1 This post approved by the management. Open Blog has not been declared. ??

2 Regardless of RDTE budgets, the USAF isn't going to surrender the force structure that the A10 represents. I doubt the A10 production lines exist anymore; wasn't it built by Fairchild?

3 In my opinion, the A-10 should be adopted by the Army.  Close air support by fixed wing jets should be something they can do too. 

the F-15 is an amazing airplane, but it's very old in concept.  It's amazing to me how the F-22 is being passed over after so much money poured in.  The cost per aircraft go down quite a bit if you build a fleet of them.  And in the long run, this saves money if we avoid a direct military challenge.  It's a crazy world and we should be prepared.

4
the attempt to make a one-size-fits-all aircraft is a bad idea

Didn't we learn that with the F-4? and that was only 50 something years ago!

5 The plastic planes are just for the Israelis, silly. I mean it's not like I'm gunna let 'em USE them.

6 UAVs have changed the game as far as air support.

7

I doubt the A10 production lines exist anymore; wasn't it built by Fairchild?

Yep.  Fairchild Republic.  And yes the production lines don't exist anymore.  The A-10 was a fantastic plane.  It worked, and it was built and delivered on time and under budget.  Full of WIN!

8 I do agree that UAVs fill a lot of the A-10's role.  But we probably need that plane.  If the AF doesn't want it, the Army should get the remaining airframes.  I'm not asking for us to build new ones.  I bet we have more than enough, since the UAVs also fill many mission roles.

9 What's left of Fairchild is in Texas anyway.  No way in hell Obama is going to send a nickle to Texas that he doesn't have to send there.  Not that this is an issue in this case, but I'm not surprised this company managed to deliver the goods according to contract.  I am a Boeing fan, but they are not very Texan.  Of course, they have the advantage of not going bankrupt either.

10 That NONE of our Air Force machines are kept maintained with parts and the refueling necessary apparatus before/while the next "better" project goes into production is the basis for our coming failure, being led by the "allied" shared technology/costs to play out like NASA US moon and space station investments--eventually only to benefit our enemies.

11

Interesting arguments. Same thing happened after Vietnam. We dropped the number of fighters and quickly had to rebuild after the F-111 fiasco (the fighter gap with the MiG-25).

That being said... I'm not worried about the Russian or Chinese fifth generation capability. People don't realize that the F-22, in the form of the YF-22, first flew in early 1990. I was stationed at Edwards AFB fixing F-16s, behind the YF-22 and YF-23 hangars. So, our fifth-generation has been developed and improved for the last 20 years since then.

Besides that, Russia doesn't have significant money to build a large number of fighters, China has money, but not as much technology, and doesn't have the bases to deploy from. Additionally, China doesn't have naval capability to project their air forces, nor the in-flight refueling capability for extended duration flights. Foreign sales are a threat, but again, fighter aircraft are maintenance and training intensive. Look at how poorly Iraq and Syrai have done when they have tangled with Israel.

You do raise a valid point, however, about the A-10. Unloved by the higher-ups, it's not high-tech enough. But the drivers love the Hog. And yes, the F-16/18 are too high-speed for the job that the Hog accomplishes. Could the F-35 replace the A-10? Like you say, probably not.

All the above being said, bear this in mind: the various US services are plugging lots of money into some interesting force-multipliers for our airfleets. Trust me...

12 While I agree with the general thrust of your post, I must take issue with your accounting of the scoreboard.  Speaking as someone who was serving (I was an F-14 RIO) during the Kuwait war,  I can tell you  that the ROE was written to explicitly favor the F-15.  Who wrote it?  F-15 drivers.  Go figure.  Politics never end.  It required both optical and electronic verification by the fighter prior to being cleared to shoot.  The F-16 had the electronics, but not the optics.  The F-14 had the optics (TCS), but not the electronics.  Only the F-15 could claim both.  In all the shoots, was there ever a case of one disagreeing with the other?  Nope.  There were hard feelings all around from this.

Still, that was during the first Gulf War.  I don't know enough about the ROE during the Iraq invasion to comment on it from an eyewitness viewpoint.  Anyone who was actually flying then visit this board and care to comment?

Having said that, canceling the F-22 was a monumentally stupid thing to do.  The F-35 has no where near the performance and as you said is behind schedule and badly over budget.

13 "Air superiority is what you do on the way to the target."

14 Gates earnestly works towards/within the New World Order, as does Obama, and do the Bushes.  The puppet show of our lives is as much their entertainment as power plays. whether vying to be the Marxist King of the Global Mountain or better sold to conservatives as The Games We Play While Waiting For the Messiah in order to maintain our support in war efforts.

15 I know they have a strong incentive to, but I have read material by Lockheed basically saying that the quoted incremental airframe flyaway costs being quoted by the Navy and others are actually higher than it's costing them to get the test airframes out now, and that they're using flawed cost models. Sorry, I have no links, it's kind of early in the morning for me.

16 Don't forget that one of the reasons the F-14 and F-15 fighters were and still are superior are because of their radar and missles. 

17 Lex Luthor: I do agree that UAVs fill a lot of the A-10's role.

I'm afraid I don't.  UAV's work great in the current scenario: Single shot kills in a benign environment.  Right now there is no dedicated SA assets targeting them and they don't have the weapons needed for a high kill per sortie ratio. 

Strange as it may sound, most of the A-10's devastation during Kuwait was wrought through its cannon, not smart bombs.    Flying along the enemy front and strafing anything that moved.  It's BB's were easily able to penetrate Iraqi armor.  "Tank plinking"  was a favorite sport in that community.

