Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "A-10 Thunderbolt 30mm vs F-35 Lightning 25mm | GAU-8 Avenger Cannon Versus GAU-12/U Equalizer Cannon" video.

Yeah just ignore that multiroles have been ground pounders for three decades now.
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@bush_wookie_9606 Yes. The F-35 will get there faster, the pilot has superior visibility over the battlefield, and will be able to place weapons more accurately. Also, funny how you accuse me of not understanding irony when you clearly show that you know that I understood your comment, and you also understood my own use of irony.
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The A-10 has already been replaced. Vast majority of CAS is performed by other planes.
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@bush_wookie_9606 I didn't realize we were talking about the Tornado. Oh yeah, the low altitude strike aircraft that received an upgrade to expand capabilities in medium altitude after the low altitude dash met air defenses? You mean just like the entire concept being the A-10 was essentially struck a huge blow in 1973 when everyone realized integrated air defense systems would be a bitch to handle? The world keeps turning. I think the F-16 succeeded as a multirole despite that. Harriers? The USMC lost fewer of those than A-10s in combat, making their attrition rate 1.5 per 1000 sorties while the A-10's was 0.875. Big whoop. "ultimately I think a updated remote piloted A10 would be far better" - You can't keep upgrading old airframes forever, and remote piloting is better achieved through drone. It would make more sense to design a drone for CAS than turn the A-10 into a drone. This is what's so goddamn weird with the A-10 conversation, we can pretend that the A-10 supremacists only want a CAS-focused aircraft to replace it but no, they straight up want to keep the A-10 in the air, no matter what. Even if it takes something as silly as making it an unmanned aircraft.
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@bush_wookie_9606 "but ultimately the US airforce is not interested in CAS and never has been" - WHOOOP there it is. Yeah, keep parroting the old "military reformers" nonsense made up to write books. The USAF was always interested in the CAS role and history proves it. "the F16 was meant to replace the A10 and it never lived up to it." - But it already did. F-16 performs over 30% of CAS missions while the A-10 only perfoms 11% since 2014. "it has poor maneuverability" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0hWzaKEeZo "a lack of armament" - 18k pounds, babey. "it would be massively easier converting the A10'S to drones" - This has to be a joke, right? The majority of drone conversions is for use a TARGET drones. They're made to fly and get missiles launched at them. For actual drone use, we use drones. It's not easier at all to do a conversion. Just the wiring harness to connect all functions of the A-10 cockpit to a flight computer would be an absolute nightmare. The on-board computer would need to be completely new because you'd need to combine the remote flying of a conventional aircraft of drone conversions with the weapons employment of actual drones. You're severely underestimating the complexity of the aeronautical world. For the cost of converting a fleet of A-10s to drones you could just perform non-stop sorties of conventional drones for years. And in the end? You'd get an underpowered, slow drone that can't handle modern air defenses. And that's reaching the end of its lifespan.
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ALSO-RAN ! If the F-16 was used against the better trained Republican Guard due to A-10 losses... Then why wouldn't a low observable multirole be even more surbiveable? Also, the A-10 is literally irreplaceable because the production lines are closed. If you lose one, that's one less. Can't make any more. F-35s can be produced right now.
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@demomanchaos Who says it's not resilient? You? In real life 7 A-10s were shot down and another 13 suffered severe battle damage in Desert Storm. Almost 30 years ago the A-10 was proven to be obsolete and Chuck Horner pulled it out of missions against the Republican Guard. The A-10 is not resilient at all. Not as effective? Again, says who? Multirole jets are effective at CAS. Hundreds of times more expensive? The F-35A is a bargain at 85 million a piece. Lord knows how much a modern A-10 would cost, and how much you'd have to spend on targeting pods just to give it the bare minimum of capabilities. "overbudget and very far behind schedule" - Welcome to the world of government projects. "little scam that isn't even a suitable replacement for any of the machines it is supposed to replace" - lmao again, says who? You? Pierre Sprey? Russian "experts" on RT? "proven machines that do the job better and for much less money?" - You mean aging machines that get progressively more expensive to maintain?
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@thudthud5423 "armored" - It won't take off. "Until then, keep the A-10 flying." - Planes will literally break apart if pushed past the limit. There's a limit of hours on those airframes.
