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Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

The A-10 is obsolete. Its airframe literally can’t hold the power systems required to support modern defensive and offensive capabilities. It would get wrecked against any modern air defense environment. It was designed for the threat environment from half a century ago with no upgrade path.

F-15 and F-18 are not better at air superiority. The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.

The F-35 can carry much more weapons payload than any of the 4th gen aircraft you mention and has more range. That on its own is a huge win, stealth and sensors notwithstanding.

You don’t seem to understand the criteria against which military aircraft are judged.

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>The A-10 is obsolete. Its airframe literally can’t hold the power systems required to support modern defensive and offensive capabilities. It would get wrecked against any modern air defense environment. It was designed for the threat environment from half a century ago with no upgrade path.

Yet we keep flying it in the face of repeated attempts to retire it, with the USAF even going on the record that the A-10 will be kept in inventory "indefinitely"[1]. The A-10 is clearly not obsolete and continues to proudly serve the USA and its friends and allies, and enjoys much adoration from its pilots, mechanics, infantrymen, and civilian fans.

>F-15 and F-18 are not better at air superiority. The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.

The F-15 has suffered no airframe loss to enemy combat action in its entire service history, that is a feat not easily met. The USAF even went as far as to procure new F-15s, the -EX model, because F-35 production wasn't keeping up.

As for the F/A-18, the Hornet boasts superior flight range and payload capacity besides being significantly cheaper, to say nothing of its proven air superiority and multirole capabilities.

>The F-35 can carry much more weapons payload than any of the 4th gen aircraft you mention and has more range. That on its own is a huge win, stealth and sensors notwithstanding.

That is patently false. The F-35 must sacrifice what little stealth it has to carry more payload, otherwise it can only carry a small handful within its internal weapon bays. Even accounting for carrying payload on its wing pylons, it still can't hold a candle to the other fighters; the F-15EX in particular can carry patently ridiculous payloads.

As for range, it pales in comparison to air superiority fighters (eg: F-15C/D/E/EX, F-22) or 4th gen naval fighters (the F/A-18C/D/E/F).

[1]: https://archive.ph/20170912212105/http://www.theaustralian.c...

>Yet we keep flying it in the face of repeated attempts to retire it, with the USAF even going on the record that the A-10 will be kept in inventory "indefinitely"[1]. The A-10 is clearly not obsolete and continues to proudly serve the USA and its friends and allies, and enjoys much adoration from its pilots, mechanics, infantrymen, and civilian fans.

Because the US has, in the past decades, not waged a war against a near-equal opponent who could have held together any kind of air force or air defenses for at most the first few days of a US invasion. In all of the US wars since the A-10 might have been obsolete against a near-equal opponent, it was more advanced than the mass of opposing tech, and could be used well. For counterinsurgency, the cost of actually modern tech is more of a problem, given that the cheap old stuff is still far superior to anything a Taliban commander can put in the field, and given that guerilla warfare has as it's aim not tactical victories, but increasing the cost to the bigger party into politically untenable regions.

It is very much obsolete in the sense that the US also requires air capabilities for large, near-equal conflicts, and there is no unsurprising way for A-10s to be useful there. In summary: keep enough A-10s around for CAS against outclassed opponents, but don't plan on having enough to take on China, seems like a wise strategy.

> The USAF even went as far as to procure new F-15s, the -EX model, > because F-35 production wasn't keeping up.

Is that the reason? I thought it was the need to counter the Chinese strategy of mass producing fighters with an idea of overwhelming western fighters through sheer weight of number. F35 is weak on per hour running cost and uptime per unit, and loses to the F15 variant if you are looking to scale.

The f35 can operate in a similar role to an e8 alongside a mix of cheaper aircraft.

Yes, F35 production not keeping up with airforce recapitalization needs, something like 45% of airframes flying beyond service life. So need to plug gap with F15s.

> F-15EX in particular can carry patently ridiculous payloads.

But also this. Which touches on F35 being very complicated to develop for, and taking ages to integrate weapons vs F15s. And some operational considerations like not wanting to retrain F15 pilots.

Look at USAF 4+1 for next 15 years of procurement. Basically F35A, F15EX, F16CD, A10s and +1 being F22s that will be replaced by NGAD.

Read between the line consideration is F35/F22 was made for Europe/RU theatre, lacks range in PRC theatre without tanking, which are vunerable to J20s with longer range and air to air. Hence NGAD being mid sized bomber, and acquiring 100 B21s that cost as much as 1000 F35s.

F-15EX also didn't meaningfully exist even in USA at the time of this contract and is barely starting to show up right now.

Point is EX has continuity with prior weapons integration. AF wanted F15 capabilities and opted for modernized variant. Plus F15s simply carrying more = USAF opting to keeping mixed composition of airframes that excels in different capabilities niches instead of previous TACAIR proposal of going all in on stealth. Even A10, for as much meme calling for it's death, got a host of modernization that puts it ahead of F35 for certain missions short/medium term. AF still going to go HAM on 35s long term, but within next 15 years, they're reorienting for 4+1 mix because 35s simply won't be the stealth swiss army knife it was designed to be, largely due to software complexity that makes integration painful.

Yes, F-35 production simply wasn't sufficient in the face of pressure from aging F-15C/D airframes that will very soon need replacements:

>Adding new F-15s was not an Air Force idea, but instead came out of the Pentagon’s Cost and Program Evaluation office, or CAPE, and was endorsed by former Defense Secretary James Mattis. While the Air Force’s long-held position has been to invest only in fifth generation fighter technology, it has defended the plan to buy new F-15s as a way to maintain fighter capacity, given the aging of the F-15C fleet and the slow pace of F-35 acquisitions.

