A-10 to be retired.

USMCmech said:
the USMC sees CAS as their core mission while the AF sees it as one of many missions that they are tasked with.
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That's because both of those statements are true: the USAF doesn't just "see" CAS as one of many missions...it IS one of many missions. It isn't because the AF doesn't "care", or that there's some sort of conspiracy to ignore CAS because it isn't "sexy" or deemed important enough to demand attention -- it is that the AF is tasked with particular missions in the National Security Strategy that it MUST also dedicate resources to as core competencies.

If the USMC air wing were also responsible for all of the other existing combat and non-combat airpower missions outside of CAS, you would see time, effort, resources, and expertise dedicated to CAS similarly diluted.

It is popular barracks talk to criticize the USAF for not making CAS its #1 mission....but such a view ridiculously ignores the bigger strategic airpower picture.
 
USMCmech said:
I'm sure the Navy and AF would see this as a waste of time and resources
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The difference is that the Marine Corps is fundamentally an infantry-based service, so there the "every man a rifleman" mantra makes perfect sense. If there were a USAF analog to that mantra, it would require every officer to be trained as a pilot and every enlisted man to train as an aircrewman.
 
Hacker15e said:
It is popular barracks talk to criticize the USAF for not making CAS its #1 mission....but such a view ridiculously ignores the bigger strategic airpower picture.
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Another way to look at it is that given the need, the military is willing and able to throw everything at CAS - Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. That is not a trivial degree of flexibility.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
There's already a plan.

http://boeing.mediaroom.com/Boeing-to-Build-56-Additional-A-10-Wings-for-US-Air-Force
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Sure there is a plan -- it isn't like the USAF has been caught flat-footed, because they've known of this issue for over a decade and have been trying to keep the fleet flying despite increased operational requirements and shrinking budgets.

What we are seeing right now, during the year of sequestration, is the USAF making real-time decisions about what to keep and what not to keep based on real-world money in the budget.

That's the origin of this maybe-plan to ground the Hog.

It just seems as if the posters in this thread aren't aware of the issue, hence the appearance of some outrage about the decision amongst those posters.

When the money tap gets shut off, it is time to make tough decisions about weather to pay the rent, the note on the car, or the electric bill this month, because you can't pay them all.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
Another way to look at it is that given the need, the military is willing and able to throw everything at CAS - Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. That is not a trivial degree of flexibility.
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Completely agreed -- that is what has happened in the USAF over the last 10 years. Just as important, the focus will pivot to the next threat, too, when it emerges.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
Not really a maybe-plan, Boeing starting re-winging them last year and the first batch was completed with an order for 56 more. I guess you mean the plan to re-wing the entire fleet was maybe-ish.
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No, I'm referring to the maybe plan to ground the Hog entirely, which hasn't been decided on -- I was just describing that there is a back story on why the A-10 was picked for retirement, and that it had to do with airframe lifespan issues.

I'm perfectly aware that they have all ready bought some new wings and put some of them on.
 
Hacker15e said:
No, I'm referring to the maybe plan to ground the Hog entirely, which hasn't been decided on -- I was just describing that there is a back story on why the A-10 was picked for retirement, and that it had to do with airframe lifespan issues.

I'm perfectly aware that they have all ready bought some new wings and put some of them on.
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Sorry. I misread and didn't delete fast enough. I fear bifocals are in my future. Maybe I need a bigger smartphone.

I think there is a 50% chance the A-10 lives on to some extent.
 
Hacker15e said:
It isn't because the AF doesn't "care", or that there's some sort of conspiracy to ignore CAS because it isn't "sexy" or deemed important enough to demand attention .
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My concern is not the loss of the A-10 and it's 30mm cannon (which is serious overkill for 99.99% of CAS missions anyway), my concern is the loss of the units within the Air Force, whose pilots were specialized in CAS because that is what their aircraft was built for.

