>Airforce bureucrats trying to retire the A10
>Suggesting in committees that F16 fighters and B1-Bombers are capable of replacing the A-10 for close air support missions
What's the straight dope on this? Do you guys think retiring the A-10 would be a mistake?
I'd be curious to know what the thoughts on the A-10 are from the guys who have actually been on the ground, and have been the beneficiary of A-10 close air support.
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I think it's all a hoax just like Trump talking about trying to spend less on jets
> he's actually going to build new upgraded jets and weapon systems
It's just keeping the enemies thinking we're going to weaken support when really in the next 10 years there will be a new low cost super bomb or jet that Merks all
The A-10 is great at killing sand niggers who can't shoot back.
It's all but useless in symmetrical warfare.
Retiring the A-10 is basically saying were done fucking around in the middle east.
It will never happen.
>I'd be curious to know what the thoughts on the A-10 are from the guys who have actually been on the ground, and have been the beneficiary of A-10 close air support.
Why the fuck do you feel that this somehow matters? The people on the ground couldn't care less about what's on the way so long as there's a lot of flashing and loud fucking noises at the end of it.
Now, would retiring the A-10 be a mistake?
I don't see how it would be any worse than relegating a supposed 5 star CAS platform to running a tiny minority of CAS missions in between scavenging for spares off currently existing 'Hogs.
We'll take them if you don't want 'em
...
it's a cost effective way to kill infantry that posses little to no AA capability
>The A-10 is great at killing sand niggers who can't shoot back.
kek
Now I understand why Sup Forums is such a big fan of it.
My reasons for wanting to hear the boots-on-the-ground opinion is that the soldiers who use the hardware, and operate in coordination with the hardware have insights that a bureaucrat isn't really capable of acquiring.
Weapons systems can only go so far in the vacuum of blackboard engineering. At a certain point, you need to turn it over to the men and see what they come back with.
If the military, for some reason, has some overwhelming preference for the A-10 over the F-35 as a close air support provider, I'd be curious to know what those opinions are, and why they have come to hold the opinions in the first place. It would be more telling than a lot of the speculation that goes on in the various "Pentagon retiring A10 [agree/disagree slant]" pieces that get rolled out every other week.
>What's the straight dope on this? Do you guys think retiring the A-10 would be a mistake?
They need a replacement that is just as tough and can do the same job if they retire it.
Twin linked autocannons achieve same rate of fire as rotary ones and weight order of magnitude times less
Is anyone here in the Air Force? I'm joining later this week, cyber warfare ops, 1b4x1.
what matters most to people on the ground is that the air support is there when they need it
if they retire the A-10s in favor of more costly alternatives, brass will be more reluctant to deploy them in times of need
we need a low-cost work-horse of a plane that can be deployed frequently and without the cost of a F-35's AIM-9X missile
sorry meant next week.
The A-10 can survive direct hits several times over and, due to the multitude of redundant systems, still fly home
It's going to be needed against Muslims here on North America
>My reasons for wanting to hear the boots-on-the-ground opinion is that the soldiers who use the hardware, and operate in coordination with the hardware have insights that a bureaucrat isn't really capable of acquiring.
I see where you're coming from, but this is just one of those things where anecdotal input really doesn't have any bearing on budgeting decisions.
11Bs and 0311s can talk about how cool the GAU-8 sounds when one comes in for a pass, but that still won't change the fact that multi role aircraft and strategic assets like the B-1 Lancer have been providing a vast majority of CAS for at least two decades.
I'll also leave you with this; witnessing a multiple JDAM release is way more boner inducing than hoping some tweaked out hog pilot doesn't strafe your position.
I have been reading about B-1's since I made this thread. They seem pretty crazy.
I can conceive of how next-gen precision bombs and shit might turn a higher effectiveness than strafing.
Why bother explaining to a pilot where the enemy is when you can just tag his GPS coordinates and program them straight into a guided weapon.
The A10 is great at striking fear into the hearts of your enemy desu.
