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Re: Best Fighting Plane on the Planet [triathlung] [ In reply to ]
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triathlung wrote:
This should be an interesting comparison. The F35 purchase has come completely off the rails in Canada with the government trying to justify buying new super hornets instead of the F35. It would be cool if they bought a bunch of A10's, but we still need fighters with long legs to protect our northern coast etc.


I've seen that A10 cannon up close and it's a scary bit of business.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...jets-really-gun.html

Australia has also ordered a heap of F35s and yet many were also think another generation of Super Hornets supplemented by a better CAS aircraft like the A10 would have given us decades of service without the incredible price tag of the F35.
But yes, we all know that F35 will be a better system, but did someone mention the price tag.....
and of course, the F35 purchase has many political machinations at the higher levels.
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Re: Best Fighting Plane on the Planet [gregtryin] [ In reply to ]
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gregtryin wrote:
spot wrote:
gregtryin wrote:
Agree with most of what you say. The F-35 is going to be a great airplane....for $120 million a copy. An A-10 costs about $20 million if my memory serves. And, the F-35 is not even close to having the CAS capability of an A-10. The A-10 was built solely for that purpose and it excels at taking out bad guys on the ground ESPECIALLY if they are in a tank. If I was a bad guy in a tank and A-10's were overhead, I am out of the top hatch right now. Your lifespan as a tank crew member would be measured in minutes. The alternatives? Try using a JDAM on a moving tank, or mobile troops. Sometimes, there isn't any substitute for a good guy with a gun.

Love the F-22 Raptor and it is definitely THE air superiority fighter of the day. But, for CAS, just seems like hyper-expensive overkill. BTW, I met the Colonel that headed up the F-22 Training Squadron at Oshkosh a couple of years ago when they brought the F-35 to the show for it's first public showing. The Air Force transferred him from the F-22 squadron to the F-35 Training squadron. How lucky can one guy get?

Greg


So, I know lots of folks like to bash the F-35 and it's supposed inability to conduct CAS, but everybody needs to remember that in addition the A-10, the F-16 and the F-15E (and the B-1 and the B-52) have been doing CAS for a long time now, and the F-35 is essentially a very survivable F-16 in terms of size and weapons load out, so no reason why it wouldn't be at least as effective as the F-16 when it comes to CAS. Yes, the A-10 has some capabilities that are truly awesome and not to be found in any other jet. On the other hand, the A-10 has limited survivability on a modern battlefield with modern air defense systems as compared to an F-35.

As for killing a moving tank, yes the GAU-8 excels at that, but so does an AGM-65 Maverick missile, which can be carried by any tactical jet. A B-1 with CBU-105 Wind correct munitions dispensers could also lay waste to many, many moving tanks with one pass. Lots of capabilities to kill moving tanks...SDB II will also have that capability.

Good points, but it's the cost of the F-35 that makes it a tough sell for that mission in my mind. And, I suspect one CBU-105 costs as much as an A-10...;-P I have no idea what they actually cost, guessing here. As complex as it is, I suspect it is not a cheap weapon.

For the record, I don't like to bash any military hardware, I love all of 'em, including the Maverick missile. Yep, those will work on a tank, for sure. All that said, whenever I have seen F-16s deployed, they were using bombs and not guns. Maybe it's because the A-10s were standing by for gun runs and there was no need for the F-16s.

Greg

Both the F-16 and the F-15E have done 20mm strafing runs for CAS in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously not as effective has HEI rounds from the 30mm GAU-8, but still pretty damn effective when the bad guys are too close for bombs.

___________________________________________________
Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.
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Re: Best Fighting Plane on the Planet [getcereal] [ In reply to ]
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Yes! That ammois ridiculous! Thanks.

getcereal wrote:
littlefoot wrote:
My buddy's dad flew one out of willow grove base and he also brought home an empty bullet they shot. It was huge. I think the bullet was more than 12 inches from base to tip. It was awesome seeing that as a kid.

Unfortunately he died in a plane crash when I was in college. He was a great guy.

There have been reports of issues with the A10 for years. Loved that plane.


  • 30 mm cannon

http://rebrn.com/...-it-fires-at-755913/

Nothing ugly about this:


Sorry to hear about your buddy!
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Re: Best Fighting Plane on the Planet [spot] [ In reply to ]
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My 2-cents (and FWIW, I flew ~4000 hours between F-4's, A-10's, and F-111's).

You can do CAS with an F-16, F-15E, AC-130, B-1, and B-52. When the F-35 gets up to speed, you could do CAS with them.

The best thing about the A-10 and CAS, that was the only mission we trained to do (with maybe a little bit of SAR escort). We weren't training to shoot down MIG's, bomb bridges in downtown Baghdad, or fly nuke strike missions. The pilots are good at doing CAS.

A big advantage when comparing A-10's to F-16's (and probably to F-35's) was the ability of an A-10 to loiter. We had quite a bit of gas and we could orbit for a long time waiting for something to happen compared to the "fighters".

While bombers have even more loiter time than an A-10, it's tough to employ JDAM's if the bad guys are moving around, especially if the bad guys are close to the friendlies.

In our current "wars", the bad guys don't have much in the way of air defense. A-10's and AC-130's are perfectly survivable. That could change, but if there are lots of sophisticated SAM's, MIG's, and radar directed AAA batteries around we're probably not doing much CAS anyway.

