Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "Ed Nash's Military Matters" channel.

  1. ​@Aqua Fyre Don't you get embarassed by having to type the same old cope from a year ago?
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  2. The USAF still lost about 200 of them in SAR missions, though.
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  3. That fails to take into account the psychological effects of seeing A-10s shot down.
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  4. What's the price of the morale hit upon seeing A-10s get shot down?
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  5. Same exact argument was used for the T-62. They were used in frontline roles and slaughtered. Please stop.
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  6. ​ Meat Salad  they lost the 4th Guards Tank Army near Izium. The Ukrainian 93rd Mechanized proudly uses the tanks they captured from the former elite Russian unit after inflicting several defeats on them in the Kharkiv region.
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  7. ​ @limedickandrew6016  there's a difference between using ONE old tank as a gag, and outright pulling out the T-62M Obr. 2022 to get slaughtered in Kherson.
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  8.  @Dimetropteryx  It's kind of complicated to determine. Because the tail does block the exhaust plume, and when MANPADS became a thing they were a single band seeker that follows the heat signature and then proximity fuse detonates the very small warhead to shower the aircraft with fragments. So by physically blocking the IR signal from the sides you can only take a shot at the rear, and any maneuvering will make flares the only target that the seeker can track. But as time went on, MANPADS now have dual band seekers, improved algorithms that reject flares, and the control logic tells the missile to do a last second jink to move ahead of the exhaust plume so that it has a higher chance of colliding with the aircraft and the impact sensors fire the warhead inside the fuselage which is vastly more effective than a fragment shower.
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  9.  @naterbaternaterbater  900 bucks per hour? That's lower than the A-29, your number is messed up.
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  10. Helicopters with sensors mounted in the mast can still use terrain for cover and fire from behind concealment.
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  11.  @jacobmccandles1767  This is not true. In fact early gens of heat seeking missiles did not measure distance at all, and as tech progressed missiles still had no direct measurement for distance and instead relied on the rate of closure to the target (heat signal increase) to help the algorithm find the time-to-impact. The first gens of heat seekers did indeed tail-chase which made them inefficient at using their energy. Modern heat seeking missiles have a high off boresight and thus they're able to actually fly ahead of the target to optimize closure rate.
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  12.  @tomlobos2871  Helicopters with the sensors mounted on the mast can locate targets and fire over the horizon. The ability to hover allows that, while fixed wing aircraft will still need to pop up and expose themselves. Unless something else lases the target.
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  13. They'd be trained wrong because the tanks are totally different.
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  14.  @Gromit801  Not really. Congress is wrong in this case, as usual.
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  15. The B-1 performed CAS. With a straight face. Your incredulity is not an argument.
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  16.  @bennuredjedi  The A-10 is not viable, and the USAF is actually starving it out of maintenance and supplies to make sure it gets retired. The AV8B is an extremely vulnerable airframe that was viable decades ago, but no more. Sure, other airframes are also from the Cold War, but they're modern and adapted to the 21st century. The Harrier is not adaptable. Yes, it does "take away" from the Air Force because the government doesn't want redundancy. If they're giving something to the Army, the Air Force can't have it or else they're wasting money on duplicates. The Air Force doesn't "focus" on air superiority. Air superiority is just a means to an end. The end and main objective of the Air Force is the support of ground forces. It doesn't free up money. It wastes money. The F-16 will eventually reach the end of the line. The A-10 wasn't even perfect for the 1980s. It was estimated that piloting an A-10 would be a suicide against Soviet armored units. It's 2022. Ukraine has shown the Su-25 gets easily shot down. There's no 21st century A-10. A 21st century aircraft needs survivability, which means stealth and speed. The A-10 has neither. There's no roles for the AV8B. They're getting retired. The STOVL is meant to land in short deck carriers. How does supporting ground forces require carrier landing? The USMC is amphibious so to them it made sense to bring Harriers on their carriers. Without that, STOVL isn't needed. Who are you going to export Harriers to when countries that would use a Harrier want F-35s instead? No, it doesn't have room for modernization. You'd have to start from scratch. The F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 are sleek, future proof designs. The Harrier is flawed as a 21st century aircraft, which is why so many were lost in Desert Storm. The F-15EX was purely corporate welfare to keep the St. Louis plant open. Without orders, Boeing would have to close it. Super Duper Hornet? The Navy asked to stop buying them. They know they won't be useful past 2050 and they don't want to spend billions on aircraft that will be retired too soon. The A-10s and AV8Bs can't be upgraded because they're locked into what they are by their airframes. The AV8B for example blasts the side of the aircraft with hot exhaust gasses, making the aircraft a beacon for IR missiles. You can't change the position of the engine. By design, the Harrier cannot be better. You cannot change it. Bringing back the Corps makes as much sense as putting the Navy under the Army. It's exactly the same.