18 Europe, and previously the USSR, have taught us (at least Barry got the news) that you have to choose, socialism or defense* and that's the reason that he has to hurry to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Even America can't afford it all. *China is an outlier, their hybrid economy only works because they have proven that they are willing to kill everyone if they step out of line, which is kind of hard example for other countries to follow. Not everyone is fortunate to have a super surplus of cheap lives to make an example with.

19 Jeff: Don't forget that one of the reasons the F-14 and F-15 fighters were and still are superior are because of their radar and missles.

Sadly the F-14 is gone.  Not merely retired to the "boneyard" like other aircraft, but each one was shredded to prevent spare parts getting to the Iranians (they fly them) via the black market.  You can see videos of this on Youtube.  Like watching your puppy being run over.  Not a good thing to see.

20 "a one-size-fits-all aircraft is a bad idea"

Yeah, just ask McNamara. 

21 "Could the F-35 replace the A-10? Like you say, probably not."

John McClain took one out with a broken semi-tractor-trailer.

In all seriousness, that movie showed the problem with the F-35.  It's only got a single engine.  It's probably pretty tough, but it's just not in the same league as the A-10.  I'm really surprised our navy is going to be relying on a single engine craft.  No limping home after any of a million potential problems.

I was a redleg and have less direct knowledge about this stuff than almost anybody, but I also agree that the multi national approach to weapons development is bizarre.  I do not buy into these NWO ideas, but sometimes it does seem like we're working against our interests.  Why in the world am I only just now hearing that Russia was helping Saddam cover up a WMD program?  Why would we cancel such a prominent and powerful symbol as the F-22, killing so many jobs, while spending far more on job creation that won't last?  I can't think of an easier call Obama could have made but to preserve a ton of great jobs.  Surely this isn't one of those 'Bush gets some credit so burn it' things.  Right?

22 Air Force will never allow Army fixed wing close-support aircraft.

But the Air Force doesn't really want them, either.

23 countrydoc, you're right.  There's just nothing like an A-10 with a pilot right there making a huge impact on a battle.

I just meant UAVs do have some kind of close air support role.  I completely agree with you that it's not a substitute for the times when we need something like an A-10.

I think Air Defense Artillery, an Army program, should become an AF program.  And I think the close air support mission should move from AF to Army.  A lot of people are mentioning political issues between F-15 and F-16 pilots, so I guess the political ramifications of my suggestion make it unrealistic.

24 "Yep.  Fairchild Republic.  And yes the production lines don't exist anymore.  The A-10 was a fantastic plane.  It worked, and it was built and delivered on time and under budget.  Full of WIN!"

No wonder the current crop of Donks want it gone..

Also, I am really concerned about dumping the Raptor.  Ah but that was Bambi's bone for the whack jobs to cut the "HUGE MILITARY BUDGET!"

I love how liberals endlessly piss and moan about the military budget, but don't say a fucking word when Congress wants to give itself a raise.

25 @ Mrmacs

Awesome insight.  You see, THIS is why I will get news from a blog instead of the govt knob slobbing MFM.

Thank you sir.

26 HobbieHawk: Air Force will never allow Army fixed wing close-support aircraft. But the Air Force doesn't really want them, either.

Lex Luthor: And I think the close air support mission should move from AF to Army.

The AF hates CAS, hates it with a glowing white hot fire of hate.  But they fear the Army getting fixed wing aircraft.  This is all due to a turf war that took place at the end of WWII.  Army said CAS should be their mission.  AF said flying planes was their mission.  A "compromise" was reached.  AF would get everything it wanted and the Army could have helicopters.  The AF agreed to this because they didn't believe a helicopter would be of any use on the frontline.  The Army told them they only wanted helos for rear area logistical support.  They then proceeded to develop combat helos. 

Politics, always politics.  It has nothing to do with strategy or what is best for either the military or the country.

27 "I love how liberals endlessly piss and moan about the military budget, but don't say a fucking word when Congress wants to give itself a raise."

Easy fix. Pass a law that says anytime Congress votes itself a raise, every member of the armed forces gets the same percentage raise.

28 To be sure, and I love the troops, the problem for our military is not their pay rate.  I sometimes wonder if the constant military par increases are a mini cloward pliven attempt to make other investments in the military more difficult to pay for.

29 I sometimes wonder if the constant military par increases are a mini cloward pliven attempt to make other investments in the military more difficult to pay for.

Which is why the Pentagon recently asked Congress to stop giving the troops pay raises.  It is squeezing out acquisition and R&D.

30

The Air Force needs to remember their duties as part of the Key West Agreements and provide close air support for the Army.  Sadly, the entire promotion structure for pilots seems to be "Eagle Driver Y/N?" and has been that way since 1985.  Now it'll switch to "Raptor Driver Y/N?" and continue on.  The A-10 needs a proper replacement: durable, low-and-slow close air support aircraft where you can hang a lot of ordnance and loiter where needed.  The F-111 also needs a replacement:  a high-speed nuke-capable medium precision strike aircraft that can switch to a high-speed medium area denial bomber with a limited ground attack role.  (As a former EF-111 maintainer, all I can say is this:  put a frickin' gun on the next one, all right?  You never know when you're going to need to bust a cap on a AAA/SAM radar site or other ground control vehicle and all that's available is your electronic warfare bird.)  When used as a successor to the B-25, the F-111 did well.  When trying to be all things to all services, the F-111 failed miserably.  That was due to both Robert McNamara's bullheadedness and an excessively convoluted OPSEC.  We didn't want the Soviets to think we'd built a smaller, less-noticeable B-58.

