"A-10s To Be Deployed To The South China Sea" Topic

"The U.S. Air Force's venerable A-10 Warthog has been a lot of things. A Cold-War Soviet tank-killer. A slow-flying escort for rescue helicopters. A heavily-armed counter-insurgency plane. Even a specialized hunter of rotorcraft.

Now add "maritime patrol plane" to the twin-engine attacker's resume. That's because the Pentagon has sent four A-10s and their crews and maintainers to fly sea patrols west of The Philippines, in a mineral-rich region of the South China Seas that Manila and Beijing both claim.

The four Warthogs from the 51st Fighter Wing, home-based in South Korea, were actually part of a larger contingent of U.S. warplanes that visited The Philippines for the 2016 edition of the Balikatan war game. When the exercise ended on April 15, most of the Americans and their planes departed. But four A-10s and two HH-60G rescue copters remained behind at Clark Air Base…"

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Go Warthog… Go!!

Amicalement
Armand

It doesn't seem to be a job suited to the A10.

Would love to see footage of what an A-10 can do to a ship or small fleet of fast patrol boats!

A-10's loose their best attributes if working at sea, slow and always visible isn't the way to go.

Actually, given the close proximity to the Philippines, and the effectiveness of the hogs, seems like a great matchup to me.

Those GAUs, Hellfires, and other weaponry it can carry will be able to neutralize most naval vessels rather effectively, especially escort-sized ones.

I'll bet any J-10s getting frisky might end up being Swiss Cheese too.

J-11s could be a concern.

Nothing more than a publicity stunt.

Low & slow fliers over the ocean with no terrain to take advantage of make them great targets.

Chinese frigates with SAMs would make short work of them.

I think F-18s and F-16s or F-15s would be better suited.

Actually the US used lots of A-20 and A-26 attack planes in the Pacific. They were great at tearing up merchant ships and smaller naval vessels.

That was another time.

Even small craft can carry SAMs and MANPADS nowadays.

They aren't supposed to fight – just show the flag.

I suspect infrastructure for more modern aircraft is not up to speed yet.

Good point, but Clark Air Base is a modern airport.

An important asset of A-10s is the long loiter time at low speeds. Ideal for saying look we are watching you. A bit like a cop on the beat versus one in a cruiser.

Ergo – not as dumb as it might look to use A-10s.

Agree with Skarper: I think this is more about loiter time than anything else, but there are islands for the Hogs to hide behind in case of a shooting match.

Be interesting to see what that 30mm gun will do to a modern warship.

I think there are 3 main factors in the choice of the A-10.

1 loiter time

2 ease of identification – no-one in the region operates anything remotely similar

3 availability – they have A-10s and very little for them to do these days. The USAF – be they right or wrong – does not and has never liked the A-10. Airforces hate close support operations. Not glamourous, not safe, not 'strategic'.

They could be also used against the radical islamists in the south, who just beheaded a Canadian.

That 30mm gun will knock out all the radar and FC systems topside, pretty quickly, I suspect, not to mention making the crew areas and hull look like Swiss Cheese. They are very thin in modern vessels.

Could be but IMO won't be. US involvement only seems to make things worse. This has been a lesson that took too long to learn but has finally started to sink in.

These radicals are a nuisance but not a threat the Philippine army can't contain.

The problem with the 30mm gun is that it is a short range LOS weapon. You have to overfly the target to engage [or nearly]. Even shoulder launched SAMs pose a threat to the venerable Warthog.

They are not deployed to fight – I wonder even if they are armed when on missions.

But it does provide a presence that is clearly US and there is little risk of them getting shot at by trigger happy Chinese coastguard captains.

@Skarper: Not that vulnerable, based on Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Seen lots of photos of A10s with holes all over the tailcone, rudders, and elevators that flew home just fine.

I understand that the pilots may have needed a change of flight suit when they saw the damage, however.

An A-10 against a real warship? That would be one splashed A-10. You do realize that anything over a patrol boat carries an AA outfit designed to engage supersonic, wave riding ASMs? An A-10 would never get close enough to drop its Hellfires, much use its gun. Using an A-10 as a maritime strike role is the absolute WORSE thing to do.

Its just showing the flag and nothing else.

Again, the A10 is designed to keep flying while damaged and put warheads on foreheads.

The 30mm Avenger gun outranges 20mm and 23mm by 100%, and has more retained velocity/KE at max 20/23mm range than they do at the muzzle.

AGM65s work pretty well as antiship missiles, though they have a small warhead. Most likely antiship weapon is going to be a nice large bomb, probably laser-guided.

Remember everyone complaining that fighters can't serve the role of a dedicated ground support/ AT plane?

Also works in the other direction.

A-10 isn't meant to be a anti-ship weapon. That's for the high flyers.

Granted, though it's not a total waste as long as nobody shows up with any real warship bigger than a FAC or maybe an FFG. (I'd put odds of an A10 being able to take an FFG7 as originally equipped).

Fly an A10 past a coast guard ship or anything else without much AA coverage and you're going to get people's attention.

Granted, though it's not a total waste as long as nobody shows up with any real warship bigger than a FAC or maybe an FFG. (I'd put odds of an A10 being able to take an FFG7 as originally equipped).

Yes, it is a total waste. Especially after the frigate tosses a SAM at the A-10 at long range.