The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law | Hacker News Reader

The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com

61 pointsourmandave115 comments

This is something congress really shouldn't be doing.

For example, how much of the scope ambition and scope creep for the F 35 came from congressional meddling?

Someone recognized for their expertise in infantry strategy and tactics should be placed in charge of close air support procurement, given a preliminary budget to try to meet and then be given free reign to figure out what they can get from that budget.

What would be reasonable is the Air Force pulling its head out its ass and just giving the CAS role back to the Army, since they hate it so much. Seriously, just give the Army the CAS roles, and the Air Force can go zoom around in their shiny supersonic invisible aircraft, and the soldiers and marines on the ground can get the close air support they so need from an organization not doing everything it can to stop giving them that support.

Randomly, nice nick. The Culture reference made me smile.

Doing that (Taking CAS responsibilities from the USAF) is actually a wonderful idea. One of the reasons the F35 is such a cluster f is due to the Marines requiring it to more or less be a Harrier replacement. The Marines use the harriers primarily for CAS and I've targeted for them as well in Iraq when I was there ~2003-2004 during the big Fallujah offensive.

Yeah, that's a big reason the F-35 is fucked. At this point, it definitely would have been more effective to develop at least two entirely separate aircraft.

Isn't the purpose to reduce the maintenance cost? I would think one type of aircraft is easier to maintain than 2 different specialized aircraft.

The problem is that the CAS mission the A-10 performs is effectively impossible against any modern enemy with modern missile systems and manpads. The A-10 is for shooting up poor brown people we're messing with for no particular reason, not for fighting a real war.

The solution here is to get rid of the A-10 and simply not do "nation building" and counter-insurgency in poor countries. We don't need the A-10 because it's useless for any war worth fighting in today's world.

It really isn't. The A10 is basically a flying tank meant to be hit and survive. The Iraqi army of desert storm was a "modern enemy" with pretty decent soviet gear at the time. US gear was just that much better due to us spending such an obnoxious amount of our GDP on our military. A manpad doesn't have remotely explosive power of the AA that hit the A10 in this video, don't believe me? See the pictures yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7JM82fa5ZY

There are literally dozens and dozens of similar stories. The A10 is simply put the most effective CAS tool the US Military has or ever had. CAS is a very important part of US warfare and just because they might be against an enemy with better anti-air doesn't negate the need for boots on the ground, which require CAS for maximum survivability. Most likely the Stealth B2s or RQ-170 Sentinel would be sent in first to quickly take out as much of the AAA as possible.

Disclaimer: I'm a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom II, and flew the Shadow 200 TUAV. I targeted several times for A10s and have heard the BRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTT up close.

>The A10 is basically a flying tank meant to be hit and survive.

Like Dale Storr's OA-10, which took a single Strela hit and went down? The A-10 is certainly more likely to be mission killed by MANPADS and AAA than other aircraft (which are liable to be destroyed outright), but those that survive are not useful for combat--Kim Campbell's A-10 was grazed by a Shilka and rendered combat ineffective; after she landed it in manual reversion, it was shipped back to the US and required months of intensive repair. That's great if your objective function is maximizing the number of airframes that are eventually flyable again after being damaged, but godawful if your goal is to actually use them to perform CAS.

>The A10 is simply put the most effective CAS tool the US Military has or ever had.

I completely agree with this, but tools only benefit you /if you can use them/. A-10s cannot survive in contested airspace, and if the not-at-all-fearsome Iraqi Army spanking them so hard that they ended up with a 10,000 foot hard deck didn't clue politicians in on that, maybe a few videos of modern SHORAD like the Pantsir which are available for $peanuts will.

>just because they might be against an enemy with better anti-air doesn't negate the need for boots on the ground, which require CAS for maximum survivability

The CAS you get is better than the CAS you don't. If your primary CAS tool is the A-10, then being against an enemy with even the slightest anti-air capability means that you don't get any CAS at all.

>Most likely the Stealth B2s or RQ-170 Sentinel would be sent in first to quickly take out as much of the AAA as possible

The RQ-170 is a phenomenally expensive unarmed recon drone that the US operates a handful of. The B-2 is useful for striking an enormous number of fixed targets, but is not designed or intended to be employed in a SEAD/DEAD role against anything more mobile than theater-level air defenses. No SEAD weapon in the world is capable of striking air defenses that it isn't fired at, and as a result anything flying at low level is vulnerable to SHORAD whose operators use the advanced tactic of parking it in a treeline and waiting until they hear a jet to engage it.

