There was a fantastic article and analysis I read some weeks ago that addressed this issue, and I'm trying desperately to find it. However, I remember the key points, and I'll surmise them here:
- The A-10's survivability is overrated. The Air Force conducted studies after both Gulf Wars and found that the A-10 was taking higher damage per sortie when compared in '91 to '03. That Iraq's air defense was in shambles didn't seem to diminish the fact that the A-10 was becoming more vulnerable to more sophisticated weapons. Technology has made cheaper weapons more effective since the 1970s in which this was designed. In a higher threat environment, the lack of sophisticated sensors, threat identification, and ECM is seen as not boding well.
- The A-29 is a fantastic plane. But it's giving the A-10 a run for it's money, not the F-35. In the low-threat COIN environment, it has all of the benefits of the A-10 with none of the drawbacks. That famous cannon isn't always idea against militants in the mountains when you're worried about spraying your own troops. That the A-19 can carry small guided weapons just like the A-10 gives it capabilities where it counts. And it's half to a third of the price to purchase and maintain.
So the A-10 is getting squashed from two sides: The F-35 can penetrate the high-threat environment, and provide CAS in a lethal SAM environment, while the A-29 can provide CAS/COIN against militants in a low to non-existent threat environment. There is no middle ground. It left when air defense systems gained the sophisticated tracking and accuracy that wasn't there in the 1970s and 80s.
The A-10 was a fantastic plane and well designed for the time in which it was envisioned to fight. But even I agree that it's time has passed. Like the F-14, it's sad to see it go, but I think it's the right call.
"The Air Force’s F-35A version of the aircraft and hold 182 rounds. It’s slated to be externally mounted on the Marine Corps’ F-35B jump-jet variant and the Navy’s F-35C aircraft carrier version and hold 220 rounds"[1]
The F-35 has no hope of doing sustained CAS. It is another Air Force "drop your bombs and fire a few shots then run home" plane. An A-10 can keep insurgents away from your troops for a fair amount of time.
They should strip the Air Force of its CAS role and hand it back to the Army. Then the Air Force can concentrate on what it likes: strategic bombing and air dominance.
War Is Boring have been running a series of articles over the past year or so about the effectiveness of the A-10 for CAS, and about how the F-35 is a "jack of all trades master of none" compromise that is also terrible at CAS.
They paint a compelling picture that the Air Force is stumping to ditch CAS as "unsexy" so they spin as hard as they can against the A-10.
Who cares about A-29 vs A-10? Both got shitcanned.
I agree the article's title sucks. The point is that military political dysfunction managed to get rid of all ground support airplanes while mumbling "F-35" when anybody asked about ground support.
I find it funny that anyone believes F35 will be able to survive even in a range of a moderate quality SAM without massive support - it might be stealthy enough at this moment from the front, but it's rear is one huge bullseye for radar/ir
The article is surprisingly factual for an F-35 criticism.
The A-29 is a very capable aircraft in the CAS/COIN role, and has the advantage that its relatively cheap. The A-29 can't take battle damage like an A-10, although A-29 has the major advantage in that its cheap to purchase (less than $20m for the Program Unit Cost) and cheap to fly.
Two of the best CAS aircraft are the A-1 Skyraider and the A-37 Dragonfly. The propeller driven A-1 "Spads" were used to support the rescue of downed aviators over Vietnam. The A-37B (based on the T-37 Tweet) was flown by both USAF and South Vietnamese Air Force pilots quite effectively. These aircraft were cheap to operate, and accurate at weapons delivery.
I'd even go as far as saying the USAF should seriously consider "replacing" the A-37 as the "low" part of the high-low mix with the F-35. Keep the same size and side-by-side layout, and use avionics and "stealth" features of the MQ-9C Avenger [2]. This would enable piloted CAS missions, where drones are impractical.
>So the A-10 is getting squashed from two sides: The F-35 can penetrate the high-threat environment, and provide CAS in a lethal SAM environment, while the A-29 can provide CAS/COIN against militants in a low to non-existent threat environment. There is no middle ground.