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But the F-16 provides 33% of CAS missions and the A-10 only 11%. Fast jets perform CAS now. It's a multirole world now.
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In 1991 the amount if A-10s getting shot up had Chuck Horner pull the A-10 out of missions against tge Republican Guard and send in the F-16s. Not getting shot at in the first place iis king, not getting hit when shot at is great, planning to get hit is suicide.
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ALSO-RAN ! Air superiority doesn't mean anything when the threat is the ground.
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ALSO-RAN ! the A-10 is dead meat against an integrated air defense system. Having aircraft overhead doesn't mean anything because the A-10's nemesis is not enemy fighters, but ground units.
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The A-10 had to be pulled out of missions against the Iraqi Republican Guard in 1991 due to all the A-10s shot down and requiring battle damage repair. They're proven against subpar forces or minimally equipped insurgents, but any competent force is gonna bruise the A-10 fleet.
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ALSO-RAN ! The trillions is the total project cost until 2070. The airplane itself is extremely cheap at around 90 million per F-35A. Cheaper than a modern F-16.
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@andrewostrelczuk406 This is all being argued from the wrong perspective. Yes, new things have unforeseen costs. But so do old ones. There's not bringing the A-10 "up to date". What technology can you cram it with that will make a significant improvement? Power plant? What? No. You're not getting a new engine for it, I don't remember when but plans for new engines were scrapped or else you wouldn't get much needed upgrades. Thrust vectoring? Are you out of your mind? Dude, adding a new power plant would definitely require a redesign of the aircraft because a new engine with more thrust would probably increase fuel consumption enough for an entirely new fuel and engine management system to be added. The higher thrust would probably require redesigning the engine mounts and section of the fuselage. Thrust vectoring would DEFINITELY require the fuselage section to be redesigned because by vectoring the thrust... you're also changing the vector on the reaction force so the engine mount will suffer forces from angles that was never designed to handle. You make a bold assertion by accusing others of being armchair quarterbacks while you make a joke out of the aeronautical field. In 30 seconds I could think of severe issues with your upgrade proposal without even having to run any simulations or pick up a calculator. If aeronautical engineering was that easy any idiot could thrive in that field. Mind that the last A-10s to come out the assembly line did so in 1984. They're ageing. Airframes have limits. And you want to soup them up and add thrust vectoring for no discernible reason. "thank goodness we have had a few laying around so they could reverse Engineer it" - Reverse engineering it is literally more expensive than buying a new plane. "more swept back wings" - Why would you sweep the wings back if it's not going to reach transonic speeds? Are you goddamn serious?
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@andrewostrelczuk406 "Since then technology has been so slow to get moving forward" - Because technology was easy to progress when we had little of it so even handymen with no scientific background could invent things, and today technology is so complicated it takes teams of people with doctorates to figure out how to extract 2% more efficiency from solar panels? Or for example when it comes to semiconductors we're making microprocessors so dense that if we keep at this rate the processors will not actually work due to quantum effects causing electrons to skip across channels and corrupting the logic? "just how much Koolaid are you Guzzling?" - What about you? "you know that there is no such thing as Just in time Delivery" - I don't see how this relates to the F-35. "If you have 20 aircraft vs 2 and you have 30 pilots, a mandatory amount of training time to get filled and just one goes down for a maintenance issue there goes the weeks of training and planning" - And you expect old aircraft to be more forgivable in terms of maintenance? They're money pits. Only 60% of the A-10 fleet got the new wings because of how goddamn expensive it is to keep airworthy an aircraft that only gets 11% of CAS missions.
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lol no. It would be extremely expensive for the return. If you're gonna open your wallet it might as well be for something that's gonna last until 2070, not an interim solution.
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The A-10 has already been replaced by F-16s, 18s, 15Es and even the B-1. The A-10 only got 20% of CAS missions since 2004, only 11% since 2014.
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@sheilaolfieway1885 The A-10 has already been replaced. Most CAS missions are performed by F-16s, F-18s, Strike Eagles and B-1s.
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@sheilaolfieway1885 The article says that the aircraft will remain airworthy, not that it will keep getting missions. The A-10 has already been replaced, the USAF simply wastes money keeping it airworthy because they're forced to.