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  17.  @bennuredjedi  They already exist. Most USAF CAS missions are done by Strike Eagle, F-16, B-52, B-1, etc. CAS is a mission, not a platform.
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  18. The A-10 has been mostly replaced by F-16s and Strike Eagles.
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  19.  @MM22966  The tank-opener is not a good anti-tank weapon - instead better suited against lightly armored vehicles. In the last 40 years the A-10 suffered a severe black eye from the Iraqi Republican Guard, so don't forget you're including a war where the A-10 went against a relatively modern force.
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  20. Why would you want the same capabilities? The capabilities of the A-10 are essentially what makes it outdated. The low thrust from the engines so that it can consume less fuel hinder its ability to get out of trouble. The weight from the armor and cannon compounds the issue. All the things it can do, other aircraft can do better. The low speed also means it takes longer to get to where it's needed.
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  21. ​ @bullpupgaming708  the A-10 isn't cheap once you add the cost of maintaining ageing airframes. Boeing made two billion dollars from the wing program alone.
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  22.  @bullpupgaming708  But it's not cheaper. Every dollar put into the A-10 is a dollar taken from other airframes. Streamlining the fleet would have major logistical benefits. Why wouldn't they send combat drones? Cheap, no pilot to be lost. It's not some major hurdle, especially as the use of drones escalates. You know what's cheap? Having a proper force structure rather than dragging old aircraft past their retirement age. You wouldn't have to make those choices by just having a sensible fleet instead of a mix of airframes.
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  23.  @lanceschaerer6875  Middle Eastern/West Asian dirt floor shed engineering is a sight to behold. If a part breaks or wears down they'll find a way to weld it back into a semi functional state.
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  24. The early B-52s were all retired decades ago.
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  25.  @SheepInACart  There's supposedly a two second delay when flying Predators. Latency isn't defined by speed of light, the speed of the transmit signal is negligible compared to the latency in the system itself. Every time a signal has to be received, processed, and sent back again adds a few hundred milliseconds of delay.
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  26.  @Gromit801  No, they're wrong as usual. The Hog has already been replaced. It did 20% of CAS from 2000-onwards and only 11% since 2014.
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  27. Scrappy underdog using everything it can in a defensive fight vs second army in the world in a war they chose the time and place for.
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  28.  @joshkamp7499  Those A-10s returned with very superficial damage. Look closer. The skin is ripped up like an angry rat really want to get the canned food. HARMs are meant to give breathing room to strike forces by forcing SAM sites to shut down while the bomb carrying planes go in and out. They're not going to be wasted on SHORAD. Funnily enough, in Desert Storm F-16s went after AAA with dumb bombs and cluster munitions.
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  29. They're fighting for towns an hour's walk away from Donetsk city, which they control since 2014.
