A-10 vs F-35 - taking (virtual) bets

[Tirak]

That's cute...

 

Every time myself or others listed a reason why specific features of the A-10 made it better for CAS your standard fall back was "Yeah butt the F-35 has..." A feature that in YOUR opinion makes the A-10 obsolete. As such you succeded in running those who disagree with you off.

 

Fact majority of your assertions about what makes the F-35 capable of performing CAS run counter to the research of the people who originally designed the A-10 to perform the CAS mission so I'm gonna defer to THIER judgement.

 

The F-35 is an Albatross. The concept of "One size fits all" just doesn't work when designing Aircraft. You always have to sacrifice performance for in one area to gain performance in another. This is fact NOT hyperbole. If you strip a way everything that makes the F-35 useful, all of the nifty new and shiny...it's not optimized for anything. It flies...but so does an albatross.

 

The F-35 is a great replacement for the Harrier...but it was going to be far too expensive for 1 service to foot the bill. So the defense industry came up with the Joint Strike Fighter. They gave Congress 1 size fits all.

 

The simple fact is The A-10 was optimized for CAS, The F-15 was optimized for Air Superiority, The F-16 was optimized as a lightweight fighter.

 

You cannot say any of those things about the F-35 as an aircraft. You cannot say any of those things about the F-35 performing a specific mission unless you add the word "its sensors" to the sentence.

 

The requirements for the A-10 were drawn up in an age before guided weapons like we use today, before targeting pods, before GPS before datalinks, before pretty much modern air combat. It was designed based on concepts that hadn't been refined since the Germans were divebombing Russian artillery pieces with JU-87 bombers. Times changed, technology improved and now your dinosaur of a plane is as effective as an M163 gun carrier. Sure, there was a time when filling the air with lead was a really great way of doing a job, but now there are superior alternatives, and ones that fulfill roles that the dinosaur can't.

 

You for some reason seem to be incapable of understanding the change in battlefield weapons, which very much reminds me of WWI generals faced with new weapons and innovations. They refused to change to suit them and millions died.

[Cunctator]

The F-35 is an Albatross. The concept of "One size fits all" just doesn't work when designing Aircraft. You always have to sacrifice performance for in one area to gain performance in another. This is fact NOT hyperbole. If you strip a way everything that makes the F-35 useful, all of the nifty new and shiny...it's not optimized for anything. It flies...but so does an albatross.

 

It is not true that the F-35 is not optimized for its role. The F-35 is a strike fighter and that role it excels. The Lightning can fly into any heavily defended airspace, locate targets on the ground and blow them up, while being able to defend itself against all possible threats. It wasn't designed as an air superiority fighter or interceptor, that was the F-22's job.

They analyzed how the F/A-18, F-16 and AV-8 were actually used in combat in the last decades and then build an aircraft that fits perfectly in that role.

 

If you take away all high tech stuff you still have an airframe that can carry two 2000 ibs bombs, AMRAAMs for self defense and enough fuel for a 600 nm combat radius internally and can still fly at Mach 1.6. No F-15, F-16 or Tornado can do that in a similar configuration while carrying bombs, target pods and tanks.

 

Stealth, sensors and sufficient performance and maneuverability will be enough to prevail in A2A until someone can afford to build a similar number (1000+) of stealth fighters, which will not happen anytime soon.

[zxarkov]

Here is something worth considering: The over reliance on PGMs

 

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/06/we-cant-always-count-on-smart-bombs-csba-study/

[BSS_Sniper]

That's the thing, though: comparing CAS to CCA to mortars to artillery is EXACTLY the comparison we should make, because the goal is not to determine "what system is best at loitering the longest and making low gun runs the best", it is "what system is best at most rapidly and effectively providing the required battlefield effects", and quite often, not only is the answer to that question not the A-10, its NOT EVEN CAS AT ALL.

 

CAS is nice in a non-contiguous (IE, COIN) battlefield, because, as you point out, the forces may not always be in range of a surface-fired system. However, that's unlikely to be the case in a high-intensity conflict, where there will be far more well-defined front lines and much more concentration of assets (and the artillery crews will actually be manning their guns instead of playing infantry redux thanks to ROE that prevent using their guns in the first place). CAS will always be required in support of special operations, who operate way beyond the range of surface fires. It'll always be required for COIN because of the vast distances the COIN force must control (but again, you probably don't need anything quite as powerful and sophisticated as the modern A-10C for the job). It'll always be required for airborne operations, because parachute forces cannot generally bring enough heavy weapons and artillery of their own. It's kind-of necessary for air assault, but they can usually bring a lot of heavy weapons, and have gunship helicopters anyway. However, for the majority of the units in the US military, CAS is a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have.