You said yourself that your squadrons had not trained much on that mission, and had to recruit experts to give you a crash course in CAS because no one seriously thought a mud hen would be doing strafing runs in the mountains of Afghanistan. When the coming budget cuts take full effect, will the F-35 units emphasize the CAS mission as much as the A-10 squadrons do currently? I doubt it.
 
USMCmech said:
my concern is the loss of the units within the Air Force, whose pilots were specialized in CAS because that is what their aircraft was built for.
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That's a valid and very legitimate concern, but I don't think it really describes the reality of what will probably happen as the Hog is eventually phased out.

As A-10 units are shut down, that DOC capability will be shifted to other units (likely Viper and Lightning squadrons). Those units will be responsible for competent execution of that mission, and they'll thus train to it as part of their core competencies. The experience is not simply going to vanish into thin air.

Let's also not cast rose petals and rainbows at A-10 units as exclusively CAS-only units. They also have additional missions besides CAS in their DOC statements that themselves are disciplines requiring effort and expertise to learn and remain competent; BAI, FAC-A, CSAR, and even basic competence in BFM and ACM (both air-to-air self protection missions). I have seen just as many circus acts in the CAS stack out of A-10s as I have from any other airframe.

Let's be real here: we've known for a long time that the A-10 was going to be retired quite soon. In 1999 (IIRC) the USAF released it's "Vision 2025", which said that by 2025 the only remaining "legacy" fighter was going to be the F-15E, with the rest of the tactical fleet comprised completely of Raptor and Lightning. My memory is a little weak on the exact date, but by my recollection the A-10 was going to be retired according to that plan before 2020. Today, we're over halfway between that prediction and the end date in 2025, and if it were not for sequestration and the overall budget situation, the Hog would still be going away in 5 or so more years.

USMCmech said:
You said yourself that your squadrons had not trained much on that mission,
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Realize that my statement about my first F-15E squadron was over 10 years ago, several years before 9/11. Today, I think you'll find that, across the AF there has never been a higher level of CAS experience and expertise at any time in USAF history. My bet is the vast majority of F-35 pilots will be coming from legacy airframes, and coming with real-world combat experience in those legacy airframes, with a very high degree of CAS focus.
 
Hacker15e said:
Let's also not cast rose petals and rainbows at A-10 units as exclusively CAS-only units.
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Speaking of rose petals and rainbows. Let's not draw too many conclusions from Iraq/Afghanistan/Bosnia. You don't have to introduce too many threats to expose the worst vulnerabilities of the A-10. Add large caliber AA and viable SAM threats to the battlefield and the A-10 doesn't get to fly around in low, slow circles. If ingress and egress corridors are contested, you lose sorties to fighter cover.
 
Hacker15e said:
Let's also not cast rose petals and rainbows at A-10 units as exclusively CAS-only units. They also have additional missions besides CAS in their DOC statements that themselves are disciplines requiring effort and expertise to learn and remain competent; BAI, FAC-A, CSAR, and even basic competence in BFM and ACM (both air-to-air self protection missions).
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The same is true for Marine jet squadrons, but the focus has always been ground oriented.

Today, I think you'll find that, across the AF there has never been a higher level of CAS experience and expertise at any time in USAF history. My bet is the vast majority of F-35 pilots will be coming from legacy airframes, and coming with real-world combat experience in those legacy airframes, with a very high degree of CAS focus.
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I have no doubt that this is true. My question is will it be true 20 years from now?
 
Autothrust Blue said:
This aircraft looks sort of appropriately mean, but it doesn't have the Big Gun.
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Not to stand in the way of the Embraer love-fest, but this one WAS built around a big gun, is insanely cheap, and was designed by Burt Rutan (who as far as I'm concerned can do no wrong). :D



That thing uses an offset single-engine to counter the recoil from the GAU-12/U 25 mm cannon (the same gun in the AC-130 by the way!).

