My dad has always said that the A-10 is an infantryman's best friend. an F-16 or F-18 will straff over the battle field and is gone. an A-10 will just hang around.
When I was younger we went to a nature preserve that is adjacent to the gunnery range at Moody Air Force base. We went up in an observation tower overlooking the preserve and watched A-10s do strafing practice. The sound of the GAU-8 main gun is something you have to hear to believe. If bad intentions have a sound it's that gun.
It really demonstrates the problem with the American military bureaucratic structure - all the best attempts they made with rotary combat aircraft couldn't really measure up to the A-10 in that role, but the army wasn't allowed to operate fixed-wing combat aircraft so they had to rely on the air-force to do that... and the air-force infrastructure and culture doesn't really properly "map" to the kind of work the A-10 did.
Regardless, the A-10 is an anachronism now. Its chief advantage was its ruggedness and ability to properly explore the battlefield when attacking unlike faster, more fragile aircraft... and now they have drones that fill that role of "slow enough to look around before opening fire and we don't care quite so much if it gets shot".
>Its chief advantage was its ruggedness and ability to properly explore the battlefield when attacking
Well, not really. While those are both big advantages it enjoys, its chief advantage and the mission is was designed for was that it carries enough ordinance to stop a Soviet tank column rolling into Germany in its tracks.
The A-10 is absolutely overkill for any modern CAS mission, and the airframes are simply 40 years old. Extending their life is only a temporary solution; they'll have to be replaced sooner or later. When they are replaced, there really isn't much of an argument for building a direct replacement instead of farming its various roles out to other platforms {hang and wait: predator, strike: f-35, CAS: Apache}
Well, I meant in recent engagements. I mean, how many times was the A-10 actually used to attack a Soviet tank-column vs. gunning down a bunch of poor guys with AKs hiding in light cover?
I put "declassified" in there because I saw a video a few years ago that claimed to show an A10 ripping through a tank. No idea what those rounds were.
Perhaps not through the front armor of a current MBT, but that's not where the guns aims. Instead it hits the top of the turret, the engine deck, and treads. This may not always result in an explosive, turret tossing engagement, but it definitely will result in a mission kill.
Every video I've ever seen of the A-10 involved it doing nasty things to tanks with its gun, at the very least rendering the tank inoperative. From wiki, sounds like it uses 5:1 mix of ~1 pound AP and HE rounds.
Like greedo alluded to, MBT armor is usually concentrated in the front (and angled) to defeat rounds from other tanks fired from roughly on the level, they tend to skimp everywhere else, and especially on the top.
Yes but count in the time of the whole operation, I bet that equation looks a bit different.
Stuff like loiter times to find the tank, risk to pilots. I bet pilots are the most expensive component in the aircraft. Wikipedia says a helfire is $68,000 usd. Say you fit 8 on an aricraft, how many depleted uranium rounds must you have to take out 8 targets (and account for misses). That takes logistics to move, occupies room.
Crack is the supersonic crack of the round, then explosion of the round when it hits the ground and the "brrrr" is the sound of the propellent gases leaving the barrel of the gun.
The rounds are supersonic, so the first sound you hear is the sound of the rounds hitting the target, then you hear the sound of the gun firing arriving at the much slower speed of sound.
I played Battlefield 1942: Desert Combat when I was much younger, and the developers did a pretty great job of replicating the A10 sound, you felt incredibly powerful controlling that vehicle for the sound alone.
Bit of a learning curve for sure, but flying them was amazing when you got good at it! I remember especially the Apache being a juggernaut in any situation, even in dogfights with planes like the A-10.
No kidding! I was at a shooting range long time ago, and I still remember that "brup BRUP!" of those cannons going off (double because you hear the sonic boom of the bullets before you hear the bullets themselves).
One of my favorite military planes for sure. Sad that it's getting decommissioned but it has served us well.
If you ask any soldier who's been in Iraq or Afghanistan what their favorite sound is, everyone will answer that it's the Warthog providing air support. It's provided welcome relief the world over.
It's a shame that it's being mothballed. The Air Force has always hated the plane. It's a shame we can't just turn it over to the Army.
I would still bet that its life will get extended. Every time that the AF has actually moved to get rid of them the Army jumps up and says, "yes! we'll take them off your hands," and suddenly the AF grudgingly extends the service life because they don't want the Army to get back into the business of having fixed wing aircraft...
I heard USAF at point offered to sell the A-10 to South Korea. Pretty clever of USAF if true. They were not 'retiring' them but still getting rid of them AND not giving Army a chance to say 'we will take over the A-10'.
Lucky for US Army, South Korean govt supposedly declined the offer.
I dunno, I'd rather see an AC-130 H/U/J/W or an Apache in the air above me providing continuous support rather than a few strafing runs from a fast moving A-10.
The A-10 can get to the scene faster, that's about it.
Quoting my own comment from another subtree below. AC-130s circle low and slow, and cannot maneuver quickly, which makes them very very good SAM targets. The A-10 is very maneuverable and quick by comparison.
After an AC-130 was shot down in Iraq, they only fly at night.
Medium speed, but not low, they're pressurized and all of the equipment can operate at very high altitudes. The A-10 is designed to operate below 1,000 feet, low and fast. The A-10 can operate in the lower 400 mph range and the AC-130 in the lower 300s, so not too much difference.
The software and sensors have always been the major limiting factors but the US definitely sees the value of the AC-130, so there's has been a good amount of money put into it, and it's paid off.
The crash in Iraq was in 1991, 23 years ago. Since then the crew size has decreased, software has gotten exponentially better, hardware has gotten dramatically better, and they've learned from incidents to protect the crew.
Large SAM targets should always be taken out first with cruise-missiles or bombs from a high altitude. Handheld SAM launchers like the one that shot the AC-130 in Iraq down are possible to prevent with sufficient chaff (which the AC-130 has a good amount of) combined with fast enough software and senors to detect the missile. There are even more counter-measures in the new versions of the aircraft and there was a ton of money spend to preventing the loss
I really don't see why a system can't be developed these days that can effectively destroy any SAM missiles by having a dedicated cannon which can auto-target and engage any SAM, considering the processing abilities and advanced sensors available today.
The AC-130 could be the future of combat if we can perfect SAM countermeasures, which we are spending lots of money on.
Oh yeah, I forgot about flak and cannon fire from the ground. Maybe that's why it hasn't been used more. Maybe they'll be able to create advanced light-weight armor and make them autonomous eventually. Lasers and rail-guns would probably render the AC-130 ineffective though.
It's basically a flying battleship.
Here's a cool video of JATOs being used 30+ years ago:
Another great advantage of that plane is just how durable it was. It could take massive damage yet stay in the air. Of course, pilot skill's important, too.
> The sound of the GAU-8 main gun is something you have to hear to believe. If bad intentions have a sound it's that gun.
I've only heard it in videos, and all I could think of is that it sounds like God Himself farting. You can't hear individual reports, just one long BRRAAAAP.
When I was younger we went to a nature preserve that is adjacent to the gunnery range at Moody Air Force base. We went up in an observation tower overlooking the preserve and watched A-10s do strafing practice. The sound of the GAU-8 main gun is something you have to hear to believe. If bad intentions have a sound it's that gun.