New A-10 wings

[bentwaters81tfw]

Link to an item on the 'Hog'

Note plans in place to fly the Hog until 2030. Someone has realised that it takes a Hog to do a dirty job.

http://www.fightercontrol.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=287&t=159954

 

None of the politics please.

[Britman]

Just goes to show that you can't reinvent the wheel! This is a plane that to me was designed to do exactly what was required without too many compromises . The A9 however shows just how special the A10 to be.

Keith.

Edited March 27, 2018 by Britman

[noelh]

I read a book about the A10 operations in the the first Gulf war. At the conclusion of the war many were transported to Davis Months it seemed for scrapping. But here we go 27 years later they're still here with no sign of retirement.

[Mikey-1980]

There's a great documentary from Battle Stations all on the A-10....worth a watch

 

 

[Lord Riot]

Fabulous news! Just need them to reactivate Bentwaters now!

[stalal]

An aircraft inspired by Ju87G and designed with input from Hans Rudel. A great compliment to German ingenuity indeed. 

[SA80A2AR]

i have to say although some people say the A10 is a rubish aircraft and should be axed, but i think they are a good looking aircraft

[spruecutter96]

The A-10 is designed to do a particular job and it does it extremely well...

 

I've read that the US Air Force has always hated the aircraft and has wanted to get rid of it, but the 'Hog proves too valuable every time it's used. 

 

Chris.   

Edited April 10, 2018 by spruecutter96
Correcting a typo.

[whiskey]

6 hours ago, spruecutter96 said:

The A-10 is designed to do a particular job and it does it extremely well...

 

I've read that the US Air Force has always hated the aircraft and has wanted to get rid of it, but the 'Hog proves too valuable every time it's used. 

 

Chris.   

That's because everyone that has had negative comments about are zoomie pilots. Think about it, the USAF got rid of all it's "non-Mach" combat capable aircraft except the A-10 back in the 80's-90's and now they are scratching their heads trying to fill these gaps that they created. It's almost as if they are trying to reinvent the wheel. IMHO it's disheartening.

[spruecutter96]

Maybe they can use the "Flying Turkey" F-35 to fill the capability gap (but somehow I really doubt it!)

 

Chris. 

[Mike]

The old new F-35 is just too expensive to get dirty, and drones can't cope with danger-close missions as well as having a human in the titanium bathtub with zero lag between eyes and hands.  People are quick to forget this, and when the cost-cutting axe is swinging, they eye it up with avorice.

[Giorgio N]

I know, someone is going to hate me, but as an engineer and an enthusiast I hate to see old myths getting continuously passed on and on... I mean, everytime we read something stupid about airplanes in papers we're the first to say that the press is rubbish and then we repeat ourselves stories that are not any truer ?

 

On 27/3/2018 at 7:11 PM, stalal said:

An aircraft inspired by Ju87G and designed with input from Hans Rudel. A great compliment to German ingenuity indeed. 

 

This is one myth that I rate among the weirdest ! Rudel had absolutely no input in the A-10 ! The only "input" was that a civilian DoD employee part of the program management team asked the members to read Rudel's autobiography and invited him to give a lecture on his war experiences. End of the story !

The A-10 also owes nothing to the Stuka and the aircrafts have nothing in common. If there's a WW2 aircraft that has somewhat inspired the A-10 this was the Soviet Il.2. Really, I'd be very surprised if anyone could find any similarity between the Stuka and the A-10

 

17 hours ago, spruecutter96 said:

The A-10 is designed to do a particular job and it does it extremely well...

 

I've read that the US Air Force has always hated the aircraft and has wanted to get rid of it, but the 'Hog proves too valuable every time it's used. 

 

Chris.   

 

The USAF never hated the aircraft, if they hated the aircraft they would have not even asked money to develop the concept, build prototypes (of both the A-10 and A-9) and then build over 700 aircrafts ! It was the USAF who got the A-10 in service, not some outer influence.

What is true is that at some point the USAF considered retiting the A-10 earlier than expected but there was a very good reason for this: the A-10 was built to destroy tanks in the Central European theatre and with the development of more and more advanced anti-aircraft systems the A-10 had become very vulnerable. The titanium armour is very cool but is not going to save the A-10 from the kind of missiles that every Soviet armoured column started fielding right before the end of the cold war, one of those missiles and even the super-protected Warthog would have been a flaming wreck.