Oh, but there is. The A-10 was primarily designed as a tankbuster. While the A-29 is fine for the CAS role against irregulars, in a war against a country with lots of armor you'd really want to have the A-10.
There's something similar in the world of jet aircraft too. The Textron AirLand Scorpion, built from off the shelf parts, designed to take a whole bunch of ordinary weapons systems, went from design to flying at air shows inside 3 years, without massive costs. It's a subsonic, twin jet plane with a stall speed around 100 knots, which costs ~$20m.
It's not remotely clever compared to the Eurofighter, Sukhoi Su-XX jets or similar recent generation multi-role aircraft, but for low speed engagement with flexible hardpoints and easy maintenance, it's hard to find many competitors. Which is weird, given the nature of most aerial combat roles for the past 15 years.
I thought of these fighters as well. Governments don't buy these because they don't want a 9/10 fighter. They'd rather buy a decades old 10/10 fighter even though they'll never need (and probably can't pay for) that extra 1/10.
> but had the plane been flying as low and slow as older generations of attack planes did, the crew might’ve realized their error simply by looking down at the ground.
There are a lot of WW2 incidents of friendly fire casualties from ground attack aircraft, both from aircraft attacking their own guys to aircraft being downed from anti-aircraft fire from their own side. This happened to all sides in WW2.
Also WWII had 4 major theaters, probably 100 000 000 troops mobilized or deployed, and production lines for armor and planes that would make Henry Ford gawk. The scale guaranteed that the friendly fire will occur often.
"A crew operating a high-tech fighter plane made a terrible mistake" -> "Had the crew been close enough to the ground to see their enemies, the mistake may have been avoided" -> "A-10's require pilots to be close to their enemies" -> "A-10's and planes that rely on dated technology are superior to those that utilize the latest and greatest weaponry."
This argument is useless without determining how many incidents like the example described at the beginning of the article occur, whether they could be avoided with an older plane, and whether the cost of the mistakes made by the newer planes outweighs the advantages they provide.
Afghans eventually withered down close Soviet air support. Soviet strategy seemed to be winning with new air and infantry tactics. Until they started losing hundreds of aircraft. If I remember correctly it was mostly heavy guns and not US Stingers that did the trick.
The enemy is well aware that all they have to do is win an endurance war against an inflexible bureaucracy that bleeds money and outlast the patience of a fickle populace. This was demonstrated recently enough in Vietnam. US strategy was losing, even though they won almost every fight in both wars.
It would take a lot more than this one cheap fighter to outlast the Afghans. At least body count was better this time.
A different plane would not have helped winning Afghanistan. suffering might have been even longer. The expectation to win there is an illusion.
Looking for technological solutions - low or high tech - is just more of the same misguided thinking. The case is lost in a totally different way - it's not technology.
"The Hornet’s cost per flight hour? $25,000 to $30,000, according to official Navy figures. It’s estimated the F-35 costs anywhere between $31,900 to $38,400 per hour to fly."
So the F-35's lower hourly rate is almost the same as the Hornet's upper rate? Doesn't seem like that much of a deal.
The Hornet is an actual Jet and therefore those costs are real. The F-35 estimates are the most conservative that are legally defensible but will almost certainly much greater than that once actually in service.
Its important to note the air force number is something like unit budget divided by number of hours flown divided by number of planes, so its fairly realistic, but the specifically named manufacturer provided cost estimate is something like gas and oil and scheduled maint assuming nothing ever breaks and there's no enemy action and things wear out according to the blueprints.
Also it costs the same to feed a pilot of any aircraft, ditto ATC and commo guys and all the rear echelon folks, although none of those costs were included in the mfgrs estimate.
No matter how badly the numbers are fudged its probably still one order of magnitude cheaper, perhaps a little more.
The numbers I can find for operating JAS Gripen is roughly $4700, so there are some modern planes that are only one magnitude cheaper. However, many tend to not prioritize operating costs very high.