>While the Air Force is adamant that buying F-15EXs will not reduce the requirement to build 1,763 F-35s, history and the Air Force’s own budget request suggests otherwise. The 2020 budget submission shows the Air Force buying 24 fewer F-35s over the next five years compared to last year’s plan.

Further reading: https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/f-15ex-vs-f-35a/

Yet we keep using the a-10 to fight against non-modern air defenses over and over again. It has a use. If ukraine had them, would russia be able to shoot them all down? The answer should be yes, but russia should have waxed ukraine theoretically.

Russian AA is killing Ukrainian Migs very well when they're not careful. No one is flying over Ukraine very much because both sides have AA dominating all engagement altitudes.

I don't think you understand the kinds (and volumes) of SAM firepower a Soviet hangover can leave you with. Ukrainian skies are the most dangerous skies in the world right now, for both sides.

I wasn't trying to say that a10s should be used in Ukraine (because they'd be shot down). But a10s are still really useful in many other circumstances, most recently when fighting countries without air superiority. So if the us fights China, it doesn't seem like they'd be that useful because the us might not have air superiority and it won't be a tank war.

> You don’t seem to understand the criteria against which military aircraft are judged.

FYI your argument was going so well until you employed this fallacy. What GP does or doesn't understand is entirely irrelevant, not to mention that mind-reading is forbidden, not really, but it is also fallacy. Only what is stated is relevant. Now if you'll just accept this, I actually do not want to argue. I was hoping you would not mind answering my questions, because I do not understand.

> It would get wrecked against any modern air defense environment.

Obviously, we have a modern air defense, and the F-35 and F-22, among other elements, are a part of it. Who else does? Russia? North Korea? China? I'm just curious who threatens our 50 year old technology. IOW, besides our allies, who has 4th and/or 5th gen aircraft that we need to shore up against and not let them wreck our jalopies?

> The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.

same question, who, other than our allies, is operating 5th gen aircraft that we should be concerned about? I'm not making any point. I really don't know. Appreciated.

No one is operating 5th gen aircraft that the US should be concerned about. Many countries are operating air defenses that the US should be concerned about. The 5th gen aircraft have credible, but not perfect, defense in-depth against the current generation of air defense platforms, whereas the 4th gen aircraft do not (though they may gain it at some point).

In the specific case of the A-10, it was designed for a world that had extremely primitive sensor systems that couldn’t even reliably lock onto a plane when looking straight at it. We aren’t in that world anymore. Not only is the terminal guidance sophisticated and reliable but the warheads are designed specifically to destroy aircraft like the A-10. Everyone has had 50 years to work on that problem.

Modern Russian and Chinese systems effortlessly deal with an A-10; it lacks the power systems to support modern counter-measures against modern systems. It isn’t upgradable like that because that wasn’t a design objective.

Modern military aircraft like the F-35 have critical combat roles that don’t involve dogfighting. Their sensor suites and processing capabilities are at least as important as any other particular feature, and other aircraft don’t have that. Their systems can measure and exploit their environment to an astonishing degree.

yep, we can also draw some interesting conclusions from the current conflict in Ukraine and that's with a targeted campaign an air defense is only as good as the entire network and system it's built around.

The Ukrainian air force with mostly su-24's and su-27's should not exist or even be able to operate against Russia's supposed air defense capabilities(s-400, s-300, Tor, manpads) but war is almost always a battle of information and the stealth and network capabilities the F-35 has puts it a league of its own. One which only the f-22 could transcend but the raw number of F-35's being pumped out negates that advantage to a degree

The Ukrainian air force is severely limited in it's air operations against the Russians. Similarly the Russians largely don't operate their aircraft over Ukraine. That's because both sides have air defence systems that are highly capable against aircraft of those generations.

> That's because

one side has untouchable radars and AWACS.

Both sides have essentially untouchable radars. The Ukrainians have so far avoided shooting at Russian planes flying much beyond the Ukrainian border, and Russia has the Beriev A-100.

E-3 would never enter the Ukraine airspace (and they are not Ukraine, but totally-we-are-not-the-part-of-that NATO), while A-50/100 would be gladly shot down if the chance arises. So 'essentially' is not the right word here.

Why does it matter? A-x would never need to enter Ukrainian airspace anyway.

Physics says what they should if they need to support something in the Western parts.

They can scan almost all of Western Ukraine from Belarus airspace. The southern most coast south of Moldova, and maybe Odessa is beyond it's published estimated range assuming it flies more than 100km inside Belarus airspace, but not by much.

>scan almost

At what altitude? Earth isn't flat, so even at 20km and superb electronics you don't see what happens near the ground.

Though probably someone already published their routes, but I too lazy to check, honestly. Still my point stands - As can be downed (and everyone would clap, especially in the US) while Es "NO YOU DONT THATS ARTICLE 5"

>At what altitude? Earth isn't flat, so even at 20km and superb electronics you don't see what happens near the ground.

Over distances of 600km the vertical offset due to earth's curvature is about 20km. If it flies at it's operational ceiling of 14km, it can offset most of that but wouldn't have direct line of sight on planes at extreme range flying below 6km. If it has over the horizon capability though, which honestly seems highly likely for a recently updated system, then it should be able to compensate for the remaining shadow with some loss of resolution. Which I'm guessing is why it's estimated range is considered 600km. I'm sure the military analysts making those estimates know about these effects.

Anyway, southern Ukraine can be directly radar imaged from over Crimea so it's really not an issue. It's petty clear Russia can have full radar coverage of all of Ukraine without having to put their air radar assets close to Ukraine.

It is of course possible Ukraine might decide to try a long range anti-air strike, but I think that's unlikely due to the possibility of hitting a civilian plane, or the target coming down on a civilian area.

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