Had the cold war continued into the '90s, the A-10 would have been retired for this reason but then the world suddenly changed and the USAF had an aircraft without a mission, something that would have been an even better reason to retire the type.

With the US involvement in more and more "small wars" the A-10 found a new niche, as now the type was not threatened by dangerous weapons anymore, however the new enemy became the budget. The USAF has reduced the number of types in service over the years and the A-10 has one big problem: it's a type that is only useful in limited situations as it's not survivable enough in today's airspace. As long as the enemy consists. of Afghan guerrillas with some ond shoulder launched missiles and machine guns things are fine, but in a theatre like say Syria or Ukraine it would be a sitting duck. It's a great aircraft very useful in some situations but can't be used in other theatres. And this is why the USAF wanted to replace the type, they ideally would like to replace them with something that can be used in any theatre. Having a super-specialised machine that is only useful in some missions is fine when there's plenty of money around, when money becomes scarcer it's better to have types with operational flexibility that can be used in every theatre and possibly perform diverse missions. This is why the USAF has considered retiting the A-10 in the last few years, all the stories about the "fighter mafia" and so on are just that, stories.

 

49 minutes ago, Mike said:

The old new F-35 is just too expensive to get dirty, and drones can't cope with danger-close missions as well as having a human in the titanium bathtub with zero lag between eyes and hands.  People are quick to forget this, and when the cost-cutting axe is swinging, they eye it up with avorice.

 

The fact that the F-35 would be too expensive for CAS is another myth and the history of combat operations of US types has showed how USAF and USN have never shied from throwing their assets into the fray. Even Tomcats have done strafing runs in the past, what matters is not the value of the aircraft, what matters is that the mission is accomplished. The same services have made a huge use of expensive guided munitions, sometime just to destroy machine gun pits, the cost of the munitions is negligible compared to the cost of the human losses that may derive from not neutralising the threat. The day the F-35s will deploy in theatre, you can bet that they'll bve used hard as every other USAF type has in the last decades

In any case the experience of CAS over Iraq and Afghanistan has showed that the best results are now achieved with mission profiles that don't require pilots to fly down low where ground fire is a problem. Even the A-10s today are using these profiles and smart weapons to get the job done.

Edited April 11, 2018 by Giorgio N

[Mike]

1 minute ago, Giorgio N said:

The fact that the F-35 would be too expensive for CAS is another myth

The fact that they're fairly scarce with purchase numbers going down here & there might come into that equation to make it less of a myth, as any good commander will preserve their assets for the job they're best at.  They're not well blessed with ammo either, but that doesn't preclude CAS, but limits their engagement with guns to a quick squirt that will probably be more of a show of force.  I understand what you're saying though and I'm no expert.

[tempestfan]

1 hour ago, Giorgio N said:

the A-10 was built to destroy tanks in the Central European theatre

That was its original raison d'être. How well it would have performed in that role given its limited adverse weather aids may be another story; there was a fine article (Roy Braybrook ?) in Air Int'l in the late 70s or early 80s discussing this (no idea if he was biased). The general weather conditions in its actual theatres of ops certainly were well suited to it.

[Giorgio N]

5 minutes ago, tempestfan said:

That was its original raison d'être. How well it would have performed in that role given its limited adverse weather aids may be another story; there was a fine article (Roy Braybrook ?) in Air Int'l in the late 70s or early 80s discussing this (no idea if he was biased). The general weather conditions in its actual theatres of ops certainly were well suited to it.

 

Have to say that when I wrote this I cut the story short... the A-X program that led to the A-10 started during the Vietnam war and the kind of aircraft the USAF were looking for was something like a better armoured and faster Skyraider. With the wind-down of the US involvement in Vietnam the idea of using the A-X as a tank hunter started to develop and was finally implemented in the A-10. It should be said that in the mid '70s few aircrafts had full night combat capabilities, so in a sense the A-10 wasn't the only one with this problem but by the mid '80s things had changed a bit.

I also remember reading many comments on the true effectiveness of the A-10 in the Central European theatre in the early '80s and there were a lot of doubts raised over this.