What I got from reading this article is the impression that it makes absolutely no sense to use the F-35 for close-air support. It is inferior in performance and far more expensive to operate than the A-29 for CAS missions. Here in Canada, politicians are dithering and dickering over whether or not to buy the F-35 now that it's looking less impressive and the weak Canadian dollar has made it far more expensive. For some inexplicable reason, the prevalent idea is that the RCAF should own and operate just one model of fighter. This idea needs to change.
The reality is that Canadian planes have not engaged in air-to-air combat since the Korean war, but virtually every conflict the CF participates in requires close-air support. That mission is currently fulfilled by CF-18's. The A-29, or a similar plane, could provide superior CAS capability for far less money. Then, as an added bonus, the successor to the CF-18 would not need to be compromised for CAS, as the F-35 is. Canada could look for a pure air-superiority fighter, and buy a smaller number of them because they would not be called upon to perform CAS. The end result would be an air force that's better at it's primary roles and far cheaper, and Canadian forces (and their allies) on the ground would be far safer.
The blue on blue in Afghanistan mentioned in the first para was caused by the GPS resetting its self (to the current location) when the batteries where changed.
Which is why the SF team unfortunately called the strike on them selves - this happened a couple of times I belive.
My biggest concern about F-35's is how quickly they can be made in wartime situations. They have so many sophisticated instruments... can they really be mass produced? In WW2, Germany had the best tanks, but the Soviets and the Americans overwhelmed them with numbers. You can say that WW2 is an old war, but if you're wrong do we really have a reliable plane that we can mass produce anymore?
In modern, high-intensity warfare, you fight with what you have. The days of producing a Liberty ship a day are way past our industrial capability, and the technology in the F-35 and fighters of its caliber limit the ability to mass produce in anything close to WW2 quantities.
that germany had the best tanks is a bit inaccurate. The t-34 was better than almost everything else out there when it came out. easily outclassing common german tanks. the improved models could compete with the tiger and panthers (though there were few of these)
though the big issues with the tiger and panther was the horrible maintenance issues.
A terrible article entirely predicated on anecdotal evidence. I have no doubt that most of the 'technologically advanced' equipment Americans put into and will put into wars will ultimately fail to live up to expectations.
But let's give another anecdote about the A10. In Iraq, the A10, just like the B52 in Afghanistan, was responsible for killing two truck loads of British soldiers. Its pilot mistook the luminous arrow signs that indicated friendly forces for missile systems.
In Afghanistan, an American Apache mowed down a platoon of British troops after being called in as air support and mistaking the troops for the enemy.
The thing that links all these incidences is not low or high tech but the American military. Clearly its pilots, soldiers, staff are not trained properly. Just a bunch of reckless idiots. Much like the government that sent them.
> Clearly its pilots, soldiers, staff are not trained properly. Just a bunch of reckless idiots. Much like the government that sent them.
And this is not "entirely predicated on anecdotal evidence"? You've described two incidents, and extrapolated from there to call an entire military (in this case, more than 2 million people) improperly trained "reckless idiots."
The incidents are serious. But without any attempt to qualify the rate of these accidents relative to the number of engagements, or a comparison to other militaries in other conflicts around the world, it sounds like you're just riding an axe.
> * The thing that links all these incidences is not low or high tech but the American military. Clearly its pilots, soldiers, staff are not trained properly.
No, the thing that links them all is war - it's incredibly messy and people have been killing the wrong people in wars for as long as men have been fighting.
>> In Afghanistan, an American Apache mowed down a platoon of British troops after being called in as air support and mistaking the troops for the enemy.
Do you have a link for this?
Here's a list I found that doesn't seem to mention w whole platoon getting killed:
I can certainly buy the narrative that the military is spending too much money or designing weapons for the 'last war'. Yet I have a nagging suspicion that this is like the business users complaining that IT won't just buy everyone $200 laptops to save money. Devil's advocate: what could the Airforce's rationale be? I hate to write off the professionals so quickly.
If you need a turboprop attack plane to deal with a specific threat, you can fast track something cheaply because it's a widely known/used technology. The converse isn't true. You can't go back and decide you need a top tier $trillion fighter in a month.