 

For most up-close-and-personal fights, the infantry (and supporting armor and artillery) actually have better weapons for dealing with the enemy- to include armor- within a couple kilometers of themselves than CAS. They don't need CAS to kill the stuff they can kill themselves with sabot, Javelin, CDTE airburst grenades, and mortar/ artillery fires. In that scenario, all CAS is doing is providing another source of fires, which are less timely and lower volume than the artillery is already providing, and which isn't accomplishing anything the artillery isn't already... except that the artillery often has to cease fire to allow the CAS into the area.

 

No, it's stupid to use airpower to attack the targets that surface fires are already successfully prosecuting. Instead, air should be used to engage the targets that surface fires CAN'T successfully engage. By conducting BAI and interdiction missions, killing armor reserves behind the lines, disrupting artillery behind the lines, and crushing the supply lines behind the lines, air power provides a much greater force multiplying effect than it would by simply directly attacking forces already in contact.

 

And for that mission, an F-16 or F-35 is as, if not more, well suited than an A-10.

 

You obviously were never in the infantry. lol There's no such thing as a tank nearby. There's always aircraft...

[tflash]

So, time for a quick round-up of the results so far: we're stuck with the A-10C because WWI generals didn't adapt tot the changing reality that CAS should be performed in a COIN situation where millions die, often by 5.56 bullets that proved to be superior to the 7.62x39. A-10's came to the rescue of troops in contact after turning the tail to the republican guard because the Gulf war was erroneously started before the F-35 was fielded with its superior SDB I missile, that we should not confound with the SDB II that actually would fit in the cargo hold of the AC-130, which is by far the most superior CAS aircraft for conflicts that unfortunately turned obsolete when the F-22 came online.

Contrary to artillery, the F-35 has enough fuel and range to stay away from CAS, which is already overcrowded with all the jets, transports, bombers and drones overhead that compete to perform this task better than the A-10 that was never designed for it in the first place. Instead, given its stealth the F-35 can sneak away out of the conflict unharmed, not so bad for a plane inspired by the flight dynamics of an albatros!

[Sweep]

Here is something worth considering: The over reliance on PGMs

 

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/06/we-cant-always-count-on-smart-bombs-csba-study/

 

Very interesting article.

 

 

(snip)

 

:megalol: :megalol: :megalol: :thumbup:

[OutOnTheOP]

You obviously were never in the infantry. lol There's no such thing as a tank nearby. There's always aircraft...

 

Is there also never a mortar or javelin nearby, nor a tube or rocket artillery battery capable of ranging?

 

Because if you were in the infantry and never planned ahead to bring any form of supporting weapons (like, say, your 60mm mortars), you were incompetent and failed to plan (or planned to fail).

 

No, I was a 13A (field artillery officer), because, surprise surprise, that's what fire support officers are. I served with the FIST team of a Stryker cavalry troop and later with a parachute infantry regiment (that's infantry, by the way).

 

I've seen too many idiots that thought that they'd take on the world with their M4, and left their mortars (and other support weapons) behind because they thought they "wouldn't need them". Those guys are the ones that end up in a bad way, screaming for CAS support, because they made a piss-poor decision not to bring any of the weapons that have been proven time and again to be the ones that actually do most of the killing on the modern battlefield.

 

I had a troop commander that genuinely entertained the notion of pulling our 120s out of our M1129s because he "wanted more troop carriers". I was able to convince him it was a bad idea, because we already had 14 "troop carriers" in the troop, and only enough troops to fill 5 of the 12 seats on each anyway (and because if, in the deployment, we decided we needed the mortars, it would have been too late, as re-installing the turrets is a depot-level job). Luckily, logic prevailed, because as it happened (and I mentioned earlier), our mortars did the lion's share of the killing. Funny how proper planning for supporting arms obviated our need for "life-saving CAS", even during the 2007 Battle of Baqubah (one of the largest single engagements of post-2003 Iraq)

 

Oh, and by the way, we had tanks and Bradleys on call within 20 minutes at pretty much all times, even though we were not ourselves a tank unit. However, we had CAS support for my troop *once*, and it was an F-16. (plenty of Apaches out of FOB Warhorse, though). The only A-10s in country would have taken hours to get there (I'm pretty sure they were frag'd to Anbar at the time). Tanks were so available that we literally called up a two-tank section just to blast a *footbridge* between the Shia and Sunni neighborhoods that was being used to launch retribution attacks between the two. Bradleys are AWESOME for clearing hostile buildings, by the way. Better than even Apaches; they can use a short burst to open a hole into each room (or just fire through windows) and kill everything inside without needing to flatten the whole building with less accurate fire.