First off, fantastic reply, thanks for taking the time to write it. The typical US strategy is utter dominance of the sea, air, and night. I really do see drones + tomahawks taking out much of the AAA in addition to long range bombers like the B2. Even if stealth isn't effective, a hoard of Tomahawks is going to give any advanced adversary a hard time. The newer Block IV Tomahawks ones are smarter and quite a bit more lethal. The suckers can loiter for up to 30 minutes on station in a holding pattern and be set to all hit targets at the same time. Hitting 4-5 targets is cool, but hitting 20+ at the same time is quite devastating. In the opening of the war in Afghanistan if I recall they launched a cruise missile every 12 seconds on average for 48 hours. Also, they'll use drones (again like the RQ-170, or its classified and armed bigger brother) to find AAA, where it is worth sacrificing a few to sniff out the well hidden AAA. Hiding in the tree lines won't do much to hide from modern UAVs (as I can attest as a former UAV pilot). With the Shadow I could see footprints through wet grass at night with the thermals (as it detected a +/- 0.1 degree C temperature variation).

So in summary, I think you're entirely right. The A10 was meant to be survivable in contested airspace of yesteryear, but gen 5 and the coming gen 6 fighers along with modern AAA would obliterate it. Even not entirely modern but very advanced AAA like maybe the S400, which Iran has, would knock out an A10 no problem. But the US wouldn't willingly put boots on the ground without utter dominance of the air first. You only need CAS when you have boots on the ground, so I see it ultimately as a moot point. China isn't stupid enough to go toe to toe to war with the US, as we'd both suffer heavy heavy casualties. They're doing a better job of simply asserting their strength economically and through cyber means, which they're better at than us.

yes, in USSR/Russia the BUK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system) is designed to defend ground forces on the battlefield against incoming A-10s. 70kg warheads :) With new, much better targeting electronics, etc., this lighter system is supposed to be doing well too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantsir-S1 (20kg warhead)

Interesting that modern system like Pantsir seems to cover the F-35 case too: "Aerial targets include everything with a minimum radar-cross-section of 1 cm2 and speeds up to a maximum of 1,000 metre/second (Mach 3) within a maximum range of 20,000 metres and heights up to 15,000[7] metres". I don't think that F-35 RCS is less than 1 cm2.

Giving that and also that stealth isn't much of a stealth if there is a network of radars, including airborne ones, it doesn't seem like F-35 would be any better than A-10 in CAS against modern military, while against bearded guys with AKs in desert the A-10 is just more powerful and cheaper.

The advantage a fighter is going to have is it's higher and faster. An F-35 can fly outside Pantsir's envelop and still carry out a CAS mission using a targeting pod.

This is why I don't like the A-10. The environment in which the aircraft is expected to fly is much more dangerous than it used to be. Against a competent opponent we'd see A-10s getting shot down one after another.

For such profile you don't need F35 - a larger Predator / X47 would do just fine.

I think OP is saying flying tanks don't do well against missiles.

Right. The OP is wrong :)

I showed a concrete example proving it. That was with an actual anti-aircraft missle. A manpad is much much smaller and the A10 was designed explicitly to take direct manpad strikes.

Oh, i see - Thanks!

Are helicopters used, useful for CAS? Briefly, if you could, when would you use the warthog over a helicopter (or vice versa). Thanks.

Helicopters are slower, carry less, have less range and make great targets for RPGs, M72s or pretty much anything else you'd shoot a vehicle with.

The solution here is to get rid of the A-10 and simply not do "nation building" and counter-insurgency in poor countries.

Or not to get into wars in the first place; then you could give up having an Air Force at all, right?

Seriously, "stop doing COIN in poor countries" is a political solution that requires a top-down policy change that goes counter to the entire historical direction of US military involvement since Vietnam. The US very seldom tackles even a second-rate military armed with Russian cast-offs -- the most recent example was Iraq in 2003 -- so the A-10 is still useful for the sort of brushfire wars and missions you get involved with. Even though they'd die like flies in a shooting war with a real front-rank opponent. (Like who?)

> "stop doing COIN in poor countries" is a political solution that requires a top-down policy change

Yeah? That was my whole point. You make it sound like it's crazy. It's the most sensible course.

In the abstract, yes, it's the most sensible course. Unfortunately, from where I'm watching (hint: not an American) it looks like the State Department has an ad-hoc de-facto promotion track whereby you can't make it to the top unless you've got a proven record of running a short, victorious war. Not that this is official policy or anything so formally clear-cut -- it's more like an emergent property of the institution itself, and the priorities that the bureaucracy has evolved to service -- but you don't get to become SecState unless you're a hawk and the best way to acquire hawk credentials is to "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business" as Michael Ledeen put it (according to Jonah Goldberg).

(Tertiary source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ledeen )

The military doesn't get to decide when to go to war or against whom.

OK, you tell the soldiers and marines who are currently on the ground and fighting that we're getting rid of what is, for them, the most effective solution. Until we're actually not fighting these wars, it's best to keep the most effective weapons to fight them around.

You could also tell them 'hey we're bringing you back home to the States' and I think that would help the medicine go down.

But that's not going to happen. So... we're back to "do the job with sufficient equipment," or "do the job without sufficient equipment."