Ultimately, though, you're not going to see any changes in Air Force development and procurement strategies until you change the institutional bias towards air superiority pilots that currently exists.  They want to focus on air superiority with only lip service paid to the rest of the aerospace defense mission.  The result is the F-35, a wannabe air superiority fighter that is hamstrung by having to pull strike and CAS duties.  Make a striker, make a long-range air superiority fighter, make a short-range air defense fighter, but don't try to put all three into one critter.  Okay now that we've figured out that little problem, let's see how we can split ACC back into TAC, SAC, and ADC and get the Air Force back into the total aerospace defense game.

31 Several fundamental points;
- Don't assume the conflict of today will resemble the combat situation of tomorrow. I agree the HOG is essential to current operations and especially close engagements where slow speed capabilities are necessary. But don't underestimate factors such as LGB's and other precision guided munitions. Also, it would be a mistake to assume the status quo (in terms of technology) and the vehicles which carry these munitions will remain the same. As weapons develop the platforms that can carry them often multiply via adaption and development. Remember innovation doesn't just mean new "things"- it means doing old "things" new ways. Still, there is nothing like a good strafing run from a HOG when your taking heat.
- There was a point made up-thread about force multipliers. Absolutely critical for future operation and some are game-changers. That said, definitely not Nirvana or an excuse to lapse on airfleet decisions- especially not until some of those options are tested and proven for ALL types of anticipated conflicts.
- F-15's rule the skies, probably are one of the most diverse, reliable aircraft ever built and given the chance, Raptors won't be too far behind. I am personally partial to the Falcon's and fell there is still a possible future role- but hey I am just a nostalgic old guy- I guess. Either way, it would be a big mistake not to have these in quantities necessary to guard against all potential conflicts- and screw the price tag. We can just cancel ObamaCare and that should get us at least 400 22's- nui?

32 3 I doubt the A10 production lines exist anymore; wasn't it built by Fairchild?

Yes, but Lockheed is the prime contractor for it now, and the A10C is in the works. 

33 Just reabsorb the Air Force back into the Army and be done with it.  The 60+ year experiment has shown to be little more than an expensive pi$$ing match over fuding, priorities and territory.  Let the Army direct its "air wings" like the Marine Corps, eliminate redundancies and move forward from there.  I honestly can't see what an independent Air Force brings to the fight that is worth the extra expense and confusion.

34 I want a UAV with the GAU-8.

35

There is always the alternative of the F-15-XL, which basically gives the F-15 updated avionics (from the F-22 suite of systems) and vectored thrust/supercruise (from the F-22) in the F-15 airframe.  More of these (new) would cost less per airframe than a new F-22.

The most recent "block" of F-16's is so different from the original, that it is practically a new aircraft.  The F-16 will be with us for quite some time. They can be built with more air to air capability (with ability to use AMRAAM) if the Air Force wanted to do it.  It's just a matter of  choices.

And I also doubt that there are 500 F-15 C & D's left, plus the F-15E Strike Eagle, in operation. Maybe 300.

36 If you're reading this thread, you would enjoy (and probably should read) Robert Coram's biography of America's Sun Tzu, Colonel John Boyd.  The title is "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art of War", it's on Amazon, and it's amazing that this guy who never got a star in our military nonetheless contributed three major ideas to air and ground warfare, any one of which should have gotten him a star were it not for him being such a cantankerous sumbitch.

The F-16A was John Boyd's baby, in concept and to some extent execution.  He liked the F-15, but hated every swing-wing fighter in production because they were in his estimation too heavy, his Energy-Maneuverability theory proved the F-111 was a pig and should never dogfight anything more threatening than its own refuelling tankers.  The A-10 wasn't a Boyd project, but the project director was one of Boyd's acolytes at the Pentagon, Pierre Sprey.  Boyd hated the "multirole" concept, in part because a multirole combat aircraft was rarely good enough at any one thing to insure dominance.

The Army should take over CAS, either with drones or a purpose-built turboprop aircraft, a 21st century A-1D with the necessary loiter time, damage resistance and payload to help out the Army as needed.  The A-10s have been rebuilt recently into A-10Cs, but the production line has been closed for years.  Even if the fixtures and jigs could be found, the irreplaceable part is the people who knew the quirks of the design and the "right" way to make the plane that the plans do not provide.  The A-10 is an incredible design, bug-ugly until you need it and then the greatest things in the air once it arrives.

The F-15 line is still running, cranking out F-15Ks for South Korea.  We could do worse than to buy a few hundred more F-15Ks to supplement our F-15C and F-15E fleet.  Considering that the F-15A-D fleet was grounded due to cracks in the airframe (one F-15C lost the fuselage from the engines forward in mid-flight, which had to be disturbing to the pilot), some low-hour Eagles would be a good insurance policy.

And 150 F-22s just cannot cover the kind of ground that 500 F-15s can cover.

37 The Air Force needs to remember their duties as part of the Key West Agreements and provide close air support for the Army.


This.

As I recall, the Army rank and file has long held the view that multirole fighters are a backdoor method of getting out of the CAS business. I can remember listening to rants about this during my own Army service, 20 years ago.

The USAF has been around for 60 years, I wish that the AF brass would get over their "youngest brother" syndrome. The rank and file do great work, but the AF bureaucracy is toxic.

38 Has there been anymore on converting F16s to QF-16s for SEAD, CAS, and point air defense (RoK mission).

39 "It's made of plastics, so it can be pierced by a rifle bullet."

I can guarantee you that a rifle bullet can pierce sheet aluminum just as easily as it can "plastic".
Also "plastic" holds up much better to salt water corrosion.
Not a small consideration for carrier aircraft.