>Area around you is obliterated
>Hear Satans horn shortly thereafter
>I have been reading about B-1's since I made this thread. They seem pretty crazy.
You should look into the F-111 Aardvark. You'll run into the term "tank plinking". B-1s are pretty fucking scary, and I'll concede that the idea of a strategic bomber designed at the peak of the cold war to fly low level supersonic penetration nuclear strike missions providing more CAS than dedicated CAS platforms and even multirole aircraft like Eagles and Vipers is crazy, but it's how it is.
Yes, low cost is always desirable but in the B-1s case, it's on 24 hour call to rain death on whoever need be. I feel this should also be considered, and it slightly ties in to the grunt input thing; they just aren't qualified to have any opinion resulting in impact on budget/procurement.
>I can conceive of how next-gen precision bombs and shit might turn a higher effectiveness than strafing.
This is the reality of the A-10's demise. You have an antique airframe literally designed around the gun being upgraded and modernized to function essentially in the same way as the multiroles do; high altitude precision ordnance release for CAS. They fail to receive the benefits of being a multirole airframe, and it shows. Current precision ordnance has a smaller CEP(circular error probability) than the GAU-8.
>Why bother explaining to a pilot where the enemy is when you can just tag his GPS coordinates and program them straight into a guided weapon.
Exactly. The concept of being low and slow to allow for direct eye observation sounds good; but we've advanced sensor suites and avionics to the point where you'd be hampering pilot situational awareness by NOT focusing on them over low and slow.
It's really really old and we're having a hard time getting parts for it. The 30 MM is outdated and not as good as our inventory of cluster bombs. They had to switch to TP rounds to penetrate the mud huts the sand people were hiding in in the sand box. It has started to get so old that it needs a shit ton more maintenance per flight hour than it's worth. It was cool and I've always wanted to load one, but it's past high time to let the old girl fly off into the sunset. It's like the B52 it only still exists because of political pressure and we should have put it out to pasture at least a decade ago. This is the cas of the future and the A-10 doesn't support it and making so it can would cost more than it's worth. The A-10 uses old style ground attack where it "marks" it's target with WP rockets before it strafes them with it's gun rockets with Hague legal rockets and bombs. It's an outdated type of attack and it's more dangerous to the boots on the ground. We use smart munitions so much now for a reason. Even the slavs use smart bombs when the cameras are rolling and the us military is pretty much always on camera while its working.
It's so old that it's becoming not that cost effective though. We can't just rely on the lol I only shoot sand and rice niggers that can't into Sams and air force any more. Some of the persistent and developing threats have the ability to shoot up in a very real and tangible way. That and when Mccain blocked the program from getting retired like he should all of the maintainers who were supposed to go to the 35 got held back on the hog. So manning across the fleet for maintainers has been fucked for the last couple of years. I love the BBBbbrrrrrrtttt too, but it's just time to let the old girl go. There's an old saying about tactics vs logistics. And while the A-10 is great tactically it fucks us royally logistically.
>1175% answer to all my original questions/thoughts
>thanks for the thorough reply user
1. Because it's the only CAS left that actually goes visual, the pilot will asses the situation and drop the payload where it's mostly needed instead of launching a missile/bomb from FL320+ and 30 miles out trying to hit a laser designated target.
2. It's fucking scary. A A-10 roaring over your head and dropping its full payload on your ass is the worst nightmare of every enemy. Now try two A-10s.
3. Low maintenance per flight hour (unlike helis), low upkeep costs (it's tech you can repair with a sledgehammer), so there's no reason to not send a few into the air 24/7 in every conflict.
4. against anyone that has not russian tier AA/AAA capabilities it's absolute low risk high reward. You could probably brake that thing in half and it would still fly.
It's the perfect platform to brrrrrrt hajis and other insurgent shit where the biggest threat is a Cal .50 shooting at it, same reason many nations use stuff like the EMB 314 Super Tucano as CAS plane or simply strap 2-3x 12.7mm mgs and a few bomb rails on a PC-7 trainings aircraft or any turboprob that goes over 200 knots and call it a day.