Too bad those in charge passed up on it at the time (likely putting aesthetics ahead of versatility and economics). Not unlike why the A-1 and OV-10 will also probably never see the light of day again despite their capability.

Edit: I think that's Mike Melvill (Space Ship One pilot) doing the flying in that video.
 
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The problem with the Mud Fighter was that the rest of the systems were not at all thought out. Mainly, it had zero ability to carry other heavy ordnance, it had zero military avionics (basic things like a bombing or gunnery computer, but also more advanced things like a 1553 bus to those nonexistant heavy hardpoints), no threat detection systems, no self-protection systems, etc.

There was also significant question about in-field battle damage repair capability of the carbon-over-foam construction. Let's remember that one of the Hog's main selling points is its ability to soak up small arms and light AAA, keep flying, and be easily repairable afterward.

So...it isn't a case of "aesthetics before versatility". It is more a case of Rutan with a great idea that wasn't anywhere remotely close to being fleshed out enough to be a viable combat aircraft.
 
Hacker15e said:
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.
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Shack. In fact, one day just after landing and pulling into dearm, the #3 jet next to me.....I noticed the crew chief giving a very urgent shutdown signal to the pilot as the dearm crew approached the jet. Turns out, something had cracked within the wing structure, and #3s jet was losing JP-8 through it's underwing panels at a fairly rapid rate, a major spill underneath the jet. Turns out, wing cracks. This was prior to our wars in Iraq/Afghan, and the fleet has been severely worn out since then, as you explained.

@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.
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Correct, and that's what the HogUp mod was doing with regards to the wings, and why you see so many A-10 carcasses in the boneyard sitting there with no wings at all, awaiting scrapping. There was also a difference between the '75-'77 models, which were all retired post Desert Storm, and the '78-'82 models, which remained in service afterwards.

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.
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Agree on all counts.

On the Army debate, oddly enough, it was then-CSAF Gen Merrill McPeak who wanted to give the A-10s and the CAS mission to the Army, in trade for taking the Army's ATACMs Theatre Ballistic Missiles and those going to the AF, like the BGM-109 GLCM that the AF was then operating in Europe.

As fas as a new CAS aircraft, want my vote as a CAS guy through and through? Bring back the Piper PA-48 Enforcer.

Go to about the 9:30 point

 
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USMCmech said:
This is why the Marine Corps has always emphasized CAS as mission #1 from day one. With the pilots spending 6 months learning to be grunts before even attending flight school. I'm sure the Navy and AF would see this as a waste of time and resources, but in the eyes of the Marines it is absolutely critical to operating the air war as one with the ground war. The corporate mentality that we are all riflemen, who sometimes fly or fix airplanes, is vital to the effectiveness of Marine Aviation.

This axiom proved true again last year when the CO of VMA-211 lead a counter attack against the insurgents who breached the wire at Camp Bastion.
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Meh, depends on the community. TBS is a given for all Marine O's, but that is basic infantry bread and butter stuff, and not at all related to CAS, other than seeing on a show and tell day what CAS does for you and getting maybe a chance to say a 9-line. I went through the USMC Hornet RAG, and just like any other Hornet RAG, CAS was 3 flights out of an entire syllabus (not to mention that it was, doctrinally, completely different CAS than anything you do in the real world or ever after). Granted we had a lot more IP's with FAC/JTAC experience than the Navy side, but it wasn't a focus in any stretch of the imagination. I'm sure the Harrier and Marine helo guys spend more time on it in initial training because they don't do anything else, but we all definitely spend more time on it in the fleet.......and when we are talking about the fleet, it is a core skill for everyone, and we are also talking about a period of one's career that is not "day 1". I think Marines would like to think they prioritize it, but it isn't any more fundamental to Marine tacair than it is to the Navy or the AF......and that isn't to say that it isn't fundamental, but that it is critical to us all. I spent Sat night falling home drunk with some Brit JTACs after spending a night at the club talking CAS. That is because it is the most important thing I will do in my near future.
 
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