40

The Fairchild Republic facility in Hagerstown, Maryland no longer exists. That was the A-10 primary production line, and it was mothballed in the 1980's after the run was complete. It was supposed to come back on line to start spitting out replacement aircraft when WWIII happened, but it never did so the company collapsed.

The A-10C's are rebuilt older airframes, just like the CH-47Fs are rebuilt older airframes. You can only do that so many times. Right now with some of the combat losses, CH-47 airframes are scarce enough, the Army was surveying the very few in museums to see if any of them met the criteria for F-model conversion.

The biggest issue with pulling the A-10 into Army Aviation is the personnel required. There are a shitload of skill sets to maintain that thing that do not exist in the Army. New personnel, MOSs, and so on, and so on. The costs and personnel slots required would probably cost us a division. Recent events proved how thin our sustainable ground force numbers were when push came to shove, and we weren't talking about a high casualty environment. You take our current force and try to refight the Korean War with it, we're going to have to reinstate the draft in about a week.

If the USAF gives up fixed-wing CAS, there are a lot of off the shelf propeller options that would be easier to maintain. The Super Tucano is regarded as a very nice little COIN bird, and AirTractor is working on an armed version of its popular cropduster. Thing has the bombload of a Skyraider with better gas mileage. The problem with those little cheap platforms is they, like UAVs, need friendly skies. The A-10 is a flying tank, the cropduster conversions not so much.

That is the real problem with neglecting America's fighter force. EVERYTHING in the US military's doctrine is predicated upon fighting under friendly skies. The US hasn't had to fear serious- and I mean serious, not the occasional Scud or "Bed Check Charlie" in a Nork biplane- air attack since the North African campaign. Yes, that has created a thought process that assumes since we've had friendly skies since 1943 we'll always have them, so therefore the fighter community can go piss up a rope because we're sick of their shit.

I was basically a career 101st guy. What I did cannot be accomplished if the brigade air assault behind enemy lines is made vulnerable to enemy fighter sweeps. Enemy fighters need to be made extinct for either the helicopters of the 101st or the USAF transports carrying the 82nd to get in there and get us on the ground so we can do our thing.

I can sum this up. Either the US is willing to pay the cost to be the boss, or we're not. With the current administration thinking we're just one more neighborhood of the global village, and wanting to apologize for our past, they'd rather use the money for socialism and vote-buying political payoffs.

Fine. Not a problem. Go right the fuck ahead. When your weakness gets us hit again, we'll know right who the the fifth columnists, apologists, and terrorist enablers are.

41

There is actually a fair bit of potential left in the F-15 series - if you looked at the proposed changes that were around when both South Korea and Singapore got their F-15 variants, it makes for eye-opening reading.  That said, the F-22 is the best air superioity fighter around, and the US does need it to maintain a credible fighter force (No matter how much The One believes otherwise and SecDEF Gates fail to realize.).  Heck, even the F-22 could have become what the F-15 became when it evolved into the F-15E - the proposed FB-22 would have been a very nice upgrade.  And of course, while the only real competitor to the F-22 is the Eurofighter/Typhoon, given European inclinations, it is only a matter of time before they do export the fighter.

Oh yes - should I mention that one of the nations involved in the JSF/F-35 development project (Complete with project officers in the program.) is Turkey?  At least with the F-22, we did not have include members of armed forces of a nation that is becoming quite apparent they will stab us in the back.

C.T.

42

The US armed forces are taking a hell of a gamble by staking their entire existence on the problematic F-35, and the attempt to make a one-size-fits-all aircraft is a bad idea.

Who's the idiot that authorized the exhumation of Robert McNamara, and his idiotic ideas?

43 31 I sometimes wonder if the constant military par increases are a mini cloward pliven attempt to make other investments in the military more difficult to pay for.

Which is why the Pentagon recently asked Congress to stop giving the troops pay raises.  It is squeezing out acquisition and R&D.

Posted by: countrydoc (formerly oLD gUY) at June 07, 2010 10:23 AM (P/D33)

The new GI Bill is squeezing even more money out too and you need to factor in health care costs, all of which come out of the same DoD pot as planes, boats, pay and rifles.

44 36 I want a UAV with the GAU-8.

Posted by: Al at June 07, 2010 10:47 AM (MzQOZ)

that would be an A-10 with R2-D2.

45 Sgt Dan, the US is already leasing the Super Tucano in small numbers.

46 Give the Army the green light to solicit bids for the next close air support aircraft- and reopen the A-10 assembly line in the short term.

I seem to recall hearing or reading somewhere that the Army isn't allowed to operate fixed-wing combat aircraft. Anyone have any details on this?

47

As I recall, the Army rank and file has long held the view that multirole fighters are a backdoor method of getting out of the CAS business.

Indeed.

The Hog is hated by the USAF and loved by the pilots, once they get over not making the cut for Eagles or Raptors.  They may get the last laugh when those Eagle drivers end up with Predators.

In GWI, the USAF didn' even want the A-10 in theater, but once there and the fihting started, the Eagle drivers discovered the same thing that thir fathers had learned about the A-1. 

When you're hanging below a chute drifting down toward some pissed off Iraqi's, it was darn nice to have an A-10 doing tight circles around your chute.  The SAR mission always saves the A-10 from getting axed by the USAF budegt weenies.

PS:  In a COIN environment an A-10 also is better than a UAV at doing intimidation passes over some village chief of doubtful loyalty.

 

 

 

 

48

I seem to recall hearing or reading somewhere that the Army isn't allowed to operate fixed-wing combat aircraft. Anyone have any details on this?