Fairchild proposed the two seater N/AW variant to add full night and adverse weather capability but in the end this variant only flew as a prototype.

 

2 hours ago, Mike said:

The fact that they're fairly scarce with purchase numbers going down here & there might come into that equation to make it less of a myth, as any good commander will preserve their assets for the job they're best at.  They're not well blessed with ammo either, but that doesn't preclude CAS, but limits their engagement with guns to a quick squirt that will probably be more of a show of force.  I understand what you're saying though and I'm no expert.

 

They are fairly scarce today, tomorrow may be another story.
Besides, numbers are going down in all air forces for a number of reasons, one of them being the cost of human resources and all the related infrastructures. Having a cheaper aircraft like the A-10 does not guarantee high numbers if only a certain number of units can be afforded. Whenever the numbers are low, it makes sense that each aircraft can contribute to every possible mission. The A-10 can't satisfy this requirement. As long as the USAF will be involved in wars like Afghanistan the A-10 will stay, it's very likely though that the day the US will retire from the various Middle East hot spots the Warthog will be retired.

The fact of being a ultra-specialised type is also one of the reasons why the A-10 never got any export order. Korea was interested at some point but they decided against it in the end. Turkey was offered a number of second hand airframes but had problems in funding the deal and later choose something else, the Philippines were also offered the type but found it not suited to their needs. Greece too was offered the A-10 but preferred other types.

[Head in the clouds.]

Give me a Hog any day, stealth ability counts for nothing when you are in the Hogs playground and they are not too easy to down, inter changeable components to keep em flying and that gun which is worth it's weight in gold.

Sometimes you just need a truck and not a limo.

And it's ugly......in a good way.

 

Love em.

[stalal]

3 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

This is one myth that I rate among the weirdest ! Rudel had absolutely no input in the A-10 ! The only "input" was that a civilian DoD employee part of the program management team asked the members to read Rudel's autobiography and invited him to give a lecture on his war experiences. End of the story !

 

I think what I said was in the documentary.

[Giorgio N]

48 minutes ago, stalal said:

 

I think what I said was in the documentary.

 

In that case the documentary is wrong. I'll watch and see how this idea came, I have a feeling that they may have interviewed that DoD employee... wouldn't be surprised as he's very present in the media these days...

 

[whiskey]

I was a grunt in Iraq. When out in the rural areas we loved the A-10 getting down and dirty with us. Hell we loved anything more or less really. I am a huge fan of the Hog. The problem of getting low and in the trenches with us grunts no matter what aircraft is the Sam threat. I don’t know if an F-35 can maintain a low cross-radar section at altitudes of 800 feet or lower. Any input to this?

[hairystick]

On 4/11/2018 at 5:44 AM, Mike said:

... when the cost-cutting axe is swinging, they eye it up with avorice.

Which is the opposite of what the costs/flight hour represent. A hog is cheap to operate, along with the BUFF.

Pointy-nosed things are substantially more costly to operate and even more so when they have stealthy / RAM areas to maintain. It would be extremely doubtful if the Airdales would ever consider risking a -35 in a CAS role.

[mhaselden]

2 hours ago, hairystick said:

Which is the opposite of what the costs/flight hour represent. A hog is cheap to operate, along with the BUFF.

Pointy-nosed things are substantially more costly to operate and even more so when they have stealthy / RAM areas to maintain. It would be extremely doubtful if the Airdales would ever consider risking a -35 in a CAS role.

 

Then you clearly don't understand modern CAS which is performed by a range of different aircraft types, including pointy-nosed things.  In recent conflicts, fast jets have flown far more CAS missions than A-10s...so, yes, aircraft like the F-35 can and will be "risked" in a CAS role. 

[Slater]

I think the A-10 would be well suited to another Vietnam-type environment.

[mhaselden]

1 hour ago, Slater said:

I think the A-10 would be well suited to another Vietnam-type environment.

 

Well, that's the conflict which spawned the A-10 requirements so, yes, it probably would be good providing the ground-based air defences (GBAD) are no more capable than were deployed during Vietnam.  The challenge is that modern nation-state adversaries' GBAD are so good that an A-10 is a sitting duck unless something goes in first to neutralize the GBAD threat.