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The first stage of the trigger pull activates a system that stabilizes the entire aircraft.
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@themonkeyspaw7359 you'd be paying a huge unit cost for a small production run because you're paying for the factory, the whole tooling and training dozens of line assemblers to this "new" airframe they'll only be working on for a few months. Once a production line is closed down it's atupid expensive to start a new one.
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RC213V >lemon Pierre Sprey detected. Go back to producing jazz records old man.
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@TheTrueAdept complete hogwash. The A-10 was the USAF's baby and it was them who pushed for the program because they thought they'd lose CAS to the Air Mobility supremacists. This myth that the USAF never wanted it is a lie.
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@reelogic2341 in 1991 the F-111 killed more tanks than the A-10.
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@TheTrueAdept This is completely wrong and you're complicit with the spread of misinformation that comes out of the "military reformers" circles. Stop listening to crazy old people who were trying to sell books. The Fighter Mafia's biggest success was pushing the F-16 project forward, which ended up being a multirole rather than a pure lightweight fighter. Big whoop. The previous chief of staff was an A-10 driver himself. According to your logic he'd never make it up the chain because he was a dirty CAS pilot.
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BalkanBeast so you want to only be ready for the previous war?
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@Night60700 the F-22 dropped bombs in Syria.
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@Night60700 https://youtu.be/2rq031jUiRQ
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RC213V 3 F-16s were lost and 7 A-10s/OA-10 were lost. The missile was the primary tank killer, the problem is everone likes the gun, but it's significantly more dangerous to use it and it's less effective. There's a pilot interview from around Desert Storm where they say that the Maverick cracks the tank in one shot while after a gun run they have to look at the target to see if it caught fire. But the interviewer asks which weapon they like the most and they say gun. Even though it's not as effective.
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RC213V http://rjlee.org/air/ds-aaloss/ there's 3 F-16 losses and 4 damaged. If we count the battle damaged ones then the A-10 suffered... 20.
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RC213V Well, for that comparison we have the Tornado, which was given suicidal missions compared to the A-10, and suffered similar losses - with some going as far as claiming the Tornado did poorly even though it flew extremely dangerous missions at low level in the first days of the conflict. It's honestly amazing. The A-10 was spared from the hardest missions after getting a bruised eye and sent to turkey shoots against undertrained troops, gets a hero's welcome. The most effective aircraft against insurgencies are dedicated COIN aircraft. Turboprop ones, even. The F-35 can go supersonic. The recent hubhub only affects B and C variants flying supersonic at high altitude. B and C variants have a limit on how long they can maintain supersonic flight at certain altitudes. To my knowledge the A variant isn't limited. The F-35 can carry external stores, I don't know what kind of showdown you're expecting but multiple F-35s in the air all capable of shooting 4 missiles each makes for a formidable anti-air force. The A variant can fit 3 AMRAAMs in each bay for a total of 6. The F-35 can fly in the rain. You're confusing an initial restriction from flying under thunderstorms because the F-35 had not yet been fitted with an on board inert gas generator. After it had been fitted and passed environmental testing, the restriction was lifted for 5 years until an issue with the onboard gas generator was found. This only affects the A variant and the restriction will be lifted once the issue with the gas generator is resolved. Can't turn? Check out the air show footage. The F-35 is not an air superiority fighter nor an interceptor. It's the F-16 to the F-15. The F-15C maintains its role as the interceptor since not enough F-22s were produced to replace it. This is a critical concept to understand and you're accusing the F-35 of being unable to fill shoes it was never meant to wear. "critical air-frame issues" - that's rich considering that A-10s, except the ones delivered 1983-1984, also had structural issues. "the supersonic limitation problems (they have just accepted it)" - It will be fixed, but it's going to be resolved with another change in coating. No point in having it pinned in the job board, doesn't mean it's not going to get resolved.
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RC213V If you're intercepting from the back you've already lost. Also, how many multirole fighters can do mach 2 wearing bags and external ordnance? "3 dimensional, thrust vectoring, for maneuverability, and dogfights" - those will do amazingly well at turning tail and running after flight lead gets an AMRAAM straight through the nose cone.
