Military expert Pierre Sprey, the founder and designer of the F-16 & A-10 Warthog airplanes, Explains why the f-35 will not cut it on the modern battlefield.
And the A-10 was obsolete the minute it rolled off of the assembly line. Most estimates that the majority of A-10's would have been destoryed within 72 hours of the Warsaw Pact rolling across the German border. The gun is not particularly effective against modern armour, and the same mission can be carried out better by other aircraft like the F/A-18 or the F-16, as seen in the 1st Gulf War. It's found new life in Afghanistan and Iraq but even than drones would have been better suited for the role. In fact, the AF wants to get rid of the A-10, but congress wont let them.
But that is in the design of the A-10. The A-10 was not made for anything other fighting in Europe for the first 72 hours of the Soviets invading Western Europe. If the Russian speartip was blunted and there was some A-10's left over, then the A-10 would have been considered a success.
A-10 was designed to kill T-55s, T62s and T-72s (most modern tank USSR had at that time), not today's tanks.
GAU-8 was extremely effective against armor from that era and still is very useful against armored vehicles, structures, etc.
F16's can't do what A10 does the best (CAS).
In 1st Gulf War A10s are credited with something like 1000 tanks destroyed (mostly with Mavericks though)
AF is trying to get rid of A-10 for decades, but it still survives ..
The GAU-8 couldn't penetrate the frontal armour of the T-62, let alone the turrent on the sides. With ERA armour it becomes even more ineffective. Those tanks? AA, SAM, and enemy CAP are covering them so good luck getting slow and low enough to hit the tanks in the rear and 1. surviving, 2. actually hitting the damn things.
>F16's can't do what A10 does the best (CAS).
This
>In 1st Gulf War A10s are credited with something like 1000 tanks destroyed (mostly with Mavericks though)
contradicts this.
an F-16 can carry mavricks just as well as the A-10, can get their faster, and has higher survivabilty rate compared to the slow as molasses A-10.
Hell, you could replace the A-10 with a single engine turboprop with rough airfield landing capabilities and it would be way more cost-effective than the A-10.
A10 was designed for one specific task - to slow down Soviet tank armies rushing into Germany in case of European non-nuclear conflict. And while it was guranteed they would be accopmanied by mobile SAMs, it was tanks themselves that were major concern. The goal was to slow down the hordes by any means necessary and A-10 was the ideal solution for that.
According to all documents I was able to find, including several US military assessments, GAU-8 was more than capable of achieving K-kills on T72s using top-down attacks or low-angle side attacks.
CAS != tank killing, if your plane "gets there and out faster", you are not doing CAS but some sort of flyby. CAS usually requires visual confirmation of the targets, that means you have to fly low and slow, which F16 is not really made for (bad maneuverability at low speeds). You might also need to stay in the area for extended period of time, which, again, isn't F16s strong point (it's a great plane though).
IIRC pretty much all Mavericks in 1GW were from A10s, something like 95%.
I mentioned only 1k tank kills because I was lazy to type the other stuff, like trucks, armored vehicles, SCUD launchers, SAMs, all sorts of bunkers, command infrastructure, radars, etc.