Loiter time is important. Yet most military engagements in history are decided by speed and firepower.
This is the equivalent to saying that a cigarette boat could get a couple shots off in a fight with a battleship because of it's maneuverability and speed.
Well yes that may be true.
However, it's more likely a battleship would sink a cigarette boat with a precision guided weapon a second after it becomes visible on the horizon.
My working assumption is that military procurement has everything to do with which contractors need to get paid and very little to do with military objectives, since we don't actually have any achievable military objectives.
WW2 era? What a load of rubbish, just because it has a propellor. The basic Tucano first flew in 1980.
By the same yardstick I assume Vice thinks a helicopter is da Vinci era?
~~
The turboprop ( geared propellor driven by a jet engine ) is still the most efficient means of aviation propulsion devised; it surpassed internal-combustion engines in efficiency in the early 1960s, with the Turboméca Astazou, and continued to improve.
Turboprops fall-off in efficiency with altitude and speed, but below around 20,000 ft and 400 kts they're the champions.
Typically in the news process the copyeditor chooses or edits the title of the piece for brevity and "punch."
By saying "WWII-era," the title very succinctly sums up the idea that "hey, there's this interesting airplane that's been in the works alongside the very expensive F-35, but it's actually much cheaper and much less technologically advanced, but actually much better suited for the war in Afghanistan--and it resembles the types of fighter planes that you've seen in 'Pearl Harbor' and 'Saving Private Ryan'."
The title is meant to convey as much information to the audience (a general, non-technical audience) in as few words as possible, and it mostly does its job.
If you read the article, it's clear that the authors understand the difference.
It's obviously mostly a linkbait title, but to be fair to it it's a reference to most WWII planes using propellers, as opposed to the jet planes of today. They're not claiming the Tucano was literally designed in the 40s.
[+] [-] ckozlowski|10 years ago|reply
- The A-10's survivability is overrated. The Air Force conducted studies after both Gulf Wars and found that the A-10 was taking higher damage per sortie when compared in '91 to '03. That Iraq's air defense was in shambles didn't seem to diminish the fact that the A-10 was becoming more vulnerable to more sophisticated weapons. Technology has made cheaper weapons more effective since the 1970s in which this was designed. In a higher threat environment, the lack of sophisticated sensors, threat identification, and ECM is seen as not boding well.
- The A-29 is a fantastic plane. But it's giving the A-10 a run for it's money, not the F-35. In the low-threat COIN environment, it has all of the benefits of the A-10 with none of the drawbacks. That famous cannon isn't always idea against militants in the mountains when you're worried about spraying your own troops. That the A-19 can carry small guided weapons just like the A-10 gives it capabilities where it counts. And it's half to a third of the price to purchase and maintain.
So the A-10 is getting squashed from two sides: The F-35 can penetrate the high-threat environment, and provide CAS in a lethal SAM environment, while the A-29 can provide CAS/COIN against militants in a low to non-existent threat environment. There is no middle ground. It left when air defense systems gained the sophisticated tracking and accuracy that wasn't there in the 1970s and 80s.
The A-10 was a fantastic plane and well designed for the time in which it was envisioned to fight. But even I agree that it's time has passed. Like the F-14, it's sad to see it go, but I think it's the right call.
[+] [-] protomyth|10 years ago|reply
The F-35 has no hope of doing sustained CAS. It is another Air Force "drop your bombs and fire a few shots then run home" plane. An A-10 can keep insurgents away from your troops for a fair amount of time.
They should strip the Air Force of its CAS role and hand it back to the Army. Then the Air Force can concentrate on what it likes: strategic bombing and air dominance.
1) http://defensetech.org/2015/01/02/a-tale-of-two-gatling-guns...
[+] [-] nikatwork|10 years ago|reply
They paint a compelling picture that the Air Force is stumping to ditch CAS as "unsexy" so they spin as hard as they can against the A-10.
Example: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/now-the-u-s-air-force-wants...