Key West agreement of 1947

 

49 I really wish that the Air Force would let the Army handle anything under 5K feet.  The Air Force gets everything above that, including outer space.  It seems like everyone would be happier with that, rather than "USAF gets fixed wing and the army gets rotary-wing."  Hell, the Navy and the Marines handle a fixed wing distinction just fine.

50

The US armed forces are taking a hell of a gamble by staking their entire existence on the problematic F-35, and the attempt to make a one-size-fits-all aircraft is a bad idea.

Absolutely. The TFX / F-111 clusterfuck taught them nothing. The F-111 proved to be a fine plane for a strike attack aircraft, but it certainly was an epic fail in one-size-fits-all.

51 The Obama administration's attitude toward military hardware is the same as its attitude toward power sources: don't use what already exists and works -- instead, commit billions to untried, hypothetical replacements. And if such replacements finally come on line, then don't use them and start throwing money at the next flying magic unicorn in the pipeline.

F-22?  Forget it.  Obama's putting all our eggs in the F-35.  Nuclear power?  Nope, it's solar or nothing.

52

The Air Force ... wanted and got didn't want, but got despite themselves, the hands-down best close air support aircraft ever built- the A-10.

Fixed it for you.  (Though I think tmi3rd knows that, given what he wrote at the beginning.)  Design and procurement of the F-15, F-16 and A-10 are fascinating, and the A-10 most of all.  To hear some of the interested parties tell it, they had to sneak it through development against their generals' wishes.  And the Air Force once tried to mothball the fleet until the Army offered to take it off their hands and fly it themselves.

But yeah, tmi3rd knows whereof he speaks.  Technological superiority has served the USAF well, but beyond a certain point "gold-plating" of extra features adds weight and conflicts with the mission performance of a light-weight air superiority fighter.

And I'll second the calls to give close air support to the army.  You can argue the other side on infrastructure and training grounds, but if the Air Force is going to drag it's feet on a very important mission as it has historically done, you may as well give it to a service with a built in incentive to do it well and enthusiastically.

53 There's a lot of faith placed in UAVs. Unfortunately, I think a lot of it is misplaced.

UAVs perform quite well in current environments: Afghanistan, Pakistan, maybe Yemen. These are all places that import technology.  But there are other potential player that, in 20-25 years, might be able to fight back.

UAVs have a couple of weaknesses: the link back to the human controller, and the sophistication and reprogrammability of the onboard controller.  Break the link (degrade sufficiently ...... completely jam) and the UAV does..... what?  Even if it simply returns to base before performing the mission, that's quite valuable to an opponent. Take over the link with a more powerful signal and send new commands, maybe download some new program sections; how does the UAV know that it's been co-opted?

The question "how easy is this to do?" quickly gets superceded by the question "what will it cost to achieve this capability?". As UAVs become more effective and / or more prevalent, the cost becomes easier to justify.  With insufficient or no F-35/ -22/ -15 backup, just about any cost is worth paying: the result is victory.

I recall reading speculation that India is interested in the F-16XL (which will supercruise).  1000 F-16XL for us (even if the India speculation never happens), with the latest F-35 electronics and engine (no VTOL), a VG intake, and an assortment of stealth modifications, makes much more sense than continuing with the F-35: many of the parts already exist, the F-16 is a known quantity and the F-16XL has already been built successfully, and the result will likely be much less expensive than the F-35

54 Can someone explain why USAF brass don't like the A-10?  Is it because they are all former F-15/16 pilots or something?

55 What really aggravates me about this whole situation is the way the dumbass politicians have twisted the original purpose of these airframes.

The F-22 is to replace the F-15 in air dominance, air to air.

The F-35 in it;s three variants is to replace the F-16, F-18, AV-8 Harrier.

How did the debate become F-22 vs. F-35?
They were clearly meant to be a compliment to each other in the Air Force inventory just like the F-15 and F-16 have been.

The F-35 S/VTOL version is to replace the Harrier in the USMC and RAF/RN.

The F-35C Carrier variant is to replace the F-18C/D Hornet with a radar low observable platform.

Why did the argument become Raptor or Lightening II, as if they will be competing for the same job?

Congress and politics fuck up everything.

56 #57, Yep. That is it. They would rather spend billions trying to adapt the pretty supersonic planes to the CAS role than have the ugly, low altitude, low speed low tech A-10.

At least that has been the case until recently, when it was clear the A-10 is just plain badass at what it was built to do.

That 30mm cannon is just evil. Nothing else like it.

I've wondered how effective that cannon would be mounted in a Stryker on a turret.

The Marines have the slightly smaller LAV wheeled vehicle in a air defense variant that mounts the 25mm gatling cannon in a turret.

That is some fearsome firepower for ground to ground.

57

The Air Force doesn't really want to be responsible for close air support

I completely disagree with you on this one.  This idea of giving up the CAS mission to the Army has been tossed around for decades, and even had some serious traction in the late 80s, but today's Air Force is fully committed to the CAS role.   The service expends enormous amounts of time and money  training for this very complex and critically important mission.  They've also plussed up the tactical air control party (TACP) ranks and recently created a new battlefield C2 officer career field.  The Air Force is very heavily invested in CAS and there is no way they are giving up that mission to the Army.

58 This idea of giving up the CAS mission to the Army has been tossed around for decades, and even had some serious traction in the late 80s, but today's Air Force is fully committed to the CAS role. 

The AF was willing to give CAS to the army, along with existing A-10 airframes, as long as it didn't have to give up the money they're now spending on the A-10.  "Fully committed" is stretching it a bit.