That is sadly untenable. Daesh, AQ, and affiliates aren't going to just stop wanting America to burn in ashes because we pull out of Iraq & Afghanistan. War sucks, but you can't reason with ideology of fanatics. If they try to kill you, you have to kill them or let them kill you. You can try to help educate the children and give them alternatives to killing you, but you can't stop them all as ideals never die.

but then adding "and laying you off from your job" might make it a bitter pill.

Yeah, I think separation of forces should also be done around capabilities rather than modes of transport. CAS should be part of some sort of infantry command.

x2. The marines do this for the most part.

In my experience, we got better support from Marine Supercobras in Iraq than any other air entity, and in Afghanistan A-10s. Theyve been talking about getting rid of Warthogs for years, but all the guys I talked to saw right through it and knew it was just to pad the Virginia old boys pockets some more. Of course Im biased, because Ive literally had my life saved by close air support from hogs.

This is a real moral dilemma for me. I served in the military, and the A-10 is simply the best manned aircraft we have for CAS. However, I also hate the defense lobby.

One one hand there's probably a job interest in keeping the A-10 running. Mac Thornberry has taken campaign donations from lots of defense contractors, including some related to the A-10: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/pacs.php?cycle=2016&c...

On the other hand, no other aircraft does what the A-10 does as well, and the Air Force would shut it down if simply given the money in a lump sum with no conditions. The defense contractors associated with the F-35 would love to replace the low-margin A-10 with their newest shiny toy even if it is not as effective.

The fact that this is a debate right now is a sad testament to the power of the defense lobby and poor defense procurement.

They ought to think ahead and refit the A-10 fleet as ground-piloted drones.

> the A-10 is simply the best manned aircraft we have for CAS

You won't hear it here or on jalopnik et all, but there's substantive disagreement on this.

The A-10 no longer has a primary mission: the gun is not effective enough against modern tanks. For CAS in low intensity conflict it's both overkill and overly expensive per operating hour vs alternatives. The CEP on the big gun is >10m while the CEP on small guided munitions is now <1m. The accuracy of the GAU-8 fire depends heavily on pilot skill, since aiming requires pointing the whole plane. This is why the A-10 has generated more friendly fire incidents than any other aircraft we fly.

Let's compare to Beech's proposed attack variant of the T-6 Texan II. Depending whose numbers you believe, it's 1/5th to 1/10th the total operational cost per flight hour. Since it's our primary trainer essentially every pilot is already familiar with it. Likewise the ground crews can keep them running with ease. There is no parts problem, whereas with the A-10 replacements parts we don't have in the sitting in the AZ desert have to be done as small scale reverse engineering (for the cost of re-winging an A-10 we could have bought a new Texan or Tucano). It has a built in stabilized E/O ball, the advantage of which could be mitigated a bit by putting a pod on the A-10. But the T-6 is also a two seater, which allows situational awareness an A-10 pilot will never have. The back seater can focus exclusively and continuously on the situation on the ground, whereas an A-10 pilot has to re-acquire and re-orient on every pass, losing awareness of changes between passes. The two seats allows operational concepts the A-10 (and F35 for that) matter do not. For example, the back seater doesn't even need to be a pilot: they could be a controller/coordinator from a different branch, service, or even nation. The aircraft could be easily adapted to ISR roles with a back seater specialized in tending the electronics.

There's this huge internet enthusiast crowd that's infatuated with a big gun and can only see taking the A-10 out of service as some sort of conspiracy. But that's not the case, there is straightforward, solid, strategic thinking behind this.

People need to look at A-10 enthusiasm critically, and consider that maybe the planners actually know some of what they're doing, rather than being pawns in congressional conspiracies.

A lot of straw horses being set free here.

The primary weapon against tanks carried by the A-10 is the Maverick missile. The GAU-8 can do wonders against a tank especially perforating the upper engine deck etc, but it's really designed for destroying soft targets in combination with unguided rocket pods or CBUs. Comparing it's accuracy with PGMs (that it can carry as well) is disingenuous.

Oh, and you seem to be forgetting that the A-10 has had Litening pods for quite a while, giving excellent targeting and ID capabilities.

The A-10 is one of the cheapest a/c the USAF flies, excluding drones which still can't compare with the Hog for effectiveness. There's a lot to be said for the Mark One eyeball in the cockpit. The cost for flying the A-10 would be even lower if the service wasn't continually gutting its support infrastructure.

The Texan/Tucano light prop a/c is always trotted out as the cheap alternative, but the disadvantages are huge. No self-deploy capability, no survivability against MANPADS, single engined so lower ability to overcome mechanical issues, and kleenex for armor against groundfire.

>The GAU-8 can do wonders against a tank especially perforating the upper engine deck etc, but it's really designed for destroying soft targets in combination with unguided rocket pods or CBUs.

If the gun was really designed to destroy soft targets you wouldn't need anywhere near the muzzle velocity. You'd carry something a lot lighter and you'd carry much more ammo.