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RC213V Like I said, the government doesn't see fit to spend the money developing a new coating. It will be applied if a new thing comes up. The F-35 coating has already received upgrades. "So 2 of the 3 variants cant go supersonic" - This is borderline lying. They have limits on HOW LONG they can go supersonic AT HIGH ALTITUDE. I don't care if you're sleepy, or you've been drinking, or you're distracted with something else. If you keep carefully stepping around words to create a narrative that is false, I have no option but to start assuming you are a liar. Do you want to be a liar? Or are you going to start paying attention? "Whys the F22 the most maneuverable, and the best dog fighter and air superiority fighter we have" - Because it's the F-15 replacement, and the F-15 was designed for pure air superiority. "When german civilian radar makers can track the F35 across europe" - You do realize that in peacetime stealth aircraft wear radar reflectors to make themselves visible to air traffic controllers and also to prevent enemies from analyzing their true RCS, right? Why give up the goods to anyone who's watching? Also, if the radar isn't enough for a firing solution, all it can do is watch as the F-35 moves around your territory with impunity and bombs all your defenses to hell. Knowing that the F-35 is in the air doesn't do anything. Unless you can shoot weapons at it, all you can do is watch a screen while your comrades die. "The fact that USAF we are upgrading F15s, to the F15x for dogfights and air superiority to plug that gaping F35 hole" - The F-22 was the F-15 replacement. The F-35 is a multirole and thus replaces the F-16s job. But because people like you claimed the F-22 was useless and too expensive, the F-22 project was canceled. Now F-15s have to fill the F-22 hole. Careful. Again I will ask you to speak the truth or else I'll have to accuse you of something I don't to accuse you off. I'm treating you with respect. If you can't respect me enough to avoid using falsehoods, I'll have no option. "the huge cost overruns and flaws make the F-35 look increasingly like the world's most expensive lemon." - The F-35 is literaly cheaper than the F-16. Look at F-16 purchase contracts. The cost of a single aircraft plus all the pods that actually give it worthwhile capabilities is over 100 million. The F-22, if production was restarted, would cost 220 million. "you have now sunk to claiming all the warthog kills were not the most elite units, as if that matters!" - It matters that the Iraqi Republican Guard tore into the A-10 so hard that the air force had to keep them safe and baby it by giving them the regular army units which were much less capable. Sorry. If a plane can't be used against a trained force that proves something's wrong with it, and that does matter. "they got 900 tanks" - Most of them by Maverick missile, which multiroles can carry. And the F-111 got 1500. "If you think the loss of 7 aircraft, and 20 damaged(A10 is made to absorb it)" - I don't think you get the picture. There were many more damaged A-10s, the list is of coalition losses. Many more A-10s received damage without loss of the plane. The fact is that the A-10 had its losses limited by handling it with kid gloves. Had it been forced to go in for real for the total of the war there would have been more. Also, you're really missing the big issue. The Air Force made its decision after losing two in one day and having 14 receiving damage repairs on the ramp. If you're losing planes, and the ones that come back are sitting getting repaired at one point the fleet will not be mission capable.