59 Or, I guess, the way to put it is the AF is "fully committed" to the CAS budget.

60

I've wondered how effective that cannon would be mounted in a Stryker on a turret.

The GAU-8 gun (empty), with its ammo bin weigh a bit over 2 tons and cube bigger than a VW bug.

It gets its effectiveness from the short range and top attack aspect, both things a ground mount gun would not have.

 

 

 

 

61 Wow. I'm glad I didn't miss all the fun here...

Rick, I think you're probably right, but here's the rub- though the missions overlap, the training conflicts. As a mud-mover, your emphasis is 1) air-to-ground and 2) air-to-air, whereas the interceptor pilots live exclusively in the air-to-air realm (although yes, I'm aware the F-14 was actually a decent strike fighter once retrofitted in Iraq).

The recent conflicts have resulted in air supremacy so quickly that most of my friends who are -15C jocks found themselves very bored about two weeks into the conflict. The end result- fairly- is that more training is going into air-to-ground. The problem is that the guys I know who fly, let's say, the -18, are noting that their air-to-air skills are not keeping pace with their air-to-ground skills. They rely more on tactics (don't climb to meet a MiG-29; make him come down and get you or let the -15s get him) than on furballing as often as they'd like to with German MiG-29s or Indian Su-30s.

Brian, the debate is not F-22 vs F-35, not by any means. The issues are becoming that the two aircraft are almost parallel in cost per airframe (bad news if the -35 is supposed to be your cheaper alternative), and the attempt to shoehorn one aircraft into three services with vastly different needs. As you noted, the -35 is supposed to supplant multiple variants of 4-5 different aircraft.

Again, I can only go by what the engineers and project managers at Lockheed told me, but they're very concerned that the -35, while impressive, is not going to shape up to be this generation's F-16 where the -22 is already clearly this generation's -15. The guys building the things are worried it's going to turn into the F-111 all over again, pilots be damned.

62 Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about what the professionals are saying. They understand this plenty well. I'm talking about some nimrod Senators and Congresscritters, and media morons who spout off about this as if the Lightening II and Raptor are competing for the one and only new aircraft slot.

They start immediately whining about the distorted per unit cost, and frame it as which one do we want, because we cannot have both.

All this while throwing $2 trillion down the drain this year and pretending it will help the economy and lower health care costs.

Drives me nuts when there are plenty of well paying high skill jobs being killed off in the Defense industries by this idiot President and his allies in Congress, and of course John McCain who supported killing the Raptor to make sure the Navy got their goodies instead of the Air Force.

Cancel Obamacare and the wasted stimulus and we can have 350 Raptors.

63 This is the same debacle that we faced with Robert McNamara and the F-111 Aardvark. An aircraft that was of dubious value to every service that used it, because it couldn't be modified to suit each purpose. Economists and bureaucrats should keep the hell out of the military. Oh well.....

64

Drives me nuts when there are plenty of well paying high skill jobs being killed off in the Defense industries by this idiot President

See there's your problem again... thinking.

Those high paid union, pollution making, manufacturing jobs are sooo icky.

What we need are those non-polluting investments like SEIU home health care aides and more school teachers with 6 digit pensions at 55.

Once we have the best health care in the world, the Chinese would not dare attack Taiwan.

 

 

 

65 The Army is prohibited from operating fixed wing aircraft.  One of the reasons you see them puttering around everywhere in rotor-driven helo's.  That said, the Apache is one hell of a close air support helicopter.  It does everything that one would expect from a CAS aircraft except it isn't all that capable of ground interdiction over long distances.  It makes up for this fact by being able to operate out of small forward air bases and the ground crews train with and operate as a contingent of a larger mobilized Army ground force. 

One aircraft I always thought would have been an interesting CAS attack aircraft is Burt Rutan's Ares Mudfigher It was a lightweight, cheap, and highly maneuverable aircraft that was designed around a Gau-12 cannon.  And because it used a turbofan through a ducted composite cone it has a very low heat signature.  It's small size operating close to the ground would make it practically invisible to radar.  But because it is a jet it still has impressive ground target interdiction ability over long distances.

"an unarmed F-111, and the Mirage chasing it ran out of gas and crashed"

The story as a heard it from the Radar office aboard that EF-111 is that the pilot put the balls to the wall and dove for the hard deck.  They pulled up at just under 500 AGL and when they looked back they saw the Mirage pilot trying to mirror their same maneuver yet overshot and ran into the ground.  Oddly enough this was also the first confirmed air kill of Iraq War I.

"the majority of the coalition aircraft losses were a result of man-portable surface-to-air missiles."

I believe the largest number of losses were from the AV-8 harrier.  I guess putting your hot exhaust nozzles on the bottom and in the middle of the aircraft turns out to be a bad idea from a survivability standpoint.  Not only is it easy for someone standing on the ground to lock onto the heat signature.  But the missile will fly straight into the hot engine exhaust at the midpoint of the aircraft and explode right in an area where it will have maximum affect on the wings and control surfaces.

I will finally say that from all accounts so far it appears we will not need as many f-22's as would say f-15's.  From all the training exercises so far f-22 drivers have been able to take on waves of attacking aircraft by themselves and not even break a sweat.  It is an astonishing aircraft in terms of it's capabilities and represents the pinnacle of America's air power.

66

I want a UAV with the GAU-8.

No way, Gotta have somebody on the same continent you can grab by the lapels and yell "WTF were you shooting at" with that thing.

67 Concur with the notion of getting by with fewer F-22s, but it needs to be more than 120-150 combat aircraft (figure at least 30-50 for spares for a total of 187). We're doing okay- not great- with 300 total F-15C, D, and E models, and an argument could be made to buy a hundred or so F-15Js (or whatever it is we're selling to Singapore and Japan) with all the nifty new datalinks.