No, the gun was designed to destroy tanks. For anything else it's overkill.

There is no reason to keep the A-10 around if its only role is a Maverick/Paveway truck chilling at altitude and plinking targets with Sniper/Litening. There are plenty of aircraft that can do that /and keep doing it when there are angry little men on the ground who don't want them to/, something the A-10 can't do.

Show me a working program, for a working aircraft, that has been tested in actual combat then we can talk about replacing the A-10

Most of the conversation about the A-10 seems to focus on the fact the Airforce need to free up resources for the F-35, and the combination of the F-16, F15, and F35 can replace the A-10 completely. I believe this to be false, and doubly so when the F-15 and F16 are also suppose to be replaced with the F-35.... The worst aircraft ever designed by the US Military..

SOCCOM evaluated the Tucano and loved it. The program to acquire them for US inventory was killed (and went back and forth a couple times, might be something screwy there or just the usual bureaucratic stuff). We did chose them for the ~20 aircraft we're giving the Afghan Army. They're well proven in low intensity conflict across South America.

Yup, SOCOM likes them because they're able to cherry pick equipment without having to worry about whether it's suitable for the entire Army. They have always had custom aircraft, whether it was Little Birds, or the Stealth Blackhawk. But that doesn't mean the Army should choose what SOCOM likes; different roles, and funding. The reason the Tucano and its ilk are popular is low cost and easier training. Getting the Afghan AF up to speed on maintaining a high bypass turbofan and its supply chain is several magnitudes harder than a proj job.

I'm receptive to the argument that the A-10s mission could be accomplished by something like a Super Tucano. But the problem with this is that we both know the Air Force doesn't want to do actual CAS. They don't mind flying by at 800 MPH and 30,000 feet and dropping a smart bomb, but they don't want to get in the weeds. Unless the Air Force already has these aircraft in place before they retire the A-10, it's simply not believable that they'll buy them at all, unless forced. Instead, the money will be spent on some fast moving jet. So, given the two most likely scenarios, which are A-10 or not low, slow CAS aircraft, we have to argue for the A-10.

Spot on. People complain that the F-35 is overkill for brushfire CAS missions, but what they miss is that the A-10 is overkill too.

A weaponized T-6 crew with an observer and modern ISR would have way better situational awareness than a hog driver will ever get. A turboprop would also be able to spend far more time in loiter due to the low speed efficiencies of a large prop versus a small fan.

But the AF wouldn't play ball in that game. Let the Army fly fixed wing aircraft and a practical CAS solution for interminable brushfire conflict would be implemented pretty fast I think.

You're not including the cost of training/replacing two people (pilot and assistant), when they inevitably take ground fire.

https://www.google.com/search?q=A-10+damage&safe=off&espv=2&...

That titanium bathtub is why it's valuable. Again, I think drones are a better long-term solution.

> They ought to think ahead and refit the A-10 fleet as ground-piloted drones.

Curious as to whether this is even possible. Even if it was, I doubt the pilot requirement is the only thing keeping the Air Force from wanting to keep it around.

Edit: Quora FTW

https://www.quora.com/U-S-Air-Force-Could-you-turn-the-A-10-...

I don't know why you were downvoted but I think it's a fair question. I think the biggest limitations would be keeping a solid comms link (you don't want to lose connection in mid-dive for instance), and air speed (you want more reaction time due to the potential for lag or lost connections).

You would want to build in auto-pilot redundancies to have the drones fly home if they lose communications links.

For speed, the A-10 would be one of the better candidates, due to its slower loitering speed of about 300 Mph which is still significantly faster than an MQ-9 Reaper (200 Mph or so), but in-line with the MQ-9's top speed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunde...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper

Another interesting option would be to strip out the gun mount from the A-10 and slap it on the underside of a quadcopter drone as a turret.

> Another interesting option would be to strip out the gun mount from the A-10 and slap it on the underside of a quadcopter drone as a turret.

Are you talking about this monster?:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger

No way could you put that thing on a helicopter. It barely fits on a plane (the entire plane was designed around that gun) as it is.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/21/

Even if you managed to make it stable enough to sustain fire on a target, where would you put the ammo drum? A-10s have special stands you have to put under them when you take the drum out, otherwise the whole thing tips over.

If we can make this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_AC-130

I'm pretty sure it's doable.

Apparently you have a different idea of what a quadcopter is than I do.

> the A-10 fleet as ground-piloted drones.

This is just a super expensive and failure prone way to do what 100 year old artillery technology does.

Site the enemy, call in artillery fire.

Drone techno fetishism is a big problem right now. Most of this stuff does not work nearly as well as people are pretending it does.

Artillery (while often sufficient) is not as accurate as someone hovering/diving from directly overhead. This is why artillery often employs aerial spotters.

http://www.c4isrnet.com/story/military-tech/uas/2016/04/08/a...