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  30.  @jaysonpida5379  "But then came the A-10's stellar performance in Desert Storm" - 7 A-10s and OA-10s were shot down, and Gen. Chuck Horner had to pull them back away from the Iraqi National Guard. "later Senator McCain basically had a major meltdown" - Of course he did. Like when he drove a woman to tears in a hearing regarding POW/MIA records. "if there was a request from the grunts & jarheads in their holes the F-16 could do it" - As of 2014 the F-16 was doing 33% of CAS while the A-10 was doing 11%.
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  31. It's too expensive for the job it does, it's been worn and torn through to the point it requires entire sections of the aircraft to be rebuilt, terrible operational cost for COIN.
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  32. Most CAS is provided by F-15s and F-16s.
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  33. ​ @Knight6831  Doesn't matter. B-52s were used for CAS the first time in Vietnam. During the GWOT they were useful to haul bombs and stay in the air for long hours and make the drop when troops needed them.
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  34. That's incorrect. There were 6 A-10 losses, which makes it the second most shot down US fixed wing aircraft during Desert Storm, with the Harrier being first. They had to be pulled back due to excessive losses. One pilot died trying to land a damaged A-10, which in hindsight he should have ditched and just ejected safely, but the reputation for the A-10 coming back home killed him.
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  35.  @michaelhowell2541  Maybe the fact that there's no other aircraft that can do what the A-10 does is a hint that it's a dead end design and nobody else wants to make that kind of aircraft?
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  36. The former Army chief of staff already stated that no matter if it's B-52 or carrier pigeon, they don't care. All it matters is the ordnance dropping on target.
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  37. ​ @kapikoyli  Hello Mehmet - Russia flies nuclear bombers into Canada and the US all the time. No need to imagine.
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  38. They're not "conserving" the modern MBTs either.
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  39.  @tonywilson4713  "It already has poor maneuverability from its small wings." - Not true. Airshow performances show its maneuverability. The size of the wings is not the way to calculate wing loading on aircraft with lifting bodies. "he A10 was NEVER meant to go against ANY fighter so that's a mute point" - It's a "moot" point, mute is when someone can't talk. It doesn't matter what you intend. The A-10 is extremely vulnerable and you cannot simply hope it won't get shot down because you don't "intend" it to be.
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  40. False. In fact the GAO slammed the USAF for buying too many A-10s without justification.
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  41. Those arguments have been debunked a long time ago. Stop believing Pierre Sprey.
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  42. Ground attackers like the Su-25 aren't "feared" any more than the Su-25 fears the troops it targets. Fire rockets into the air, turn back and run away home to avoid eating a missile.
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  43. John McCain was wrong and that was an example of a person not knowing anything about a subject being extremely confident in their ability to be right.
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  44. The speed was not an issue as the USAF promised not to get in the way of rotary wing purchases and the government itself determined that the Harrier, A-10 and Cheyenne were not redundant and were free to continue without overlapping each other. It simply had too many problems and by the time Lockheed fixed them, technology had moved on. They had an aircraft that needed mechanical systems to compensate for its instability and was still a prototype by the time digital controls were starting to become reliable enough to put on F-16s and F-117s. A missed TOW shot during a demonstration was all it took to can a project that was too little, too late.
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  45. Most of the CAS missions are already covered by F-15Es and F-16s, meaning that there's no need for a direct replacement. No other country is building this style of aircraft.
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  46. At tree top level missiles have less energy. You want to fire them from altitude so they can trade altitude for speed. When fired from ground level, they just slow down and lose range.
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  47.  @FairladyS130  Any tech advances that negate stealth, will be even more dangerous against non-stealth aircraft. Stealth won't become useless, it will become the price of admission.
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  48. The F-16 is more survivable than the A-10 because it doesn't get hit in the fist place.