Cheap, scary and effective.
USAF here. 1U051 currently MQ-9 Sensor Op. Former MQ-1.
love the /K/ threads.
makes a change from the Sup Forums type threads
where,s the Sup Forums gone?
Good insight. Kek agrees.
F-35 is the perfect replacement. They should hurry up and get rid of the old junk and get new stealth fighters,
They're good for training. Not sophisticated enough for the 22nd century
I'll give you the scary part. Physiological plays a big part in warfare. My older brother who when marine crunchy instead of lol faggot easy life air force loved the A-10 and the super cobra. Not because they were more effective. That would be close artillery which you can't call in with air assets in the area. He loved them because they were loud and distinctive sounding. It kept the sand people in their spider holes. That kind of superstitious cowardice won't work against a fist or even second word threat. The A-10 sadly is only viable against various tiers of niggers and not our future legitimate threats.
As for the low maintenance part other than you being a medpack this is how I know without a shadow of a doubt you've never even met an A-10 maintainer. I have a half a dozen prior A-10 weapons troops in my shop right now. I've worked with probably hundreds more over the years. The only way you know your not working the weekend troubleshooting is if you're on leave. It's well past its service life. The reason it got spared was to keep the bases it's at. The air frame yearns to be in a bone yard. Brrrrtttt is cool but out dated and dangerous. could you tell a half a dozen guys in camouflage that looks like everything around them from a different half a dozen guys that also are wearing pretty much the same stuff? All while flying a 50 year old airplane 500 feet off the deck. Neither can the pilot of an A-10. That's why they mark their targets with super legal Willy Pete before they go in for the Brrrrtttt. Our guys carry gear that ID's their location that's why smart ordinance is better now. The old A-10 way worked when tanks were thinner and their was nothing better. That's just not how shit works now. WCMD's, AGM-176 and, SDB's are a thing now and in a way sadly they are much better than Ork tech Brrrrtttt. It make me sad too, but it also kills more hajji's than you would believe.
"psychological" fuck you auto correct.
>What's the straight dope on this?
The A-10 was built for one battle: the Fulda Gap. There's this little town of Fulda in central Germany that during the Cold War provided the ideal path for Soviet forces into Western Europe. As a Soviet invasion would be spearheaded by tanks, the USAF needed a vehicle whose sole purpose was destroying tanks. That vehicle is the A-10.
However, the Cold War ended, Germany reunified and the battle never came. Meanwhile tensions in the South Pacific are flaring up, which is why the USN got their VTOL toys (the V-22 and F-35) greenlighted, since their ability to be based off carriers makes them extremely useful for island-hopping. Also Trump trying to nix the F-35 won't go anywhere since Congress is for it (just like they were with the V-22, which Cheney tried to kill) as it fits nicely with his larger shift against China.
On that note, remember that generals fight the last war. The A-10 was meant to stop a Soviet Blitzkrieg and the F-35 is meant to liberate Iwo Jima.
It's literally the number one Sup Forums approved plane, all it has ever done is killing muslims.
>pic is its grandpa
It is, to put it bluntly, obsolete. The only reason they haven't been shot down in massive numbers is because you only fight even more obsolete enemies (camelherders with AK's).
It's target practice for any modern or at least semi-modern anti-air system.
A-10s are possibly the finest feat of aeronautical engineering ever. They can fly with one wing, and one engine.
Vietnam was extended by holding back the a-10s alone.
Today's fighting in the middle east could easily be won with Marines on the ground, Army for logistical support, and A-10s for air-to-ground superiority.
If someone wanted to fuck around and go air-to-air, we'd just bring in the Raptors and fuck them up.