Artillery has a range measured in the tens of miles (discounting MLRS and ATACMS). Drones have a range measured in the hundreds of miles.

Yes, artillery has short range, if you excludelong-range artillery.

But I'm not sure what kind of point you can reasonably rest on that.

I don't know why you would discount ATACMS. Technically that's artillery, and end-to-end it's cheaper than aircraft.

While I don't have number in front of me, my instinct is that ATACMS is more expensive and less flexible on a per target basis than aerial bombardment using an A-10.

It's not more expensive when you consider the entire system: training, aircraft maintenance, air traffic control, time-on-station, wear and tear on the airframe, top cover in contested airspaces, etc. Plus the occasional loss.

During peace time an ATACMS sits in its sealed container doing nothing and requiring no maintenance, whereas pilots require constant training.

Maybe if we had a WW II style conflict where you were doing three or four productive sorties a day, but I can't imagine we'll see a conflict like that again

Even if so, it might still be cheaper to keep units equipped, trained, and operational with it between actual combat missions, which might make it more cost effective on a long-term analysis. Combat aircraft are expensive even when they aren't fighting.

Can't apaches do CAS properly because they're not fast enough, so they make good targets?

Apaches are great for CAS, however one of the more common things for CAS is when someone gets pinned down. You need CAS ASAP and don't always know when you'll need reinforcements. An example would be when I was in Iraq and a pair of Kiowas with .50 machine guns and missle pods were doing air support of raids. One of the kiowas took a well aimed RPG to the tail rotor and went down in the middle of a very bad part of Tall'Afar. They made a military channel episode about it which included some of the video I shot as the payload (camera) operator of a surveillance drone in it.

http://www.amazon.com/Battlefield-Diaries-Episode-Kiowa-Down...

I was a Shadow 200 UAV (aka drone) pilot. We needed some heavy CAS onsite ASAP to prevent a pretty large armed crowd of insurgents doing a repeat of Blackhawk Down in Somalia. So, we radioed to the nearest airbase (in Mosul) roughly 60k away and they launched a Harrier loaded with a GBU50 (Also called an Enhanced Paveway II / 2000lb bomb). The plane was onsite in a few minutes where it would have taken an Apache much much longer to get there.

They dropped that big boy munition on a weapons cache where the insurgents were going back to re-arm. Miraculously, the single infantry platoon near the crash site managed to secure the pilots and hold their ground long enough for the engineers to send a combat wrecker, pull the burning hulk of the Kiowa onto the flatbed, and get everyone out. The only injury was one of the infantryman caught a bullet in the heel. So... to recap, you need something that can go a bit faster than a helicopter sometimes to get CAS somewhere ASAP. A warthog's top speed is 460mph compared to an Apache's top speed of 182mph. The speed will save lives at times like in that video. I know this because I was literally there. It was terrifying.

EDIT (forgot to add): Apaches in fact were almost always doing aerial overwatch of large convoys when we would be driving a batallion of Strykers from Samarrah to Tall'Afar, or to Mosul, etc. The thing is that they do catch a lot of flak by being low, loud, and slow. Helos of any type tend to "hunt in pairs" as we were told as when one starts catching flak and taking fire, the other will pound the originator while the other takes evasive maneuvers. In the above story, the 2nd Kiowa was pounding the hell out of the ground but had to leave station as it was running low on ammo and 2 down helos is a really bad place to be in the middle of a very angry city.

Woaw thanks, very nice and cool explanation!

So actually, the A10 is fast enough to reach a CAS mission, but also slow enough for a good gun run. That seems to make sense, since F35 are faster, but I don't think they're good at flying slow for a gun run.

That sounds like black hawk down without as much bad luck...

The problem is Apaches are relatively slow, hard to maintain, and easy to shoot down. I question whether they'd exist at all if the army were allowed to operate fixed wing aircraft.

Problem is they are too close to the ground and very audible. It's a delicate balance between accuracy and survivability.

You could say the same about the A-10.

Ever read USAF Col. John Boyd's biography? He developed of maneuver warfare and pretty much invented warfighter doctrine adopted by all the modern air forces around the world. He generalized his ideas, and it became a core part of US Marines doctrine. However, the generals in charge of the USAF rejected his ideas. In their minds, you have

Boyd was the one who pushed to developed the F-16 based around the ideas maneuver warfare. (The F-16 was designed to out-maneuver anything else). One of his disciple was the one that developed the A-10, specifically for close-air support mission, using the same principles applied in a different way.

CAS missions was something the USAF inherited back when the organization was part of the US Army. It's treated as the step-child that the USAF "bomber generals" don't want, and want to get rid of, and can't because that was part of the original agreement when the USAF was formed as a separate military organization. In their minds, if you develop a plane that can fly fast enough, stealthy enough, and click a button to shoot out missiles, then you don't need to be agile at all.