 

Funny, I never noticed that aircraft were "always available", I usually noticed (and yes, I did read the ATO) that there were like 4-8 tasked to the entire country of Iraq on any given day, and that *if* you could get one, it would take an hour to get the aircraft on station and get clearance of fires. Not impressed with XCAS or push CAS one bit. I *did* notice that Apache was available reasonably often, tanks and Brads were usually available, mortars were *always* available (if you weren't too stupid to leave them home), and the GMLRS is a thing of glory. On the one occasion we did get CAS it worked great, but we could have accomplished the same with a GMLRS.

 

Sorry if that hurts any CAS-afficianado's tiny little TF34-driven hearts.

Edited May 9, 2016 by OutOnTheOP

[Hummingbird]

Iraq and Afghanistan are two different beasts....

[OutOnTheOP]

Iraq and Afghanistan are two different beasts....

 

You're right; in Afghanistan, it is more rural, and therefore harder for the enemy to hide amongst civilian population in such a way as to preclude the application of indirect fire assets such as mortar and artillery fires; it is also harder for them to close to extremely short distances of the sort where weapons like SDB could not be employed.

 

There is literally no more demanding scenario for precision of close fires than in an urban fight.

 

I'm still not seeing any CAS task in Afghanistan that could not be performed by a light turboprop airframe like the Super Tucano with, say, a 7x70mm rocket pod, 4x SDB and a reasonably accurate 30mm low-velocity cannon or 40mm AGL pod... or by an F-35 (though the F-35 would be totally overkill, as is the A-10, to be honest).

Edited May 9, 2016 by OutOnTheOP

[Hummingbird]

The landscape of Afghanistan is the very reason CAS is absolutely vital there, armoured vehicle support often being impossible whilst effective artillery support is complicated enormously by terrain.

 

It really isn't the less demanding environment you are describing it to be.

[OutOnTheOP]

The landscape of Afghanistan is the very reason CAS is absolutely vital there, armoured vehicle support often being impossible whilst effective artillery support is complicated enormously by terrain.

 

It really isn't the less demanding environment you are describing it to be.

 

Yes, Afghanistan is difficult terrain for mounted maneuver. So? The only reason patrols in Afghanistan are ever outside the fire fan of supporting artillery or mortar is because a) Afghanistan is, all in all, a pretty low-threat environment, and b) when faced with a fairly low-threat environment, guys get lazy and complacent.

 

M777 and M119 howitzer are helicopter transportable. M252 and M224 mortars are man-packable. An infantry company worth it's salt carries it's company mortars and two rounds per rifleman. An infantry company that is lazy does not. Lazy companies need air support when faced by irregulars armed with small arms. Companies with integral mortar fires are capable of laying an immediate, thick barrage of extremely lethal 60-81mm fires within 50-70 meters of their own positions on demand and will almost never actually *need* CAS in COIN. You can put the same lethality of fire (against field fortifications; better against personnel due to multioption airburst fuzes) and far better suppressive effect (due to longer duration of fire) with 10-16 mortar rounds compared with a 300-round GAU-8 run. The mortars are far more responsive than even the best CAS, too. Mind you, a company can carry 250+ mortar rounds without any motorized transport and adding not more than 7 pounds to any individual rifleman's load (yes, I know, every ounce matters; I get it. Those 7 pounds are more valuable in a firefight than *almost* any other weapon they could carry) In theory, you might want CAS against targets that your organic weapons could not handle, but with modern ATGM, there is very little an infantry company is just straight-up not capable of handling, up to and including tanks. I suppose they would need heavier fires to deal with heavy fortifications in the style of the Maginot line?

 

Anyway, for what CAS *is* needed, there is very little reason that a dedicated COIN light attack aircraft (or indeed any of the PGM-enabled fast-movers) could not accomplish 95% of the tasks A-10 does; a light COIN aircraft has the advantage of costing 1/7th what an A-10 does in operational costs, while the fast-movers have the advantage of actually being useful in other roles and in actual AD threat environments.