This is inaccurate in my opinion. The A10 was designed to be a flying tank. It has triple redundant controls and can fly with one engine. It was designed to survive being shot. It has survived SAM and massive amounts of small arms fire. There will always be a place for an aircraft like this, and our other aircraft can't do it.
it's a great plane but it's old and has already been through a couple of crash refurbishment programs. you can only put so many hours of pulling g's on an airframe before it literally starts coming apart at the seams. the factory that built them originally has been closed for decades. something new is needed.
I fail to see why we need to get rid of this tried and true system.
>leaf
I think they should retire the A-10.
Then strip all the GAU-8A cannons from them.
Then, bring in two Iowa Class battleships in from mothball.
Pull the 16" cannons off and secondaries.
Fit GAU-8A cannons into all empty turret mounts.
Place radars on every turret roof.
Remove turret B, and replace with VLS cells.
Slave it all to an advanced version of AEGIS fire control with SPY-3 radars on the tower.
You now have a BRRRRRT Class Point Defense Ship to protect the carrier battle groups.
Tougher.
If it can't take a missile launched from a S-300FM up the fanny and keep fighting, it's not good enough.
Saw a decent article from an airforce officer saying the f-16 is far superior in supporting troops when you want air support right fucking now. Costs were not that far off either. The spectre gunship is my fave though. That fucker just loiters outside of small arms and RPG range while raining death.
PQL-10 MSP
the B-1 is more cost effective and was the leading CAS platform in Afghanistan and Iraq because it could loiter forever, react to a larger area and held a stupid amount of munitions in comparison to the A-10, even allowing FACs to decide on the size of the munition they needed instead of just having to use whatever was sent out
love it, don't retire it
if maintainence ios getting too much, just build more of them
if parts are too expensive, build more(supply/demand)
I think burguers should give all the A-10 turdbolts to the portuguese so that the portuguese could sell the turdbolts to china and make a few shekels out of it.
Then china gets happy and signs a migration deal with us that only allows their women to migrate here (just women) so that we are swarmed with waifus and everyone gets a gf. No need to browse Sup Forums afterwards (too much sex).
Its the perfect plan. Im very good at this.
maybe they want to retire it because it does not cost enough and is too effective.
Know what would be neat? Drones equipped with sirens like the Ju-87. But more custom-tooled to resemble the howling shrieks of the damned.
Have I got just the thing for you, bud.
youtube.com
it was designed to be a kamikaze jet plane that delivers its payload, they expected all a10s to be shot down two weeks into a actual war against an actual enemy (ussr at the time)
That'll do.
Former AF here...A-10 is still the coolest plane flying. It isn't fast, it is sexy, but damn if it doesn't chew shit up and make it home regardless.
Americans are fucking retarded. A-10 is a cheap plane, it costs few bucks to operate and has really strong offensive capabilities.
You can't use fighter jets instead of A-10 all the time while bombing sandniggers, it just costs too much. I Guess Pentagon just wants more money from taxpayers.
Russians are not planning to retire Su-25 any time soon.
>B..but A-10 is easy to shoot down
Yeah, because US air force doesn't have means to JAM or destroy SAMs in area, right?
Cheap and easy to operate aircraft like Su-25 and A-10 should not be retired.
Not possible. The only reliable defense against missiles with big continuous rod warheads is not getting hit in the first place.
this is niw a BBBRRRRRRRRTTTTTT thread
*now
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Why would you retire th-
>US military is organised to make money for military contractors
Oh, right...
>role
>Main battle tank
wat really?
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Frogfoots don't BRRRTT, but are awesome too
Show me a tank that can be penetrated by A-10?
.
you have this saved on your desktop don't you?
you magnificent bastard
Its not necessary to penetrate tank. After optics are destroyed tank is useless.
I'll answer some questions if people are interested. Father was an A-10 pilot with a couple deployments. Have some info on general politics of the A10
how is that job? im eligible to cross train to it, granted it gets approved. currently an f16 crew chief
What are the chances of hitting the optics?