The politics around the A-10 is discussed thoroughly in Robert Coram's biography, "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art of War". Boyd has been dead for about 15 years now; what I'm reading here, the same politicking is still going on.

The Key West Agreement isn't like the Constitution. Honestly, if CAS is important to the Army and Congress thinks the Army knows better than the Air Force how to handle CAS, then the Congress could (and if actually considered about effectiveness, should) transfer the mission, equipment, and personnel to the Army.

They really should do it. It's not like the Army isn't already operating the world's largest fleet of combat helicopters.

The Army is overspending on helicopters to skirt the letter of the agreement. I agree they should be allowed fixed wing aircraft if only for the improvement in safety and lower operating costs.

I see this as more of a "you've wasted so much time effort and $ on this argument that we're stepping in" two of you (army, marines) say you want it, one of you wants to replace it with something that can't do it's job as well so we're going best two of three and keeping it.

Wouldn't that preliminary budget, issued by Congress, be considered meddling? Is it akin to software development managers with the sheerest excuses for domain expertise accepting whatever budget and mandate is handed down from managers with zero domain expertise, and then they set about browbeating anyone and everyone they can lay their hands on to meet the hazy objectives?

This direction of development sounds to me like the reverse of what would really meet the mission objectives when the problem space is so controversial/undefined: find out from the users/stakeholders/beneficiaries what non-negotiables they must have and will not give up without a huge fight, what they lack from the current solution, and what their annoyances-but-will-put-up-with-it issues are today, what evolutions they anticipate in several future timeframes, then with their buy-in build up implementation scenarios with accompanying budgets. But I'm just an outsider with no domain expertise, so all I have are questions. From what I hear as a civilian, armed forces procurement with these big stakes rarely take into account all but the most basic survival needs of the grunts on the front lines, and is more akin to enterprise software procurement than SaaS-with-a-credit-card procurement to fix a point need (CAS in this case, and I might even be wrong characterizing CAS as a well-defined point need).

Can someone with direct military procurement experience chime in and illuminate from their perspective what is going on for the civilians in this particular case?

As below, I agree that it is subjective as to what is meddling.

I think setting a budget based on a high level discussion is what Congress is supposed to be doing. The military side can explain what capabilities they can get with a certain budget, Congress can decide if that is a reasonable level of capability and set the budget at the requested level or lower or even higher.

If the DoD gives Congress guidance on budget bands and what capabilities are given up in each band below the "ideal" band, especially in projected political terms, then I can see Congress setting a preliminary budget and finalizing after some more detailed DoD analysis of what is projected to be accomplished under that budget. For example, tell Congress for a $1B ideal budget of a weapons program, a $750-800M budget band would mean response time to deploy the weapon drops from 6 hours to 6 days. Not such a big deal for a littoral combat operations boat, but a huge deal for a cruise missile block upgrade. But we're all outsiders here, and I'd love to hear inside baseball on what the real factors are behind these procurement processes.

>>This is something congress really shouldn't be doing.

Then who should? Should we simple give the military a Trillion Dollar a year blank check and say "go forth and spend it however you want"

the F35 is a terrible plane and should have been scraped a long time ago, the A10 is proven plane...

the Airforce has never liked the A10, it is not fast enough or shiney enough for them...

I think the better plan is to bring back the USAAF and let the army start doing close air support again with more than just Helicopters...

They are better at it anyway..

Almost. The discussion at the congressional level should be over what sort of capabilities the military needs and can be justified. So the pentagon can bring a mission and budget to congress and ask them to approve that mission and the budget for it. This is different quite than an unrestrained lump sum.

Umm, that is exactly what they are going

They are bring forth the mission to decommission the A10, congress is saying no....

In my comment, a mission would be something like "close air support", not the level of maintenance to do on a specific set of aircraft.

But the Air Force is already tasked with that. Their 'customers,' i.e. the Army and Marines, say that they're trying to retire the best means of providing that support (and the Air Force is notorious for neglecting CAS if they can get away with it). So the only answer (as things stand) is to force them to keep the CAS aircraft of choice on flying status and not try to replace it with a woefully inadequate replacement. Or hand over CAS to the Army. Which is probably better long term.

I'm coming at it from a perspective that separation of forces and procurement are broken. Given the way things are, I'm not hugely concerned that this bill is being written, but I'm still complaining about the way things are.

So it is arbitrary definition you are making

I fail to see how that is different than simply coming to congress with "We protect America now give us a trillion dollars of stolen money you pried from the citizens and do not dare ask us how we will spend it"

I think every damn screw the military buys should be heavily scrutinized by someone outside the military, maybe congress is not the right venue but the idea that the military should just be allowed to spend money however they see fit is moronic on a level I can not even comprehend

The military, above all other federal agencies, have proven they can not be trusted with the money they are given, they have simpley "lost" (literally unaccounted for) more money than most agencies have for their entire budget.

