A-10 to be retired.
- Thread starter ozziecat35
- Start date
ozziecat35
4 out of 5 great lakes prefer Michigan.
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
It's hard to argue that Marine pilots don't benefit from TBS. That said, do you think a Navy pilot that went to VMFAT-101 would be handicapped in his ability to execute the CAS mission? An AF A-10 pilot knows more about CAS than a Marine EA-6B pilot. To accept your points without question suggests that we should also conclude that the Army is best prepared to provide their own CAS. Beyond that, what's the best way to improve AF CAS effectiveness, provide more CAS training or send AF pilots to TBS?
As far as Camp Bastion, I'm not sure what point you were trying to make in your mention of the Navy CO. But since you brought it up, maybe they need to improve their perimeter security curriculum at TBS.
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USMCmech
Well-Known Member
My point is not that AF or Navy pilots can not do CAS effectively (by all accounts, they do), but that the USMC sees CAS as their core mission while the AF sees it as one of many missions that they are tasked with.
The problem is not having multi role aircraft as much as trying to create multi role pilots. The time and training dollars spent on teaching CAS on top of ACM, strategic bombing, AAA suppression, ect, is another drain on the budget. Since the AF (collectively) does not see CAS as a priority, that training time will be one of the first things to be cut. As Hacker said in a previous post, the CAS mission was not a part of his training in the lean budgets of the 90s and they had to learn it on the fly.
The Marine EA-6Bs need to be given to the Navy. Electronic warfare is about as far from the Marine's core mission as you can get.
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
The USMC sees CAS as their core mission. Now, if we can just figure out what the USMC core mission should be.
I think we struggle to figure out what the next war will look like. I think it's a mistake to draw too many conclusions from Iraq and Afghanistan. Getting back to the subject of the thread. I think the A-10 has benefited from a bit of mythology as I'm not sure that everybody recognized how effective other aircraft were in the CAS role. I agree that the loss of the A-10 from the inventory is likely to result in a reduced CAS priority for the AF.
Firebird2XC
Well-Known Member
I've been on the receiving end of it- and yes, I have an opinion as a result.
Firebird2XC
Well-Known Member
This is probably the best summary of the issue at hand here, and appropriately from one of the subject matter experts. There probably isn't one specific set of capabilities that defines the best CAS aircraft, but the core issue remains that almost all fixed wing aircraft used for CAS were not really considering the mission at all when designed.
That means that as we retire one of the airframes that has been considerably effective in that realm regardless of original design, we can use lessons learned from the battlefield to better design and implement a weapons system that will truly serve the grunts on the ground.
You said yourself that despite being a mud-moving aircraft, the F-15E community believed that some missions would just 'never happen'.
It's funny, though- our best change to look forward to what the Air Force really needs in the future is still, as it has often been, a reactionary motion. I think an aircraft specifically designed to do CAS work (and not Army rotory wing wing) is just what our deploying troops need given the current and likely world state.
And these aircraft, as well as the primary responsibility for CAS for those troops, should be accomplished by the Army, in my opinion.
Firebird2XC
Well-Known Member
I'm all for it- it'd clear up a mess of complication on the two-way rifle range. A doctrinal change allowing the Army to operate fixed wings that put rounds on target for grunts would be *awesome*. The rotary wing component does an excellent job, but response time and vulnerability to ground fire leave a gaping hole in the air support capability of the Army.
Doctrine or not, I don't see why the Army would want to "farm out" direct support of its ground troops to anyone else. The Marines don't. By giving the Army A-10s or whatever, this doesn't mean that the AF doesn't/won't ever provide CAS, it just won't be their primary mission. They still can, as needed, just as they would for Marines if AF jets are all that happens to be available; its just that the AF won't have to focus on that mission and/or put a ton of $$$ towards it; money that can go towards other core missions like air superiority, space, strategic/tactical airlift, nuclear missions, etc.