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  49. The fallacy is that people refuse to accept any alternative that isn't the realistic alternative, and they think the realistic alternative is a modern A-10. No other country is building this type of aircraft. If the fast movers are suppressing SAMs then they can drop the bombs and finish the mission by themselves without having to wait for the A-10 to limp along and come do the job. Yes, that is an unnecessary waste of resources. Having a princess of an aircraft that needs everyone else to make sure there's no war going on around it so it can pickle off ordnance safely. The A-10 has no resistance to ground fire in the age of fast shooting 23/30mm AA and other anti-helicopter SHORAD that can shred slow moving aircraft for sport. They're made to protect troops against squirrely targets that hide behind ridgelines. Slow fixed wing are a piece of cake.
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  50. Same thing was said about T-62s. They were later taken out in frontline fighting.
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  51. The problem is that after the first turn, the F-22 would just go straight and the cannon rounds would have trouble chasing it. Even in DCS chasing fleeing Su-25s with the Harrier to get gun kills is a chore.
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  52. But it's meaningless. Nobody was giving modern tanks apart from Poland giving updated T-72s, so Ukraine took what they could get. Russia is not defending itself. They're attacking. Yet they're desperate. That's humiliating.
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  53. Not really. You can have air supremacy but ground defenses are still a nightmare. The US achieved air supremacy in Desert Storm but the ground defenses of the Iraqi Republican Guard still forced USAF Gen. Chuck Horner to stop sending it against them.
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  54. Losing a pilot and an A-10 you can't get any more of has absolutely no monetary savings.
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  55. The USMC can't take off or land them from amphibious assault ships, the Army isn't going to spend a billion dollars acquiring an aircraft that's going to need retirement anyway due to airframe hours and lack of spare parts.
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  56. That's a lie.
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  57. To be fair the Afghan government jumped in front of every bus for a decade and a half. The US can't baby a country forever.
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  58. What they have been using for two decades. F-15s and F-16s.
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  59. Why would they spend billions acquiring an aircraft that is one foot in the grave?
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  60. There was a former USAF mechanic who was flying a Mirage F1 in Libya as a mercenary. He had the military experience, at least.
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  61.  Meat Salad  They're not getting 800 T-90s lol
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  62.  @thethirdman225  "true CAS" is the worst straw to grasp at. Air superiority or not, warheads have to drop on foreheads.
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  63. Harriers do not use hovering for combat. At most there's VIFF'ing but that's a high risk maneuver. They hover to land vertically. That's it. In combat they fly like fixed wing. There's no advantage in hovering because helicopter pilots can "dogfight" against other rotary wing craft. There's no point in trying to enter the realm where helicopters fight best.
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  64. Helicopters can fight from behind terrain.
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  65. Those are decade old arguments proposed by Pierre Sprey and Russia Today.
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  66.  @nigelsmith7366  It's not strange at all. Same reason the Army doesn't operate cruisers and aircraft carriers. Combined arms will combine the different branches.
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  67.  @bennuredjedi  They can do it now. By ending the Air Force and making it the US Army Air Force. But who'd want that? Maintenance and logistics of the A-10? Brother, that aircraft was meant to be retired in the 90s and spent 30 years on life-support. They're old. AV8B? More of those were lost in Desert Storm than A-10s. It's a Cold War aircraft. Stop. AC-130s? They can't even operate during the day because they're so vulnerable. The crew of the Spirit 03 paid the price for saying on station longer than they should have to protect the guys on the ground. You're not doing the military any favors by making ground support so risky.
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  68.  @bennuredjedi  Vietnam was Vietnam. It's not Vietnam anymore. The Air National Guard retained the A-7s and with upgraded pods they could do what Vietnam-era A-7s couldn't. Vietnam was a question of technology not keeping up with jet performance. I think it's funny you mention the A-7 when it was one of the criticized fast jets that got the A-X program rolling. In fact, the proposed YA-7F would have afterburners and the ability to fly supersonic, but the program was killed to finance the A-10.
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  69. No, because lack of spare parts will prevent it. The company that made it went out of business two decades ago.
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  70. Attack helicopters can scan for targets and fire from behind terrain. Fixed wing like the A-10 needs to pop up, roll in and do a predictable straight line maneuver to get within firing parameters, roll away and then dive back down into terrain.