Because doing it in smaller pieces would enable more oversight than doing it in one chunk.

I agree that it is subjective as to how detailed to get at the congressional level, but the person running my arbitrary close air support mission can go to congress and explain how much support they can provide at a certain funding level. Congress can clearly reason about that and base decisions about increasing or decreasing the budget on what sort of capability seems reasonable.

In this case, Congress is mandating maintenance of the aircraft whether the military uses them or not. That's moronic.

What is moronic is the Airforce has spent over a Trillion Dollars on a plane that still does not work, and wants to decommission a proven air system so it divert that money into the failed F35 program, and wants to decommission a proven air system with out having a proven replacement.

That is moronic....

It's not arbitrary. Requirements need to be in the problem domain, not the solution domain.

Tools != goals.

The A-10 is not useful to the modern US military. If congress wants to fund something better great, but as it stands the A-10 is simply wasting Money. It's like congress is funding muskets from the revolutionary war.

As long as we're making comparisons to infantry weaponry, the M16 rifle is nine years older than the A-10 Warthog.

M16 has been replaced by the M4.

Some designs are so good they continue to be used actively eg the 1911 or M2. Variants of the original AK-47 are still used, even in Russia(!) where it is considered a superior weapon in urban warfare because it can penetrate cover better than more modern, smaller bullets.

I think the A-10's future potential is unclear. It is theoretically extremely vulnerable to modern anti-air missiles, but the same thing could be said about the Hind helicopter, which was deployed successfully by the RUAF in Syria.

Some designs are so good they continue to be used actively eg the 1911 or M2.

The B-52 design dates back to the 1940s, with the first flight occurring in 1952.

The Air Force is planning to keep those well into the 2040s. I believe one of the current B-52 pilots is the grandson of one of the original pilots.

Not messing with success is often a good plan.

> M16 has been replaced by the M4.

This isn't a case of replacing old tech with new tech, it's a case of the changing realities of war making a short-barreled carbine adequate for most needs. The M4 has been around since 1988, they'd had plenty of time to do the switch if it really were the better weapon.

If you mean the name sure we used the name M16 for a while. If you me the design then no.

The M16A2 is the oldest version still in limited use by US armed forces, it's significantly younger than the A-10 which first flew in 1972. This is a 44 year old front line combat aircraft.

PS: They really are different guns. The original version used a 20-round magazine, that's been replaced by a 30-round version. The long range accuracy was improved etc.

You're splitting hairs. If we're going that route, then the A-10 has had plenty of improvements as well. Laser targeting pods, inertial nav systems, computerized aiming, autopilot. The first A-10C emerged in 2007.

Aye, they stuck some lipstick on a pig. It's still less useful than predator and other drones.

The problem where it's to fast to be fuel efficient, to slow to get anywhere. It's got an abysmal mission range, terrible fuel economy, meaningful defense etc etc. Sure, if we where going to face a few thousand 1970 era tanks or supporting huge slow moving infantry lines then it's great. But, we just don't fight those wars.

Ahh the mythical Russia or China Threat

You are preparing for a war that will never happen...

The world has gotten much much too small for it, and if it does the F35 is not going to be a factor because the ICBM's will have killed most of the population anyway.

A-10 is exactly the type of aircraft we need to fight non-nation state enemy's, Nation on Nation battles are going to be short lived and mainly economic not with Planes.

"The A-10 is not useful to the modern US military."

The Army and Marine Corps disagree. Strongly.

Nope, http://www.dodbuzz.com/2015/02/25/army-not-interested-in-tak.... Army not interested in the A-10.

"close-air support is not a plane, it’s a mission.”

"The service’s top civilian, Army Secretary John McHugh"

He is an Obama political appointee with no expertise in this area and who, in fact, has never even served in the military.

Try asking some actual combat veterans what they think. Do you know any? I do.

>>“Anyone who is passing information to Congress about A-10 capabilities is committing treason.”

WOW.... I really have no words for how messed up that is

The Army and Marine Corps don't operate the A-10. Conversely, the Air Force isn't responsible for what the A-10 supports. Institutionally, the first two are structurallt biased to discount the burden and the latter to discount the benefit of the A-10. In principle, the DoD has structures that should be better at resolving that than going through the services independently, but there's also a good case to be made that the mission the A-10 does ought to be moved into the services (or just one of them) that do ground combat.

The Army and Marine Corps don't operate the A-10.

They've expressed interest in taking it over, many times. The Air Force won't hear of it, of course. They don't want to do the mission, but neither do they want anyone else to do the mission.

The Air Force has no more choice than they do about keeping the A-10; if Congress directs the function, dollars, and personnel to the Army, that's where they go.

Further, that the Army has expressed willingness to take 360-degree responsibility for CAS doesn't change the fact that theor current perspective on fixed-wing CAS options comes from a place of not having that responsibility.

