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

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-a-10-warthog-may-be-kept-out-of-retirement-by-law-1773923092

by ourmandave • 10 years ago

61 115 10 years ago

foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com

maxerickson7• 10 years ago

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.

the_ancient10• 10 years ago

>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..

maxerickson7• 10 years ago

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.

yourapostasy2• 10 years ago

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?

maxerickson7• 10 years ago

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.

rjsw• 10 years ago

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

dforrestwilson16• 10 years ago

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.

vinceguidry6• 10 years ago

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-...

jokoon2• 10 years ago

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

55acdda48ab53• 10 years ago

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.

jasonwatkinspdx2• 10 years ago

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.

dsfyu404ed4• 10 years ago

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.

GunboatDiplomat10• 10 years ago

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.

dsfyu404ed4• 10 years ago

x2. The marines do this for the most part.

maxerickson7• 10 years ago

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.

55acdda48ab53• 10 years ago

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.

SEJeff6• 10 years ago

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.

hosh• 10 years ago

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.

dragonwriter7• 10 years ago

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.

discardorama• 10 years ago

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_ancient10• 10 years ago

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

nosequel• 10 years ago

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.

dragonwriter7• 10 years ago

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.

GunboatDiplomat10• 10 years ago

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.

cyberpanther• 10 years ago

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.

london888• 10 years ago

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.

onetimePete• 10 years ago

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.

Havoc• 10 years ago

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).

Pxtl2• 10 years ago

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.

justin66• 10 years ago

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

It's staggering alright.

Pxtl2• 10 years ago

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.

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

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