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  71.  @EsotericResearcher777  That's just a fallacy. SEAD cannot whack a mole every threat on the ground. Not only are SAM crews aware that they need to turn their radars off to evade detection, modern SHORAD in the form of laser guideded/electro-optical SAMs are harder to detect due to their ability to shoot down low flying aircraft without the need for radar lock, and there's also the fact that MANPADS are essentially impossible to suppress. Any man with a tube on his back can pop from behind a tree or rock and put a firecracker on your tailpipe. SEAD flights cannot do anything about this.
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  72. You can't hit the pilot through the armor and you can't reliably ignite the fuel in the tanks, but you can still hit other components. If you hit flight control surfaces, weapon pylons, an engine, targeting pods, etc the pilot will be likely to have to go back home instead of fighting you. Now if the A-10 hasn't seen you and your position isn't defended, you may not want to alert the pilot to the fact that you're there. But only a limited area is protected against 23mm. It was designed mostly against 14.5mm.
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  73.  @LupusAries  "The A-10 can stay on Station for hours, in a war like Afghanistan." - A turboprop has a ton of time on station. "due to the more limited payload of the F-16" - A-10s in Afghanistan were also payload limited by the sheer altitude of some airbases. You can see videos of A-10s taking off/in pre-flight at Bagram. It's almost 5,000 ft above sea level and the A-10 is severely lacking in thrust. They're not carrying everything plus the kitchen sink or else the pucker factor during rotation would be off the charts. "Citation needed" - Oh I got the full interview. Posting the link will probably see my comment filtered for spam so google "airforcemag article 0691horner". Title is "A Conversation With Chuck Horner" and dated June 1, 1991. "The Tornado GR. 1 lost 10 Aircraft, mainly due to it's mission profile" - Exactly. The Tornado had a much harder, near-suicidal mission that forced the West to reconsider low-level attacks as a way to evade defenses as a whole and the Tornado was forced to continue the war doing mid-level attacks. The Tornado suffering those losses doing an extremely difficult job was considered a paradigm shift. The A-10 proved itself incapable against a near-pear adversary and got a hero's welcome. That's propaganda for you. "aircraft with a riskier mission profile do get shot down more" - Okay, which proves that the A-10s mission profile is flawed and only works for COIN, where a turboprop aircraft would be better suited. "Except in Syria" - Exactly. >national interest The National Interest is a terrible outlet.
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  74. That's a lie. Everyone in the USAF loves doing ground attack and support. Listen to any interview. You live in the information age, pilot podcasts are dime a dozen. Listen to them saying they love it.
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  75. Equal capability inherently requires a Vietnam war mindset in the design. Technology has moved on so you're never going to get the same capabilities. Nobody else is building this type of aircraft. They're a dead end. There's no such thing as a new production run, as the manufacturer went out of business. Starting all over again probably means a higher flyaway cost than a F-35 for an aircraft that has one fifth of the capabilities.
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  76. The USAF isn't lacking jets that could be used for training. The A-10 is worn out and lacking spare parts. No point. Removing the gun would cause it to become tail heavy.
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  77. The new wings were made by Boeing. They're entirely new production.
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  78. At a 220 million per aircraft cost? The F-35 costs 80 million.
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  79. lmao
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  80. The ground is a greater threat to the A-10 than the air. Forget air superiority. The A-10 can't duke it out with ground targets because they shoot back. In 1991 the A-10 had to be pulled away from Iraqi Republican Guard units due to excessive losses. It's not the fighters that are the problem. It's the targets. The targets the A-10 is meant to kill can easily kill the A-10 first.
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  81.  @passantNL  Even into the late 90s there were requirements for visual ID due to rules of engagement. IFF only responds if it's a friendly or unknown, and there's a multitude of reasons why a friendly IFF could be reported as unknown. The MANPADS operators do typically have a IFF antenna, but they typically get to see the aircraft before it's inside MANPADS range.