Oh, they don't mind giving up the mission. The AF offered to let the army have the A-10, but only as long as they got to keep the money they've been spending on it.

20 years ago they would have taken it over, now they really don't care.

Congress should also pass a law banning other countries from owning ground-to-air missiles.

And now we have two problems! Yes its a problem to keep an old plane flying but it does the job. But the bigger problem is the turd costing us an arm and leg to build that doesn't do the job. Its so idiotic things have to be done in such a round about way. Just cancel the F-35 and spend the money on something useful to society.

The Air Force has proven they hate doing CAS. The CAS role should be removed from the Air Force and given back to the Army.

I think people are unfair to the air force on the A-10. Obviously discontinuing it should be reconsidered, but they've made massive investment in standardizing on a handful of modern planes instead of zillion overspecialized vehicles. The F-35, for all its frustrations, is a staggering piece of technology.

Plus, consider that this is a plane expected to take fire. Everyone loves he story of the A-10 that kept flying with half a wing blown off... But imagine being the crew. I'm sure they'd rather be in a vehicle that wasn't hit in the first place, or controlling it remotely.

That said, the biggest failing has been ignoring the new role of NATO in the ME.

But yes, there should be a joint project for a fixed-wing CAS gunship drone to replace the A-10. The Avenger weapon is overkill, you could build a vehicle half its size around a Vulcan. Do the same role as an A-10, but without risking crew and the other a smaller, modern, cheaper vehicle.

> The F-35, for all its frustrations, is a staggering piece of technology.

It's staggering alright.

It's an invisible supersonic vectored thrust vtol jet fighter. That's goddamned science fiction. The fact that it even exists is remarkable... which makes the debacle of its development unsurprising.

They seem to be very popular with both pilots and ground crews so I say if the people risking their lives are comfortable with it then more power to them. I'm not going to arm-chair-general that away and neither should the law makers.

(They should be planning ahead though for replacement because that comfort won't last forever).

There should be parts of the armed services that are stuck in various decades. So you could join the 1980's air force for example, but you weren't allowed to use any equipment made after 1990. For each conflict the Pentagon would decide which decade's forces would be most effective.

Why not scrap the USAF instead? It all breaks down into mission support and drones in the long run? So why not scrap the organization that warps the strategic decisions ? Give everything ground mission related to the army, break everything that is strategic, as in supply, and the useless ICBMs of the sky to the new drone Department.

How is it that a bunch of elected people without much military knowledge "know" more about these things than the men/women in uniform, with decades of experience?

The Airforce does not want the A-10

The Army and Marines are begging to keep it

I trust the Army and Marines more than the fucking Airforce

The people that actually have to support and operate it don't want it, the people whose mission it supports but who don't bear the support burden do want it.

In each case, there are structural biases that favor those decisions even if they aren't right on balance.

The Army has indicated repeatedly that it is willing to bear the support burden for tasks that are important to it.

For example, the Caribou and more recently the C-27 light transports that were taken from them and reallocated.

In 1960s the US Army was investigating organic fast-moving CAS aircraft, they tested the F-5A, G.91 and A-4 but were told that it was unacceptable. They even faced restrictions on arming the OV-1 Mohawk for which they paid every cent.

They want it, they will pay for it but the blue-suits have the document that says 'no'.

Still, they don't have the experience of supporting it, and there's plenty of evidence that that prosuces a bias to discount the burden. That said, I've addressed the Key West agreements elsewhere in this thread: they aren't a constraint when we're talking about Congressional options. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11601834

The People that actually operate it (they have never supported it) do not want CAS, they have never wanted CAS

They want high flying fast support stealth where they can push a button and fire a missile at a target miles and miles away...

They want nothing to with close support

Why is that exactly? I love the A-10, and so does the Army and Marines, it is by far the best CAS weapon we have. The airforce knows more about aircraft and keeping those aircraft in the air than both the army and marines. Unfortunately the A-10 is old, and no one is manufacturing replacement parts for it. So as of right now the air force is happy with AC-130 gunship and the F-15E, F35. I hate the idea of the A-10 going away, and certainly the pilots are the same way. Keeping planes in the air on old parts is a hard thing though.

You act as if it's somehow not easier to commission the remanufacture of parts for a well-understood plane than it is to manufacture a whole new, untested plane.

Come on, seriously.

Having worked in requisitions, that's exactly how it works. Design new radar? "Here you go, have fifty parts!" Trying to get a power supply for a radar that's been around for sixty years? "Nope, no one's made those in forty years. Put the request into the system, and maybe we'll do a limited parts run in five years."

It makes sense if you're willing to contort your mind to military logic.

The F-16 as well as the F15 and AC130.

the F35 is a trillion dollar paperwieght that should be scraped, I would be more in favor of ending that trillion dollar gift to Lockheed by way of the corrupt military than ending the A10 program

//For the record, I fucking hate the F35, it is by far the worst aircraft ever produced by the US Military

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