A-10 to be retired.
- Thread starter ozziecat35
- Start date
Murdoughnut
Well sized member
Does that mean I can buy one on the civilian market now? C'mon NRA, I want that cannon!
ozziecat35
4 out of 5 great lakes prefer Michigan.
And crashing more than the A-10 too...
NewYorkophile
Fly Casual
I think you've got your aeroplanes confoosed.
The B-1 has dropped a metric f-ton of ordinance over Afghanistan.
ClarkGriswold
Non Nutritive Cereal Varnish Engineer
Funny you say that, just read an article about the B-1 on CNN. I guess they have been trying to see if they can use it to drop bombs on somali pirates. For some reason my electronic device is not letting me copy and paste the link...
queeno
Ward of the Guberment
just a load of USAF General BS talk,i guess our NEW Airfarce is incapable air supremacy! bet you any money the Army trys to get there hands on them. some times a single mission airframe isnt a bad thing. this kind of hits home, i was at Bentwaters for the begining of the A-10s in USAFE and then followed them to DM.oh and iam sure that the F-35 or what ever they call that thing will do just fine........NOT!!!!!!!!
Autothrust Blue
“If you jump on my shift, that’s just rude, man.”
Multimission ones are expensive, heavy boondoggles. (F-111)
The Airplane Rule comes to mind - "Perfection is achieved when there's nothing left to delete, not when there's nothing left to add."
block30
Well-Known Member
Not true, I've seen them at base X loaded and flying combat missions. I think they even do CAS, which is hard to believe. I suppose with guided munitions it doesn't matter as much what the delivery airframe is.
Autothrust Blue
“If you jump on my shift, that’s just rude, man.”
That sounds...imposing and impressive simultaneously, although probably not as frightening as an A-10 coming straight at you.
block30
Well-Known Member
So they are gonna park the A-10 because it is "single mission."? I for one, am not enamored with "jack of of all trades, master of none" paradigm across the entire fleet of aircraft. Are we going to have KC-10/135s with radomes ala AWACs? Every C-130 will be converted to an AC-130? That last one would be pretty bad ass, actually...
block30
Well-Known Member
I think the Bone is good at SOFs- show of force. Very loud, very fast, and can even make sonic booms. I've read an article or so about the troops in contact liking the sonic boom, as it keeps the bad guys' heads down.
rframe
pǝʇɹǝʌuı
What is going to replace the A-10 then? I dont know much about military aviation, but wasn't the whole "modern warfare: small guerrilla-like units in caves" one of the main reasons the A-10 was such a big asset? Wasnt there talk about ramping up the Bronco again because of this need? Or is it just another case of wanting to replace a proven design with one that will take 20 years of failed promises/development and eleventy trajillion dollars in contractor fees?
hook_dupin
Well-Known Member
The challenge the AF has is that our logistical support tails for each airframe is massive. If we really want to save money, we have to cut types and not just numbers of aircraft. I wish we had the resources to be globally dominating in every single area of air power. The reality is that we have to pick and chose now. I'm not sure I value a platform that is designed for anti-armor and has minimal survivability in a modern conflct. Doesn't mean the A-10 isn't bad-ass... it is. So were the P-47 and the A-1. I just don't think we need an all-CAS platform the way that we did in 1985 or 1991.
Also, the Marine Corps is equiping their KC-130s with small guided munitions....
block30
Well-Known Member
I knew that the AC-130's were getting guided munitions, but didn't know that the KC-130s were. I also thought the AF was pursuing the Super Tucano, and now according to Avweb, some jet made by Textron/Cessna for CAS. ???
Congress needs to change the doctrinal restrictions that preclude the Army from flying armed fixed-wing aircraft, send the A-10s to the Army, and the AF can wash it's hands of the CAS mission as a core mission. The Army can be like the Marines and do their own, with the AF supporting them with other aircraft as-needed and situationally. But the Army being primary responsible for their own CAS. That way, the AF can focus on air superiority, interdiction, strategic bombing/strike, space, airlift (strategic and tactical, but not all tactical), and other roles.
But alas, as much as the AF pays lip service to CAS, they don't really care for it that much, and worse, they don't want to lose the money that comes along with that mission. It's the worst case of "we don't want this toy, but it's our toy and therefore no one else can have it or play with it". Same thing the AF did with the C-27, which the Army could've and should've been operating to do their own intra-theatre light airlift, but the AF took the program, then just decided they don't want it anymore and are sending 2 year old airframes to the boneyard.
Those light attack planes are for Foreign Military Sales.
It's not the retardant and the engines, necessarily, it's a CG issue. In the design of the A-10, the rear mounted engines are offset by the entire 30mm gun system which takes up nearly the forward half of the airplane. One of the reasons the A-10 retains it's emptied shell casings when it fires its gun (they rotate to the back of the ammo drum) is for CG purposes. In fact, when flying with a lite ammo load or empty, if you look into the nose landing gear bay, you'll see metal plates bolted to the side of the gear well, also for CG purposes. In a Firehog, the entire gun system would have to be removed, then a retardant tank installed on the middle-underside of the aircraft (replacing station racks 5/6/7). This tank would already be aft of where the normal CG is with the gun installed, and when you drop that load......lets assume for sake of argument 1000 gals at 10lbs/gal......that's 10,000 lbs of weight difference with a resultant aft-CG shift that would have to be accounted for. There's not enough ballast ability in the nose area to do that...even with a major rework, and that wouldn't be cost effective.