[+] [-] ckozlowski|10 years ago|reply
There's a good follow-up on the F-35 as well, here: http://baloogancampaign.com/2015/03/23/f-35/
[+] [-] mycelium|10 years ago|reply
I agree the article's title sucks. The point is that military political dysfunction managed to get rid of all ground support airplanes while mumbling "F-35" when anybody asked about ground support.
[+] [-] emp_zealoth|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neurotech1|10 years ago|reply
The A-29 is a very capable aircraft in the CAS/COIN role, and has the advantage that its relatively cheap. The A-29 can't take battle damage like an A-10, although A-29 has the major advantage in that its cheap to purchase (less than $20m for the Program Unit Cost) and cheap to fly.
Two of the best CAS aircraft are the A-1 Skyraider and the A-37 Dragonfly. The propeller driven A-1 "Spads" were used to support the rescue of downed aviators over Vietnam. The A-37B (based on the T-37 Tweet) was flown by both USAF and South Vietnamese Air Force pilots quite effectively. These aircraft were cheap to operate, and accurate at weapons delivery.
I'd even go as far as saying the USAF should seriously consider "replacing" the A-37 as the "low" part of the high-low mix with the F-35. Keep the same size and side-by-side layout, and use avionics and "stealth" features of the MQ-9C Avenger [2]. This would enable piloted CAS missions, where drones are impractical.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_A-1_Skyraider
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_A-37_Dragonfly
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_Avenger
[+] [-] tsotha|10 years ago|reply
Oh, but there is. The A-10 was primarily designed as a tankbuster. While the A-29 is fine for the CAS role against irregulars, in a war against a country with lots of armor you'd really want to have the A-10.
[+] [-] IanDrake|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petewailes|10 years ago|reply
It's not remotely clever compared to the Eurofighter, Sukhoi Su-XX jets or similar recent generation multi-role aircraft, but for low speed engagement with flexible hardpoints and easy maintenance, it's hard to find many competitors. Which is weird, given the nature of most aerial combat roles for the past 15 years.
[+] [-] josefresco|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|10 years ago|reply
There are a lot of WW2 incidents of friendly fire casualties from ground attack aircraft, both from aircraft attacking their own guys to aircraft being downed from anti-aircraft fire from their own side. This happened to all sides in WW2.
[+] [-] venomsnake|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlehto|10 years ago|reply
It's close air support vs. strategic bombing. Close air support happens from low altitude, bombing from high altitude.
[+] [-] dkrich|10 years ago|reply
This argument is useless without determining how many incidents like the example described at the beginning of the article occur, whether they could be avoided with an older plane, and whether the cost of the mistakes made by the newer planes outweighs the advantages they provide.
[+] [-] walshemj|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Detrus|10 years ago|reply
The enemy is well aware that all they have to do is win an endurance war against an inflexible bureaucracy that bleeds money and outlast the patience of a fickle populace. This was demonstrated recently enough in Vietnam. US strategy was losing, even though they won almost every fight in both wars.
It would take a lot more than this one cheap fighter to outlast the Afghans. At least body count was better this time.
[+] [-] lispm|10 years ago|reply
Looking for technological solutions - low or high tech - is just more of the same misguided thinking. The case is lost in a totally different way - it's not technology.
[+] [-] josefresco|10 years ago|reply
So the F-35's lower hourly rate is almost the same as the Hornet's upper rate? Doesn't seem like that much of a deal.
[+] [-] sintaxi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperion2010|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VLM|10 years ago|reply
Also it costs the same to feed a pilot of any aircraft, ditto ATC and commo guys and all the rear echelon folks, although none of those costs were included in the mfgrs estimate.
No matter how badly the numbers are fudged its probably still one order of magnitude cheaper, perhaps a little more.
