"The A-10 Warthog: Too Old to Keep Fighting?" Topic

"After failing to convince the public that A-10s are a threat to friendly troops, the U.S. Air Force now wants you to believe that the ground attack planes are simply too old to keep fighting.

Earlier in March, Air Force officials hosted a summit to discuss the future of close air-support — the critical air strikes that help out troops on the ground.

After the gathering wrapped up, Air Combat Command—which controls the bulk of the service's combat aircraft—kept up its media blitz against the A-10 by zeroing in on the aircraft's age…"
Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

Well, the B-52s are 20 years, or more older than them, so sounds like they've got some time left, especially since the F-35 probably won't be fully ready for another decade, or so.

Clearly they are way beyond the lifetime originally envisaged.

Equally clearly there is no obvious replacement.

First identify the replacement – then retire them. It's really that simple.

The difficult bit is that chaingun on a low level platform that is incredibly rugged. It's hard to get an air superiority fighter to do that. Everything else can be done with smarter munitions (but they'll cost a lot more). So, make a really good case for not needing a low flying bit of firepower like that and you're half way there.

You're being way too logical, 20th.

Now, apparently, the gatling gun on it is deemed to be too inaccurate, so they're working on your last point, hard, even though we have no ready replacements, or money for them.

Seems to me a decent pilot can put rounds where they are needed, fairly easily, and with the proper FAC guidance. It was designed to kill enemy armor, so I imagine it can destroy Toyota technicals driven by jihadis, just as easily, and very efficiently.

Rather silly to use $150 USD+ million a copy aircraft, and $250,000 USD+ precision bombs to take out $10,000 USD trucks, unless you want to lose the economic war.

There are a lot of good Sci-Fi novels on the subject, which are very appropriate to today's battles, rather than the far future, in which they are set. They were written during the Cold War, but apply even more so today, as weapons program costs have skyrocketed even further off the charts.

Rather silly to use $150 USD USD+ million a copy aircraft, and $250,000 USD USD+ precision bombs to take out $10,000 USD USD trucks, unless you want to lose the economic war.

I didn't say it would be easy to make a good case to do it that way and not just use the A10's gun !

Horses for courses – and I think that the US Government is spending too much on expensive high tech equipment at the expense of cheaper lower tech equipment that, in many cases, would be more suitable for some jobs. Sometimes quality results in too little quantity to do all the jobs you need to do.

Shouldn't the A-10 have it's own Message Board?

Sooner or later we are going to have to fight someone with these crappy planes we keep turning out…

The A-10 is becoming less and less survivable in the anti-air environment over the battle field. Currently only 6% of ground support missions in the ME are flown by A-10's. In the right environment they are effective but that environment is rapidly disappearing. The A-10 is no longer capable of surviving in the environment it was designed for and the anti-ISIS type fight is becoming just as dangerous. The Warthog was a good aircraft for its time but that time has nearly passed.

It's hard to believe that ISIS is actually as dangerous (in anti-air terms) as 1980's Warsaw Pact en masse.

IF Daesh is running enough Radars to catch the A-10s, I suspect thay won't be running them for very long. I want to see the figures on how many Aircraft have been lost due to ground fire so far (listed by Type).

The quality of MANPADs and SAMs has certainly improved since the 1980s, but I suspect the numbers are down significantly from the height of the Cold War (especially the larger, non-MANPAD SAMs).

Most likely, those will be taken out by other aerial platforms before the A-10s are sent in, and/or they'll provide air support for them, while the Warthogs engage over the front lines.

I favor the A-10 message board.

And as for the economic war, the US GNP is a little larger than ISIL…

A-10 never operated alone. Always had other support. In it's role it shines. Without support and they can't do their job. Now, someday, an enemy is going to develop an aircraft or platform that outshines the A-10. That's when the A-100 will be developed. OR that Putin really will invade the hell out of the Arctic and their latest generation AD weapons will be put to the test. I am not sure an A-10 can survive a real foe.