I cringe when I look at what the cost overruns are for the F-35, and don't forget that the Israelis, the Australians, and the Canadians all would much rather have the F-22.

Reading over everything, I think you can make a strong argument that a stealthy aircraft is particularly useful in offensive operations of all kinds. It's just that you trade durability for stealth at this point, and once the mission gets away from initial offense and more to ground support, what good is stealth?

Oh, and Brian- understood. I thought you were referring to the discussion we were having, and after your clarification, I think you're dead right.

68 the majority of the coalition aircraft losses were a result of man-portable surface-to-air missiles.

Is that really true?  Every quote I've read from pilots was something to the effect of "I don't worry about missiles.  I worry about bullets - when it's raining you get wet."

69 Good article, misses a few points though. The F-22 is light years ahead of anything else in the air. It's not just 'difficult to kill', it's untouchable at any range. In exercises against US pilots flying US aircraft (i.e. the best damn fighters in the world) it scored better than a hundred to one kill ratios. Combined with our superior training, the F-22 fleet, even if not as large as originally planned, should still do a fantastic job of maintaining air superiority in any type of conflict. (Unlike the F-35, the 22 will not be sold to anybody. We're the only ones who have it.)

Y'all hit CAS on the nose though. You need something slow and ugly to do it best, and nothing is slower or uglier than the A-10. (The AC-130 deserves a mention here too, nothing can put lead on target more quickly and precisely, and there are no plans to retire them anytime soon. Also slow and ugly...)

70 This post approved by the management. Open Blog has not been declared.

He has to say this, otherwise LauraW will post pictures of the Hoff in a Speedo.

71 Good article, misses a few points though. The F-22 is light years ahead of anything else in the air. It's not just 'difficult to kill', it's untouchable at any range.

This week.  But its service life is expected to be what, at least 30 years or so?  Twenty years from now it won't be untouchable at all - it'll be outclassed by Russian fighters and Chinese fighters and who the hell knows what other kinda fighters.  And we'll still only have 187 of them.

72 Just bring back the Sky Raider for CAS!

73 1. @38: I was afraid no one had read Coram's bio of John Boyd. Pierre Sprey owed a lot to Boyd, and we got the A10. 2. We need guns to hose the bastards. 3. @43: Leadership endangers us. Again. 4. Wait for the first blue on blue casualties from a UAV with either degraded bandwidth or faulty control (some CIA dweeb at the trigger). YouTube has a Border Collie-like A10 driver making DAMN sure there'll be no friendlies under his gun run. 5. Since when does the U.S. Constitution permit a standing army? Thos. Jefferson: "The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:184. CAS should go to the USMC. How often does the Army get out of their UPCs?

74 @76: "UPC" s/b "APC". Sorry.

75 An A-10 shot down a plane? Dang that's impressive. Or the Iraqi pilot was just awful.

76 For your delectation: http://tinyurl.com/2cm3yfd. My kids hate the song, but I think it's great!

77

 

The F-111 was a study in "one size fits all"  abject failure.

The F-18 was a "one size fits all" failure that began the same way the F-35 did. To justify the cost, they hung it with every mission. Over time, it has transformed into a "one size fits some" qualified success.

Hopefully the F-35 will be an F-18 rather than an F-111.

 

This   http://tinyurl.com/yfqjm4j
 is the headquarters for F-35 haterade. Brace yourself. I think the F-35 used to beat his Momma.

 

For really close air support, this would be great to see.

http://tinyurl.com/2ejqxdq

 

But this is more likely

http://tinyurl.com/24fkg29

78

70 Concur with the notion of getting by with fewer F-22s, but it needs to be more than 120-150 combat aircraft (figure at least 30-50 for spares for a total of 187). We're doing okay- not great- with 300 total F-15C, D, and E models, and an argument could be made to buy a hundred or so F-15Js (or whatever it is we're selling to Singapore and Japan) with all the nifty new datalinks.

I cringe when I look at what the cost overruns are for the F-35, and don't forget that the Israelis, the Australians, and the Canadians all would much rather have the F-22.

I'd rather have F-15Js, or the new F-16 with supercruise,now, than a couple hundred parking spaces with "F-35" painted on them.The Dutch have  dropped out of the F-35 program. The Australians aren't far behind them. There is a rumbling there for the Super Hornet instead.The Canadians? They are having trouble fielding a single submarine. I can't see them dropping this kind of cash on aircraft.

Spreading the bill around isn't working too good. Like you said, nobody seems real excited by the F-35. The Japanese have also made no secret that they would much rather have the F-22.

79 The article misses the big picture. Namely that even aviation is coupled to computing power and, subsequently, Moore's Law. This can be seen most obviously in Lockheed's computing the solutions to Petr Ufimtsev's work on Stealth into the Senior Trend project. The progression in stealth since has been coupled to Moore's law very directly. Note that Senior Trend's R&D was in the late '70s, ATB (B2) was a few years following. RQ-3's research was in the late '80s. And this is just an example, material science, aerodynamic modeling, AI, are all being advanced at similarly quick rates. Given this, the problem facing the airforce is whether to invest a whole lot of money into a design (F/A-22 or F-35) which could happen to fall on the wrong side of a paradigm shift enabled by the underlying current of Moore's Law and the cheap computing power we currently have. At which point you're stuck with a whole bunch of expensive toys which are useless when faced against a current computer designed UCAV whose design is uninhibited by the necessity of a cockpit and has a 10 or 12db reduction in RCS, can pull a sustained 15 or 20g turn and is smart enough to turn in a way that minimizes returns to known threats. Or perhaps against a swarm of cheaper UCAV's, who knows. And don't think this is all fluff-talk. Bill Wagner's book, Lightening Bugs and other Reconnaissance Drones tells the story of how since the mid 1970s, the BMQ-34F (firefly) could and did out-fly the F-4 and the latest F-15/16 teams. They would routinely pull hundred+ degree turns and get behind the aggressor aircraft in around 10 seconds. I believe one 'target' firefly survived 80+ engagements against F-15/16s. But as much as I like the Raptor, the whole man-in-the-loop argument is old and tired.