[+] [-] yxhuvud|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beloch|10 years ago|reply
The reality is that Canadian planes have not engaged in air-to-air combat since the Korean war, but virtually every conflict the CF participates in requires close-air support. That mission is currently fulfilled by CF-18's. The A-29, or a similar plane, could provide superior CAS capability for far less money. Then, as an added bonus, the successor to the CF-18 would not need to be compromised for CAS, as the F-35 is. Canada could look for a pure air-superiority fighter, and buy a smaller number of them because they would not be called upon to perform CAS. The end result would be an air force that's better at it's primary roles and far cheaper, and Canadian forces (and their allies) on the ground would be far safer.
Maybe I'm wrong?
[+] [-] walshemj|10 years ago|reply
Which is why the SF team unfortunately called the strike on them selves - this happened a couple of times I belive.
[+] [-] Quanticles|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greedo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tacticus|10 years ago|reply
though the big issues with the tiger and panther was the horrible maintenance issues.
[+] [-] kjjw|10 years ago|reply
But let's give another anecdote about the A10. In Iraq, the A10, just like the B52 in Afghanistan, was responsible for killing two truck loads of British soldiers. Its pilot mistook the luminous arrow signs that indicated friendly forces for missile systems.
In Afghanistan, an American Apache mowed down a platoon of British troops after being called in as air support and mistaking the troops for the enemy.
The thing that links all these incidences is not low or high tech but the American military. Clearly its pilots, soldiers, staff are not trained properly. Just a bunch of reckless idiots. Much like the government that sent them.
[+] [-] pdabbadabba|10 years ago|reply
And this is not "entirely predicated on anecdotal evidence"? You've described two incidents, and extrapolated from there to call an entire military (in this case, more than 2 million people) improperly trained "reckless idiots."
The incidents are serious. But without any attempt to qualify the rate of these accidents relative to the number of engagements, or a comparison to other militaries in other conflicts around the world, it sounds like you're just riding an axe.
[+] [-] djrogers|10 years ago|reply
No, the thing that links them all is war - it's incredibly messy and people have been killing the wrong people in wars for as long as men have been fighting.
[+] [-] varjag|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] at-fates-hands|10 years ago|reply
Do you have a link for this?
Here's a list I found that doesn't seem to mention w whole platoon getting killed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_friendly_fire_incident...
[+] [-] yutyut|10 years ago|reply
Maybe British FACs just suck. <--I can generalize too.
[+] [-] at-fates-hands|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] johngalt|10 years ago|reply
If you need a turboprop attack plane to deal with a specific threat, you can fast track something cheaply because it's a widely known/used technology. The converse isn't true. You can't go back and decide you need a top tier $trillion fighter in a month.
Loiter time is important. Yet most military engagements in history are decided by speed and firepower.
[+] [-] Havoc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrmondo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ElectricPenguin|10 years ago|reply
Well yes that may be true.
However, it's more likely a battleship would sink a cigarette boat with a precision guided weapon a second after it becomes visible on the horizon.
[+] [-] chinathrow|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moron4hire|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dingaling|10 years ago|reply
By the same yardstick I assume Vice thinks a helicopter is da Vinci era?
~~
The turboprop ( geared propellor driven by a jet engine ) is still the most efficient means of aviation propulsion devised; it surpassed internal-combustion engines in efficiency in the early 1960s, with the Turboméca Astazou, and continued to improve.
Turboprops fall-off in efficiency with altitude and speed, but below around 20,000 ft and 400 kts they're the champions.
[+] [-] allencoin|10 years ago|reply
By saying "WWII-era," the title very succinctly sums up the idea that "hey, there's this interesting airplane that's been in the works alongside the very expensive F-35, but it's actually much cheaper and much less technologically advanced, but actually much better suited for the war in Afghanistan--and it resembles the types of fighter planes that you've seen in 'Pearl Harbor' and 'Saving Private Ryan'."
The title is meant to convey as much information to the audience (a general, non-technical audience) in as few words as possible, and it mostly does its job.
If you read the article, it's clear that the authors understand the difference.
[+] [-] avar|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Symmetry|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joonoro|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdkl|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usrusr|10 years ago|reply
True, that's nearly too young even to properly qualify as space age.
[+] [-] benihana|10 years ago|reply
It has a freaking digital attitude indicator!