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RC213V All your links claim the issue only exists at extremely high altitudes. And like described, the Pentagon isn't paying for the fix but as soon as a new coating is developed it will be applied. The F-35 already changed coating twice, and it's coating was an improvement over the F-22's in the first place. "As i agree with the USAF that the A10s be kept for the foreseeable future." - And by extension you agree with the USAF not giving them CAS missions, instead issuing them to mudhens and vipers. Fair deal. The boomers with nostalgia goggles are placated, and the USAF pours millions into keeping A-10s in service for no reason other than keeping oldheads happy. "yes 80% of tank kills used maverick(never said they were not)" - But the important aspect is that other aircraft can fire Mavericks so the tank killing potential of the A-10 came from something that wasn't exclusive to the airframe. "But the 2000 other vehicles, and 1200 artillery pieces were mostly gun" - Wouldn't take a 30mm GAU-8 to destroy those. Hey, the first night of Desert Storm low flying Apaches wrecked all sorts of shit by firing the cannon at everything that was around the radar dishes they popped with missiles. So there's nothing exclusive to the A-10. "in the 6 day war when israel destroyed egypts air force on the ground, people did not say, it wasn't a huge feat or was a big part of winning the war, and didn't drastically change the strategic situation in the mid east, because they were easy kills, of planes on the ground, who thinks like that" - I don't even know where you're trying to go with this. If Israel got wrecked by a trained force, it would shatter some kind of ideal about them being a big military power. If you try to start a bar fight, and someone who knows boxing knocks you out, everyone will think you're a joke if you wake up and start beating a smaller guy who isn't trained. "I don't think the F22 is too expensive, or a waste of money" - You would have if you were born a generation earlier. And if you were born two generations earlier, you'd think the F-16 was a waste too, full of failures, a lawn dart, etc. Or the Harrier. "The F22 handles the best because it replaced the F15?" - Are you mocking me? The F-22 was designed to meet the parameters of the F-15. The F-35 wasn't. It was designed for other use cases and roles. So it doesn't perform like the F-22. Just like the F-16 doesn't perform like the F-15. "They are not going to replace the stealth coating at this time, lmao" - Aircraft go under maintenance all the time. As soon as a new coating is tested and approved, F-35s in need of refurbishing will get it rebaked into their skin instead of the old one. "The plane overflying europe did not have stealth coating?" - Are you mocking me? UNLESS CLASSIFIED AS SECRET, FLYING STEALTH AIRCRAFT IS DANGEROUS BECAUSE THEY WON'T BE SEEN BY AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS AND POTENTIALLY CAUSE DISASTERS. STEALTH AIRCRAFT WEAR RE-FLE-CTORS TO MAKE IT SAFE AND ALSO TO PRESERVE SECRECY OF THEIR TRUE RCS. I never said they had no stealth coating, you smartass. http://www.f-16.net/forum/download/file.php?id=17770&mode=view http://www.f-16.net/forum/download/file.php?id=10657&sid=411af222e10c18d60ec144671bf7660a&mode=view here's a picture of a F-22 wearing a radar reflector. "Your telling me the Russian S400 in syria does not pick them up all the time, with its range and complexity, but a german civilian radar does?" - Because the F-35 will not wear the radar reflector in a combat mission. I'm starting to think you have trouble reading. Also, the radar vendor is trying to sell its radar. You believe their claims? "When in 2018 the syrians claim to have downed an IAF F35 with a S200" - This didn't happen. Like the second F-117 or the B-2 that was supposedly shot down by Serbians. It's all lies. The damaged F-35 happened two weeks before and it landed, and there's no source for the bird strike happening at 30k feet high. "Of course the F16 is cheaper per unit. Ones 4th generation, the other is 5th gen." - Composite, titanium, aluminum and steel do not care what 4th or 5th gen is. They cost the same. You're paying highly specialized technicians to operate high tech factories, to forge aircraft-grade metal alloys, to lay carbon fiber weave in vacuum bags and stick them in big ovens. If you want a F-16, you're paying for an aircraft. Aircraft cost a lot to make. But if you want the F-16 to actually be useful, you'll be paying 30-40 million dollars for targeting pods and other avionics. The F-35 comes with this already in the plane. "Its a 1970s design with old technology" - Do you want a 1970s F-16? Can't fly at night, can't fire radar guided weapons, can't fire air to ground missiles, etc. "How do 180 or so F22s,replace close to 500 F15s." - People like you said it was expensive and useless so they canceled the project.
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RC213V Read your own sources "The deficiency, first reported by Defense News in 2019, means that at extremely high altitudes" "this deficiency was first discovered in November 2011 after a pair of F-35s sustained “bubbling [and] blistering” of its stealth coating after flying at speeds of Mach 1.3 and Mach 1.4 near their maximum service ceiling of 50,000 feet." Two of your sources admit the problem only exists at very high altitude.
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@babylegs5049 "having purpose built fighters with specific roles in mind are more effective in combat" - But why?