Edited May 10, 2016 by OutOnTheOP

[Boagrius]

It strikes me that much of this discussion centres on how you view the US' likely strategic outlook over the next several decades (or more). A lot of the dialogue so far has focused on CAS in the relatively low intensity COIN type situations of the past (Iraq and Afghanistan). My suspicion, however, is that the USAF are prioritising their high end war fighting capability by adamantly replacing the A10 with a different class of aircraft in the F35.

 

Surely the USAF's most pressing future challenge resides in providing a conventional deterrent to Chinese expansionism in the Western Pacific and similar Russian moves in the Baltic. I don't think it would be controversial of me to say that the F35 is much better placed to contribute to such a deterrent than is the A10. Both the Chinese and Russians are working hard on the kind of next gen IADS and A2/AD capabilities that would render the A10 nigh on useless ten, twenty and certainly thirty years from now. This to to say nothing of the questionable usefulness of a short legged CAS jet in the Pacific Theatre now...

 

Just my 2c.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Boagrius

[Mike5560]

Both the Chinese and Russians are working hard on the kind of next gen IADS and A2/AD capabilities that would render the A10 nigh on useless ten, twenty and certainly thirty years from now.

 

Or say perhaps, SA-21s like the ones with coverage in Syria across the Turkish border. Or SA-22s with their anti-PGM capability in a more tactical, mobile role could spell a significant challenge even for LO jets.

[Boagrius]

Or say perhaps, SA-21s like the ones with coverage in Syria across the Turkish border. Or SA-22s with their anti-PGM capability in a more tactical, mobile role could spell a significant challenge even for LO jets.

 

Indeed. Granted there is always SEAD to consider, but there is absolutely no guarantee that even a localized Russian or Chinese IADS would suddenly collapse ala Desert Storm (thereby allowing the A10s to enter the fray on "Day 2"). Both of those powers would have a vastly superior ability to sustain attrition and "plug" nodes back into their IADS system in response to losses than the Iraqis ever did.

 

The reality is that highly numerous and independent mobile GBAD systems like Pantsir, Sosna, Strela 10M4, Buk M3, Tor M2E and even Verba could still make the battlefield prohibitively dangerous to the A10 fleet for an untenably large portion of the air war. Hats off to any Hog driver who so much as contemplates getting low and close enough to employ the GAU-8 in that kind of threat environment (!). This is to say nothing of theatre level systems like S300/400/500 and HQ9/10/15/18 or the threat posed by enemy airpower...

 

Better an F35 that can actually provide some CAS (among other important things eg. self escort) right from the outset of hostilities than an A10 that can provide none (and little else besides)? This may be particularly true in a time of ever tightening budgets, and I suspect this closely reflects the USAF's own rationale atm...

Edited May 10, 2016 by Boagrius

[Fer_Fer]

Desert storm is not a good example.

The french supplied the US with detailed information on RAKI, the integrated system they build for Iraq. Which in itself wasn't bad except for the fact everything was routed through a single mainframe located in a bunker beneath the ministry of defence. When day 1 strikes took it out, the IADS stopped functioning and turned into several isolated systems

[Boagrius]

The french supplied the US with detailed information on RAKI, the integrated system they build for Iraq. Which in itself wasn't bad except for the fact everything was routed through a single mainframe located in a bunker beneath the ministry of defence. When day 1 strikes took it out, the IADS stopped functioning and turned into several isolated systems

 

^ That was exactly my point? (ie. a Russian/Chinese IADS wouldn't roll over and die as easily as that). This could have serious implications for the A10 fleet - potentially forcing it to sit on the sidelines for much of the air campaign. Again, at least the F35 fleet could be credibly providing CAS from the day hostilities broke out until the day they finished.

Edited May 11, 2016 by Boagrius

[Basher54321]

Desert storm is not a good example.

The french supplied the US with detailed information on RAKI, the integrated system they build for Iraq.

 

Do you mean KARI?

[SkateZilla]

Saw a bumper sticker today:

"A-10s are Designed to Brrrrrrt, F-35s are Designed to Bling Bling"

[Boagrius]

Saw a bumper sticker today:

"A-10s are Designed to Brrrrrrt, F-35s are Designed to Bling Bling"

 

You might want a bit of bling bling too if you had an integrated double digit SAM threat to deal with... not so much the brrrt gun though :P

Edited May 11, 2016 by Boagrius

[Emu]

Don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

 

Don't bring a gun to a missile fight.