80

78 An A-10 shot down a plane? Dang that's impressive. Or the Iraqi pilot was just awful.

 

I'm pretty sure it was a chopper.

81 Time for tac-nukes! http://tinyurl.com/296j5m5

82

At which point you're stuck with a whole bunch of expensive toys which are useless when faced against a current computer designed UCAV whose design is uninhibited by the necessity of a cockpit and has a 10 or 12db reduction in RCS, can pull a sustained 15 or 20g turn and is smart enough to turn in a way that minimizes returns to known threats. Or perhaps against a swarm of cheaper UCAV's, who knows. _vince

 

I wish we would explore this more. The swarm concept would be cheap and almost unstoppable. It's going to be used on us at some point, we might as well get in front of it. The Air Force is fighting this pretty hard, tho.

 

83 CAS should go to the USMC. How often does the Army get out of their UPCs?

The marines already do their own CAS with Harriers and drones.  And I hope that question is rhetorical.  We've lost a lot of good people outside the protection of M-2s and Strykers.

84 I wish we would explore this more. The swarm concept would be cheap and almost unstoppable. It's going to be used on us at some point, we might as well get in front of it. The Air Force is fighting this pretty hard, tho.

The AF has mostly given up that fight - even the ex-fighter jocks in charge (the "fighter mafia", as Dunnigan calls them) realize the F-35 is probably the last manned fighter the US will produce.  But it takes decades to field new hardware, and things don't always work as well as you thought they would.  By the time Vietnam rolled around the Air Force thought dog fighting would be 100% missiles and it would never build another fighter with a gun.  While that was a logical assumption, given the way things were shaping up, it turned out to be wrong.

Man-in-the-loop gives you some big advantages when it comes to target identification and situational awareness.  In theory it's all surmountable with the right sensors and the right software, but nobody's been able to actually write that software yet.

85 The F-18 was a "one size fits all" failure that began the same way the F-35 did. To justify the cost, they hung it with every mission. Over time, it has transformed into a "one size fits some" qualified success.

I remember seeing an article on the debate between the F-18 and the A-7 Corsair in Time magazine a long time ago, but most of the details elude me. I do remember that the F-18 was criticized for burning up fuel at a faster clip than the Corsair II.

86 The F-18 actually made a bit of sense even if it turned out to be neither fish nor fowl.  You can only carry so many aircraft on a carrier, and you only need strike capability when you're going to do a strike.  So by replacing the A-6 and F-14 with a single aircraft they were able to have potentially twice as many aircraft available for a specific mission.

This sort of thinking makes a lot less sense for land-based aircraft.

87 This is what part of the stimulus should have been spent on: buying aircraft already in production. Then you mothball them or slowly sell them off.

88 "Man-in-the-loop gives you some big advantages when it comes to target identification and situational awareness." Isn't the remote operator a man in the loop?

89

I remember seeing an article on the debate between the F-18 and the A-7 Corsair in Time magazine a long time ago, but most of the details elude me. I do remember that the F-18 was criticized for burning up fuel at a faster clip than the Corsair II.

 

Range sucked. So they went from short legs to stumpy legs. By hanging tanks on them.

 

90

89 The F-18 actually made a bit of sense even if it turned out to be neither fish nor fowl.  You can only carry so many aircraft on a carrier, and you only need strike capability when you're going to do a strike.  So by replacing the A-6 and F-14 with a single aircraft they were able to have potentially twice as many aircraft available for a specific mission.

This sort of thinking makes a lot less sense for land-based aircraft.

 

The F-18 does a lot. Some of it even fairly well,especially after they souped it up. The Super Hornet does even more, hell one variant is even a tanker. Another takes over from the Prowler. I don't know much about the Growler. What I have read is mostly bad reviews. Although most of the problems come from the jammer pod than the aircraft.  

91 Isn't the remote operator a man in the loop?

Yes, I suppose.  I should have said "man in the cockpit".  The remote operator still doesn't have the same situational awareness the pilot has.  That's why the accident rate for UAVs is so much higher than it is for manned aircraft.  And then there's the possibility the signal will be jammed or otherwise interrupted.

92 That's why the accident rate for UAVs is so much higher than it is for manned aircraft. And then there's the possibility the signal will be jammed or otherwise interrupted. Note that modern pilots fly based almost exclusively off sensors for the information streams that feed their "situational awareness." It's going to be reasonably trivial in the coming decade to replace the pilot. It will start in niche roles, as it has for the RQ-3/4, and then expand out. At first perhaps only for times in which the "man-in-the-loop-but-not-cockpit" link is broken and then evolve into the X45 or X47 -esque vehicles. SAM suppression, for instance, has been done since the '70s using UCAVs such as the modified Firebee's carrying Shrike and HARMs and is low-hanging fruit in this regard. You can define a boundery area to cover, the target is active and easy to pick-out, etc. That is, if there isn't already a black project that supersedes the F-117A niche.

93
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