Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "" video.

@peterbaker8443 No aircraft can "sustain" damage. If you get hit by a continuous rod warhead, the aircraft gets sliced in half.
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@greenmedic88 "US Air Force close air support typically comes in the form of an AC-130, A-10, or on the bottom end of the tier, rotor wing craft" - No. Around 30% of CAS belongs to the F-16. The Strike Eagle, B-1 and B-52 also get a huge chunk, and the A-10 received around 11% of CAS missions since 2014. "Mostly for the loitering capability to provide overwatch on longer duration missions" - If you call in air support and a Navy F/A-18 with 15 minutes playtime is close by, that's what you get.
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@djl5634 "And it's cheaper to use than missiles rockets or bombs" - It's more expensive when you account for losses. It's cheaper to use expensive weapons that hit the target from 10 miles out, than trying to get within 2,000 ft of an enemy that knows that he has to shoot back at you. "Anything the gun can't kill the hellfire missiles the A10 uses will" - They use Mavericks, not Hellfires.
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@bthsr7113 "We're mainly fighting insurgents" - Afghanistan is over. At this point SOCOM having Super Tucanos and AT-6Bs is enough to fit the bill. "and vintage Soviet gear, some of which were the A-10's intended prey" - Okay. Vintage Soviet gear is getting clapped by drones, artillery and shoulder fired weapons, while Su-25 pilots hug the ground in fear of anti-air weapons. In Ukraine both sides have access to A-10 equivalents and they're either getting shot down, or flying very carefully rather than being the CAS beasts they're supposed to be. The intended prey is now the predator, as the biggest threat to the A-10 are the ground units with missiles and guns designed specifically to splash A-10s.
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@karlp8484 The problem is that removing the gun probably means having to put a huge concrete weight in the nose to retain balance, ahaha
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@djl5634 "And u don't use bombers for cas." - Wrong. The B-1 and B-52 have been used for CAS.
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Air superiority doesn't get rid of the ground threat.
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@MardukTheSunGodInsideMe How do you know you're outside MANPADS range? You can be several miles away from the target when you release, but there could be a guy with a MANPADS also several miles away from the target. Right under you.
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@MardukTheSunGodInsideMe Why would the A-10 be carrying those?
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@Galfeo There's also examples of A-10's that got hit and crashed, and one example of a pilot who died trying to land his damaged A-10. He should have ditched it near the base instead of trying to land that wreck but the A-10s reputation killed him.
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Returns are still reduced independently of angle, and another aspect of stealth is IR reduction. There's no "close combat support maneuvers". The maneuvers are just a reflection of what you want to do. You can provide CAS while flying straight. You can provide CAS while orbiting in a circle overhead.
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The MBT isn't over. Russia is just suffering from strict adherence to doctrine with no junior officer initiative, which means recon by fire and walking into ambushes. Their non-mobilized "peacetime" military has personnel shortages, probably exacerbated by corruption because there's probably bribery going on to have "ghost contracts" where officers claim they have X soldiers who never show up. Without infantry screening, armor falls into ambushes. This was true in WWI, in WWII, in the 1970s, etc. Every time tanks fell victim to anti-tank weaponry, and yet they survived.
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Air superiority means the ability to conduct air operations with little concern for enemy air forces. It doesn't mean superiority over the ground forces. Air superiority was quickly achieved in Iraq and Serbia, but ground threats were still active.
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Not if the convoy has any air defense.
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Russian aircraft are either firing from Russian/Belarusian airspace and turning back, or absolutely hugging the weeds. They need to go low due to existing SAM threat.
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@kameronjones7139 When Vietnam got SA-2s, more US aircraft started getting shot down by AAA. What you're doing here is like saying Vietnam has no SAM threat, look at the US aircraft shot down by AAA! That's the point. The SAMs forced the US pilots to fly low, and take their chances with AAA. In Ukraine the SAMs are forcing Russian pilots to stay low, and take their chances with MANPADS. You don't need to fly low to deliver unguided bombs. You fly high, dive to a lower altitude, release and pull back. Flying high keeps you out of MANPADS and AAA range, and saves fuel because there's less air resistance in thin air. If you're flying across a country while hugging the weeds, it's because you're afraid of SAMs. It makes no sense to hug the ground when you could just fly at a thousand feet, or even five thousand feet and drop to a thousand feet when you reach the target area.
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@kameronjones7139 No, it's you who did not read. Let's say an attack run lasts 30 seconds to one minute. Why would you fly for an hour, ingress and egress, at low level? You only need to be at low level to drop the ordnance. Are they dropping bombs for an hour? Explain. Explain right now the thought process. Why would you need to fly low when returning home when you do not have bombs? You do not have guided or unguided bombs. You won't drop more. You don't need to fly low because you will not drop a bomb. Why are you wasting fuel and risking hitting power lines by flying low?
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@kameronjones7139 There's plenty of footage of jets flying close to the ground to evade defenses while not on attack runs.
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@kameronjones7139 No, just flying. People hold their cellphone out and see aircraft zipping past.
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Stealth works due to the inverse square law. If you're inside gun range, radar stealth isn't helping.
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@Zulu4impi If those grunts were in Ukraine, they'd be watching A-10s get swatted out of the sky like the Su-25s are. Instead of talking to grunts in a bar who punch people, talk to people who were in a "real" war. GWOT veterans who volunteered in Ukraine said it was nothing like they were used to.
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"and the most advanced air defenses have been removed from the board" - Which is impossible nowadays. "I personally think we need these aircraft well past 2050" - That's just not happening. The "youngest" A-10 was manufactured in 1984. It will be 40 years old in two years. Aircraft cannot fly forever. "But a lot of the threats aren't modern" - The Soviets made air defenses to deal with the A-10 in the 1970s and 1980s. A lot of non-modern threats exist specifically to splash A-10s.
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@RickySpanish12344 They didn't do amazing in Iraq, six of them got shot down. Insurgents in Afghanistan did not have the means to shoot down aircraft, the OA-X program was considered precisely to deal with insurgents in those circumstances - it was a program for a turboprop like the Super Tucano or AT-6B.
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@Riceball01 "The A-10 can already carry a ton of ordnance with the GAU-8" - It really can't. If you look at Bagram air base footage, they take off lightly loaded. One of the A-10s problem is that the engines are weak enough to the point that at 5k ft above sea level you can't even take off with a full load.
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