4,000 rounds per minute
So it's a pretty good chance
Chances are big. Tank optics are usually targeted with small arms or sniper fire, after getting hit by GAU-10 30mm cannon fire the shrapnel will do job
>The A-10 was built for one battle: the Fulda Gap
Nope. It was build for CAS support in Vietnam. Tank killing fulda gap meme was crammed into A-10 as afterthought. And badly crammed. A-10 had no chance to operate successfully over Soviet Army organic AD. Plane and its tactics were a bunch of wishful backwards thinking.
But you temporarily took the tank out. Wouldn't you rather kill the crew and disable the vehicle on a more permanent level? The A-10 being a tank killer was always a meme.
So? Trying hitting a target, while you are moving and the target is moving.
i love it
It's called a helicopter. They're basically the gold standard for infantry support.
>Wouldn't you rather kill the crew and disable the vehicle on a more permanent level?
A-10 can use AGM-65 missiles to do this job. Also its possible to modernize and make it use newer missiles with special container.
Read about A-10 trials. Non penetrating hits did no real damage to tanks
>2003 attack on karbala
A-10 was never for taking out tanks. It was for shredding USSR light armor.
>It's like the B52
fuck you carousels of nuclear tipped cruise missiles will never get old
Yes, but the A-10 has a more fixed rate of AGM-65. If you are going to use missiles, why not just some drone and not risk an expensive pilot?
The Air Force hates the A10, the grunts love them.
The Air Force hates to do ground support, the lives of grunts depend on it
The Air Force should have no more say on the future of the A10. Let the Army have a fixed-wing Air Corps again.
>They can fly with one wing, and one engine.
so can F-15s while being more effective and versatile
fucking F16's and B-1's can't do this
this is why you need a fucking A-10
How about cost effectiveness you fucking American idiot? I understand that America has a lot of money, but this is just plain stupid. Using fighter jets as CAS..
It is all about politics. Once you let the Army having fixed-wing aircraft where does it stop? The Air Force wants to keep their relative monopoly on aircraft.
>Cos effectiveness
Until the supply line no longer exists. The A-10 is obsolete. We should be playing Broncos or some other new prop.
Oh shit that makes sense
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
Yeah it's going to take more than a raid from almost 14 years ago to make me give a fuck.
The A-10 isnt used very much at all anymore. The F-15E and F-16 make up the majority of air to ground usage. Not too useful in a modern war, only against a low tech force it has chance of usability
It was made to kill massed Soviet tanks, but only kills infantry. You don't need ginormous depleted uranium AP rounds for that. Loitering and killing infantry seems more like a drone thing desu. Neither the A-10 nor drones would work in a real war.
>Fucking retarded bureaucrats constantly want to get rid of the A-10
>BUT WAIT, they can't because it's constantly fucking NEEDED
>That says it all
I hope Trump goes, Fuck You, the A-10 stays in inventory and not only that, but we're ordering 100 new ones. I served in Afghanistan and as far as I'm concerned we can't have enough A-10s or Apaches.
>mfw F14 was retired in 2006
the A10 has only performed like 15% of total CAS in the Iraq/Afghan War, its an aging platform with no future
Are those gloves not uncomfortable? When I played airsoft they were more of a hassle than, getting shot in the hand, and I doubt they would stop anything besides small plastic balls...
>1943
Dude what?
I'm sorry if this hurts your feelings but this plane serves no purpose.
It can do nothing that a Tornado or a Hornet can't do.
I'd be glad to see it go, it's a waste of money.
I'll bet Obama is behind this.
The airframes are fucked also, firing the cannon while flying at suck speeds puts a lot of pressure on them.
They'll be increasingly expensive to maintain and probably be irreparable in a few years which means you retire them or start the factory up again to make more. The latter will cost an absolute bomb since they haven't been made in 30 years.
This was why we retired our Harriers. The Yanks bought them and stripped them for parts.
>they still use 500 pounds bombs
why so small
all the videos i see on youtube from afghanistan they drop this shitty small 250 kg petard. is 500 pounds guided bomb really yhe most popular cas bomb? WHY