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@UC09RNKy7QXboWk90HY0C4ug Unfortunately this article in particular seems to contradict others, most of which use Defense News as the source and note that the problem exists at high altitude. Meta-defense dot fr also sources Defense News, which claims the problem with supersonic flight exists "at extremely high altitudes". Seems to me that you're cherry picking articles from places that all use the same source, but conveniently forget to mention that their own source states that the issue is at high altitude. If your MO is taking advantage of bottom of the barrel "journalists" (defense bloggers, more like) that can't even read their sources properly you should present this evidence to someone who's not paying attention. Maybe they'll buy it. I'm not denying anything. "The JPO didn't rate is as level 1 because its no big deal." - It is a big deal but we'll live with it. We'll burn that bridge when we get there. In the old days new airplanes would straight up KILL pilots while the bugs were being ironed out. This is minor compared to the old days, when you didn't have the information at your fingertips.
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@UC09RNKy7QXboWk90HY0C4ug "current superhornets can do supersonic interceptions" - How long until the super hornet is retired? We have that long to come up with a new coating. Seems good.
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@bush_wookie_9606 the A-10 barely got through Desert Storm, you think it would do well in the next "big" war?
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@bush_wookie_9606 The A-10 is not firing THE armor piercing round because DU equals bad. Plus the DU round hasn't been able to pen MBT since the late 70s so who gives a shit. The A-10's main tank killer weapon is the Maverick missile and the gun is mostly relevant to strafe people made of meat and bone too close to friendlies to drop a bomb on them. 20mm high explosive should work fine at shredding humans. 25mm APEX should be even better. If you need stealth you can't do CAS either because the battlespace will be too dangerous to send CAS aircraft. The moment you hang shit on the F-35s wings you already kicked in the doors, blew all the radars to hell, dropped bombs on runways to make sure nobody can take off, and anyone who dares turning the air defenses is gonna deepthroat a HARM. The F-35s can hang a F-16 under the wing if it wants to, at that point. Loiter time doesn't mean much when a. any scenario that allows the A-10 to operate allows tankers to refuel F-35s b. the F-35 can get to the action faster and drop munitions more accurately which means it can do its job in less time c. the whole goddamn point of multiroles is that you don't need to wait on a particular kind of aircraft. If a F-35 runs out of ammo or fuel, it can just call another nearby F-35 that was doing an aerial patrol to keep going and finish the job. Or a nearby F-15E. Or nearby F-16, F/A-18, etc. If the only thing that can replace the other A-10 is another A-10 then why are more than 80 percent of CAS missions done by non-A-10 aircraft?
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@bush_wookie_9606 Regarding survivability, we know that an F-15 has landed with only one wing and about two feet of the other wing left attached at the root. A F-16 has also landed with half a wing after a collision, and the pilot was a novice if I'm not mistaken. This is thanks to body lift. We know that the F-35 employs even more body lift than those planes. So it's safe to say, the F-35 can probably fly after getting a wing ripped off, at least after losing half a wing. That's about as much as you can rip off from an A-10 and remain in control. The A-10 has a dual redundant hydraulic system. The F-35 actually has isolated hydraulic systems so if you shoot one off, you're only bleeding that one. An A-10 can still have the two hydraulic systems shot off and bled out. The gun is cheaper but it's also harder to employ. It may take a minute and a half for a bomb to fall from the bay, but maneuvering into a firing position can take finesse. We're now fitting laser guided rockets to helicopter rocket pods. This may just be theorycrafting, but wouldn't it be feasible to fit a F-35 with rocket pods in the wings - make the pods stealthy or not, who cares if you're performing low level CAS there's probably no air defenses around - allow the F-35 to fire the rockets from further away and at higher altitude than a gun, allow the dive to be shallower and less dangerous, and improve accuracy even over the 30mm because you're literally pinpointing the target with the laser that the rockets can maneuver into? A whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh and you get nearly the same effects on target as a 30mm gun run. 2.75 rocket and the guidance kit, probably cheaper than a bomb and already in use with helicopters.
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@toofless4541 It's not an argument against the A-10, just a little what-if to demonstrate that the gun has alternatives when it comes to the niche job of targeting troops too close to friendlies to drop a bomb.
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I'd rather have the asset that gets to me sooner.
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ALSO-RAN ! Most of the aircraft is not armored or else it wouldn't even take off, and it's not any more armed than any other aircraft that can also carry the same bombs and missiles. In 1991 Chuck Horner pulled the A-10s out because the losses were unacceptable. It can't handle that kind of combat.
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And yet the multirole had to be called in to do the A-10s job in 1991.
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