[Wolverine88]

Yes, Afghanistan is difficult terrain for mounted maneuver. So? The only reason patrols in Afghanistan are ever outside the fire fan of supporting artillery or mortar is because a) Afghanistan is, all in all, a pretty low-threat environment, and b) when faced with a fairly low-threat environment, guys get lazy and complacent.

 

M777 and M119 howitzer are helicopter transportable. M252 and M224 mortars are man-packable. An infantry company worth it's salt carries it's company mortars and two rounds per rifleman. An infantry company that is lazy does not. Lazy companies need air support when faced by irregulars armed with small arms. Companies with integral mortar fires are capable of laying an immediate, thick barrage of extremely lethal 60-81mm fires within 50-70 meters of their own positions on demand and will almost never actually *need* CAS in COIN. You can put the same lethality of fire (against field fortifications; better against personnel due to multioption airburst fuzes) and far better suppressive effect (due to longer duration of fire) with 10-16 mortar rounds compared with a 300-round GAU-8 run. The mortars are far more responsive than even the best CAS, too. Mind you, a company can carry 250+ mortar rounds without any motorized transport and adding not more than 7 pounds to any individual rifleman's load (yes, I know, every ounce matters; I get it. Those 7 pounds are more valuable in a firefight than *almost* any other weapon they could carry) In theory, you might want CAS against targets that your organic weapons could not handle, but with modern ATGM, there is very little an infantry company is just straight-up not capable of handling, up to and including tanks. I suppose they would need heavier fires to deal with heavy fortifications in the style of the Maginot line?

 

Anyway, for what CAS *is* needed, there is very little reason that a dedicated COIN light attack aircraft (or indeed any of the PGM-enabled fast-movers) could not accomplish 95% of the tasks A-10 does; a light COIN aircraft has the advantage of costing 1/7th what an A-10 does in operational costs, while the fast-movers have the advantage of actually being useful in other roles and in actual AD threat environments.

 

Ok, I get how things are working (or not) for fire support NOW. How do you see some possible future confrontations with say Russia, in maybe...Eastern Europe...with a more "symmetrical" type of warfare?

 

My dad was a FIST guy during the Vietnam war and I've had training as an AF TACP. I remember my dad saying what my instructors used to, that an FO has his battlefield survivability measured in seconds or minutes. My hat's off to you red-legs! huah.

[OutOnTheOP]

Ok, I get how things are working (or not) for fire support NOW. How do you see some possible future confrontations with say Russia, in maybe...Eastern Europe...with a more "symmetrical" type of warfare?

 

My dad was a FIST guy during the Vietnam war and I've had training as an AF TACP. I remember my dad saying what my instructors used to, that an FO has his battlefield survivability measured in seconds or minutes. My hat's off to you red-legs! huah.

 

I was more or less focusing on the use of the A-10 for unconventional combat, simply because against a near-peer like Russia, as has been pointed out, the A-10 just wouldn't even be able to play. It couldn't fight low because of the huge prevalence of effective MANPADS, and it couldn't fight high because of effective mobile radar SAMs and the fighter threat. Moreover, its cannon isn't effective against tanks, and the most useful weapons in the anti-armor role (CBU97/105 and similar) can be just as effectively employed by F-16, F-35 and the like (more effectively, if you count "gets to target alive" as part of the criteria).

[RoflSeal]

I was more or less focusing on the use of the A-10 for unconventional combat, simply because against a near-peer like Russia, as has been pointed out, the A-10 just wouldn't even be able to play. It couldn't fight low because of the huge prevalence of effective MANPADS, and it couldn't fight high because of effective mobile radar SAMs and the fighter threat. Moreover, its cannon isn't effective against tanks, and the most useful weapons in the anti-armor role (CBU97/105 and similar) can be just as effectively employed by F-16, F-35 and the like (more effectively, if you count "gets to target alive" as part of the criteria).

 

Hasn't AGM-154 JSOW which has a launch range of 12-70nm, basically replaced CBU-97?

[SkateZilla]

what a minute, the tank killer's gun doesn't work against tanks? that's news to me.

[Sweep]

Hasn't AGM-154 JSOW which has a launch range of 12-70nm, basically replaced CBU-97?

 

No.

 

AGM-154B got cancelled back in the late 90s/early 2ks - That was the -97 equivalent JSOW, with 6 BLU-108 - The 97/105 have 8, IIRC that was part of the reason JSOW-B got canned.