our military resources are. I cannot even fathom where to begin to fix it.

Note the J in JSOC, discard the existing branches of the military and build integrated units around desired tactical capabilities.

I guess you'd still have room for a Navy doing it that way, but you get the idea.

Medical should immediately be joint and separate -- maybe the deployed-with-unit combat medics should belong to each service, but there is no justification for the Navy, Air Force, and Army to all run separate medical and medical-logistics commands, role 3 hospitals (role 2 is borderline), stateside and fixed-base facilities like Landstuhl, etc.

Medical and Medical Service Corps are pretty borderline inherently-military, anyway; they could be a (uniformed?) federal service, able to handle disaster relief and public health, as well as treating the injured in war. We have PHS already.

(This also solves the VA vs. Active Duty healthcare difference; a unified records system and other processes for both would be ideal.)

This is easier in theory than it is in practice. While obviously each branch puts together its own integrated units for various missions, th8e real detriment to this kind of idea is what you would lose when breaking down the larger command/logistics backbone of the Army/Marines/AF/Navy.

I totally agree that the current system is not maximally efficient, but how would these new integrated units be managed logistically? Would each unit field its own logistics personnel? That might make sense, but then you end up with a lot of duplicated effort for little marginal improvement. Would we need an entire separate command structure for the sole purpose of heavy equipment movement and base management/support? If no, who might be the logical choice for this role?

I'm being a little sarcastic, but you could have units organized around providing logistics. Get this here, get that there.

Realistically, you might just end up with even more bureaucracies defending their own turf and resisting change.

The other thing that might happen is that you end up with less redundant capabilities and better integration. It's kind of stupid that the presence of a jet engine dictates that close air support be under a different command.

> Note the J in JSOC, discard the existing branches of the military and build integrated units around desired tactical capabilities.

> I guess you'd still have room for a Navy doing it that way, but you get the idea.

So, you'd have a Navy working with ships, and you'd probably have some sort of infantry carried on ships to project power in emergency situations. You might call these marine infantry Marines.

Then you'd have the rest of the military, ground-based. You might call this ground-based military force an Army.

The Navy, the Army and the Marines would all have air arms to fulfill their particular needs. The Army would probably be in charge of homeland defense (to include nukes) and the Marines would own expeditionary warfare.

It's so crazy it could work!

Why not train all the combat forces up to the point where they can operate from ships? Because reasons?

Here we are discussing a lack of procurement for a vital role, ostensibly partly because command is not structured in a way where capability is a priority, and you are doubling down on the traditional structure being obviously sensible.

> Why not train all the combat forces up to the point where they can operate from ships?

Because it's another skill to learn, practice and maintain, and there's limited time and resources. If you take every soldier and give him a two weeks a year training in operating from a ship, then that's two weeks less training in something else, and it's time and space on the ship. Do you also want to train them all in air assault? Does he need to know about submarine insertion techniques? Arctic warfare? Jungle warfare? Mountain warfare? We should probably teach him some middle eastern languages as well, and advanced life support.

It'd take years and a huge amount of money and natural resources to give someone a full spectrum of abilities, and they'd have to be a talented person in the first place to keep up with it all. It's not feasible for the majority of conventional forces.

>>It is amazing how terribly managed our military resources are

no really, military is a government program like any other...

Government is nothing if not terrible at managing anything

These articles just get worse and worse.

Opinions about the merits and flaws of the A-10 are largely irrelevant: the inventory is rotting, and there are no factory resources for replacement parts, let alone new aircraft. Keeping the A-10's going would require what amounts to a reverse engineering and reproduction program comparable in cost to developing a new aircraft.

Even if you're the biggest fan in the world of them, it simply does not make sense to keep the A-10's going. Sentiment does not prevent the decay of the aircraft, nor does it whip into existence cad files and factory tooling that no longer exists.

The A-10 costs around 20k per hour to fly. The predator series drones, T6 Texan, and the Super Tucano all cost 1/5th to 1/10th that per hour to operate.

The inventory is rotting? Laughable. The Mission Capable Rates are in the 80-90% range. There haven't been "factory resources" for parts in decades, and yet the fleet still manages to fly at a high rate. CAD Files? Factory Tooling? You have very little understanding of how aircraft maintenance in the Air Force works. Ever heard of a sheet metal shop? Those dudes can make anything.

An A-10 flight hour costs <8K. Source: I managed a $54M, 7200 hour A-10 flying hour program. I have flown A-10s for 18 years.

I'm skeptical you are who you claim, but if so you know you're being hyperbolic. Airframes have a limited lifetime; fatigue adds up. Despite the overwhelmingly positive performance to date, an aging fleet that's more expensive on margin to operate than alternatives doesn't make sense.

The AF just rewinged the A-10 fleet. Ranting about airframe fatigue in relation to the A-10 is nonsensical; the money has already been spent refreshing the airframes. Their current expected lifespan is until 2040.

Yup, at a cost of around $2billion to extend around 200 aircraft to 2040. It's exactly the problem I'm talking about: those wings cost ~10mm per aircraft, twice the base price for a brand new Texan.

I don't think that was prudent spending vs alternatives, but to be fair, it was a decision made a decade ago when the future was a bit more murky.

Operations Officer, 25th Fighter Squadron, Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea 2011-2012. Drop me an email and I send you pdfs of all the proof you need. 'nbsheeran' at the google one.

8-hour fix rates, repeat/recur rates, flying schedule effectiveness rates and MC rates are exactly what they are. No hyperbole required. They get briefed every week.

The Air Force attitude to the venerable A-10 has always struck me as pure budget bloating. I love that flying pig.

All I'm going to say is that the A-10 fanboys win the argument at the unclassified level, but it might be a different story when the discussion moves behind closed doors.

"If you only knew what I know, you would agree with me."

"Okay, what is it?"

"I can't tell you."

This is not an argument which ever works. Don't try it.

If you know those sorts of things, it is generally best to stay away from arguments about capabilities. It isn't an argument that works, you're right.

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