Same with the C-27: absolutely NO reason the AF should've taken that plane away from the Army. If the Army wants to do their own unscheduled intra-theatre airlift.....that is, airlift that doesn't follow the standard C-130 rotation around theatre......then why shouldnt they be able to? Why waste a C-130 with small package cargo or such, when it can be utilized for something more lucrative or larger, while still retaining the tactical airlift mission? With the C-27, it's not like the Army would be trying to steal the tactical airlift mission from the AF, they'd only be supplementing it by not wasting sorties on C-130s, that can be done with smaller aircraft and not burden the AF, who can concentrate on bigger fish, so to speak.
Firebird2XC
Well-Known Member
I agree wholeheartedly on all of the above. I think it's just a matter of the Air Force's initial separation from the Army and all the dogma that came of that. "YOU'RE ground, YOU'RE air," etc, ad nauseam... There's no reason why the Army couldn't maintain a few CAS Brigades. They'd have candidates around the block to staff it.
AF has always had an identity crisis, and a problem with "not wanting the toy, but no one else can have it either". With certain missions: ICBM nuclear, air superiority, strategic heavy bombing, deep strike interdiction, strategic/tactical airlift....those missions ARE the AF's bread and butter, and something that no one can take away because no one else can really do it; anymore than the AF can get a submarine of their own, or can get a Brigade of M-1 tanks. CAS is the only one that someone else can do, and that someone is the customer that they're outsourcing it for anyway. If I were the AF, I would WANT $$$ going to the core missions that I, myself, are the only one who can do, like the ones I mention above. I wouldn't want or put a ton of $$$ towards a mission that doesn't really serve me anything, that I don't get anything out of (and rightfully so, in my opinion). Another reason the AF should gladly give the primary responsibility for CAS to the Army, with the understanding that we will be there to help out whenever we can, as needed.
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
It's hard to find somebody that disagrees....until you get to Washington.
Cazadores
Well-Known Member
I think he just miss typed, it was VMA 211, Marine Harriers, Marine Lt. Col. as CO.
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esa17
Well-Known Member
Sooooo not true on both fronts.
Retiring the A-10 is a effing stupid move, the guys I work for love the Hog. It completes its mission better than any other aircraft in the inventory, aside from the citations that ferry the brass around.
The problem with designing an aircraft to do everything well is that it will do nothing great. Our guys on the ground deserve better than that.
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
Oh, senior moment. There's a VFA-211, too.
If I recall news accounts, he went after the enemy with a sidearm.
Follow the money.
Minuteman
Moⅾerator
"Narco-rocketo"
n57flyguy
Well-Known Member
Question: When are enlisted NCOs brought up through to be a JTAC? Is it more if they want to or are chosen to? I assume they would still be attach to their previous battalion or unit...
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
You guys have to understand that there is a much bigger underlying issue here: the A-10 fleet is full of old airframes, most of which have all ready overflown their design life and have been used incredibly hard in the last 10 years of "constant combat". They are just plain worn out; the fleet has had major maintenance problems for well over 5 or 6 years. They've been experiencing serious structural cracks/failures in the wings since the early '00s.
@MikeD can probably explain the technical differences better, but there are two different construction blocks of A-10 wings -- colloquially they're called "thick skin" and "thin skin" wings. The "thin skin" wings are the ones that were showing serious problems with cracks since the late 90s, so back circa 2003 the AF went through a process of making sure that all the currently-flying Hogs were equipped with the thick skin wings. This included by-serial-number research of the locations of all the thick skin wings, pulling the wings off the grounded airframes in the D-M boneyard, and swapping the wings on to currently-serving airframes with thin skin wings.
Even at that time, this wing swapout was only considered a short-term solution. If the A-10 is to continue flying long term, there is going to have to be a major program to build new wings for the Hog, which -- because Fairchild is no longer in business, and the tooling to build the wings has long since been recycled into pop cans and pots -- would be a significant investment of time and money. Money that the USAF and DoD simply don't have to put in to a 40-year-old airframe. Despite the money put into the A-10C cockpit upgrades, the airframe overall has been limping along on bandaids and dental floss, and is getting to be a bigger problem every year -- it is pretty much the same reason that the F-14 fleet was parked, and the F-4 and F-111 fleet before that.
We're not talking about parking perfectly new, functional airframes. We are talking about parking aircraft that have all ready significantly outflown their design airframe structural life.