One last thing. In the A-10, we could fly low level in some pretty marginal weather. If you're just puking off JDAM's, you can fly around at high altitude in any weather. But when the ground pounders need the pilot to put "eyes on target", you have to be below the clouds. It was sure easier flying around low level in crappy weather in a 250-300 knot A-10 than it was in a 420-540 knot F-4/F-111. You sure aren't going to take an AC-130/B-1/B-52 and go around hand flying looking for bad guys with low ceilings and low visibility.

The USAF doesn't have all the money they want for everything, and the powers that be in the USAF would sure rather have F-35's than A-10's. The A-10's are old and CAS isn't viewed as the sexiest mission the USAF does. If the USAF had their way, the A-10's would all be in the boneyard by now. Thanks, Congress!

"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.
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Re: Best Fighting Plane on the Planet [Alvin Tostig] [ In reply to ]
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Alvin Tostig wrote:
My 2-cents (and FWIW, I flew ~4000 hours between F-4's, A-10's, and F-111's).

You can do CAS with an F-16, F-15E, AC-130, B-1, and B-52. When the F-35 gets up to speed, you could do CAS with them.

The best thing about the A-10 and CAS, that was the only mission we trained to do (with maybe a little bit of SAR escort). We weren't training to shoot down MIG's, bomb bridges in downtown Baghdad, or fly nuke strike missions. The pilots are good at doing CAS.

A big advantage when comparing A-10's to F-16's (and probably to F-35's) was the ability of an A-10 to loiter. We had quite a bit of gas and we could orbit for a long time waiting for something to happen compared to the "fighters".

While bombers have even more loiter time than an A-10, it's tough to employ JDAM's if the bad guys are moving around, especially if the bad guys are close to the friendlies.

In our current "wars", the bad guys don't have much in the way of air defense. A-10's and AC-130's are perfectly survivable. That could change, but if there are lots of sophisticated SAM's, MIG's, and radar directed AAA batteries around we're probably not doing much CAS anyway.

One last thing. In the A-10, we could fly low level in some pretty marginal weather. If you're just puking off JDAM's, you can fly around at high altitude in any weather. But when the ground pounders need the pilot to put "eyes on target", you have to be below the clouds. It was sure easier flying around low level in crappy weather in a 250-300 knot A-10 than it was in a 420-540 knot F-4/F-111. You sure aren't going to take an AC-130/B-1/B-52 and go around hand flying looking for bad guys with low ceilings and low visibility.

The USAF doesn't have all the money they want for everything, and the powers that be in the USAF would sure rather have F-35's than A-10's. The A-10's are old and CAS isn't viewed as the sexiest mission the USAF does. If the USAF had their way, the A-10's would all be in the boneyard by now. Thanks, Congress!

Don't disagree with a single thing in your post. My only point is that it seems like folks assume A-10s are the only planes that can do CAS, and are the only ones doing it now.

___________________________________________________
Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.
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Re: Best Fighting Plane on the Planet [Alvin Tostig] [ In reply to ]
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Alvin Tostig wrote:
My 2-cents (and FWIW, I flew ~4000 hours between F-4's, A-10's, and F-111's).

You can do CAS with an F-16, F-15E, AC-130, B-1, and B-52. When the F-35 gets up to speed, you could do CAS with them.

The best thing about the A-10 and CAS, that was the only mission we trained to do (with maybe a little bit of SAR escort). We weren't training to shoot down MIG's, bomb bridges in downtown Baghdad, or fly nuke strike missions. The pilots are good at doing CAS.

A big advantage when comparing A-10's to F-16's (and probably to F-35's) was the ability of an A-10 to loiter. We had quite a bit of gas and we could orbit for a long time waiting for something to happen compared to the "fighters".

While bombers have even more loiter time than an A-10, it's tough to employ JDAM's if the bad guys are moving around, especially if the bad guys are close to the friendlies.

In our current "wars", the bad guys don't have much in the way of air defense. A-10's and AC-130's are perfectly survivable. That could change, but if there are lots of sophisticated SAM's, MIG's, and radar directed AAA batteries around we're probably not doing much CAS anyway.

One last thing. In the A-10, we could fly low level in some pretty marginal weather. If you're just puking off JDAM's, you can fly around at high altitude in any weather. But when the ground pounders need the pilot to put "eyes on target", you have to be below the clouds. It was sure easier flying around low level in crappy weather in a 250-300 knot A-10 than it was in a 420-540 knot F-4/F-111. You sure aren't going to take an AC-130/B-1/B-52 and go around hand flying looking for bad guys with low ceilings and low visibility.

The USAF doesn't have all the money they want for everything, and the powers that be in the USAF would sure rather have F-35's than A-10's. The A-10's are old and CAS isn't viewed as the sexiest mission the USAF does. If the USAF had their way, the A-10's would all be in the boneyard by now. Thanks, Congress!


Shack, (3100 hrs between A-10 and MQ-1)
Last edited by: stodr: Dec 7, 16 14:56
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Re: Best Fighting Plane on the Planet [racin_rusty] [ In reply to ]
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I imagine if the US had A10s during the Vietnam War. Just saying.
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