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  82.  @dagger6467  "you dont retire an aircraft line you just upgraded" - The retirement will only begin in 2030 according to their schedule. So basically 2035.
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  83. ​ @metricstormtrooper  I say give them to the navy first, push them off the carrier deck to make artificial reefs.
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  84. Why would the US Army want an ancient aircraft that doesn't have enough spare parts?
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  85. Because the Marines can't reliably take over the role? Not all aircraft are suitable for carriers and carrier operations inherently limit the number of aircraft involved, while the USAF can deploy from land bases.
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  86.  @ConstantineJoseph  There's no balance. They're losing the good tanks too, so there's absolutely no conservation going on. It doesn't make sense, unless Russia is desperate. Low cost? All the tanks were paid off decades ago. It shouldn't make a difference if it's a T-55, T-62, T-72 or T-80. The fact that they're bringing the T-55s means they're climbing down the totem pole as the vast majority of the storage tanks are garbage. Expendable? The crews are precious. Treating the tank as expendable will resort to progressively less trained tankers. The Russian military was supposed to be able to put conscripts in a modern tank. The fact that they can't already spells out the reality of the situation - Russia was defeated, they're just insisting on prolonging the suffering.
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  87.  @tonywilson4713  The A-10 is vulnerable due to essentially being a 1960s design born into a 1970s-present world. There are other close support aircraft that prioritize keeping the aircraft safe over expecting it to get hit. "check what's happened when its been up against planes like F16s in open air combat trials" - I want to kick people in the nuts over this. You're referring to a 2015 article by David Axe that was picked up and quoted ad nauseam by other outlets without doing the basic legwork. Axe wrote an article based on a leaked report he misunderstood. He didn't read it properly. For six years that I've had to explain to other people that just because they read something on the internet doesn't make it true. If you had read the report, you'd have learned it was a software control laws test, not "open air combat trials". I swear people make up more details on this story every time it's told because this is the first time I see someone refer to the test as a "open air combat trial". The F-35 in question was AF-02 and it was loaded with limited software. If you read the report, the pilot asks for software fixes. Please, for the love of everything, READ the sources instead of relying on glorified bloggers acting as journalists. "look for the Pierre Sprey and Chip Berke discussion" - Watched it the day it came out. "What Pierre Sprey goes into is what happens when an F35 is located and then engaged" - Pierre Sprey had retired from the aviation industry decades prior. I'm sorry, but what he thought he knew was woefully outdated. "that has nothing to do with combat" - But it has everything to do with the performance claims being made.
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  88. ​ @LolTollhurst  But Saab said they could upgrade Cs to Es, so Cs will have to be cannibalized to keep their promise. Time and time again Saab's marketing dept. wrote checks their engineering couldn't cash.
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  89.  @demos113  The alternative is already deployed. F-16s and F-15Es perform more CAS than the A-10.
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  90. Supermaneuverability is meaningless. It's post-stall maneuvering. You never stall an aircraft in combat unless the only other option is dying.
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  91.  @eze8970  Seems about right. If anything, the same guidance system could be used and a soft launch + propeller drone could be packaged into a tube to fit the same launcher. A bit like the switchblade.
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  92.  @texdawg8980  High in the sky is safe when all the opposition has are AKs and maybe a PK. RPG-7 rockets self-detonate at around 900 yards.
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  93. Because Ukraine's cheap anti-IFV weapons now work against tanks. This is going to be hell.
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  94. The original A-X program recommended turboprops precisely because jet engines were considered sub-optimal for the speed ranges the aircraft was meant to operate at. However as the program went forward turbofans bridged the gap and instead of higher performance, the twin turbofans were used to carry more payload and armor. But initially the A-X proposals were turboprop.
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  95. Russia's artillery/long range strike superiority and better ability to conduct maneuver warfare is the greatest threat. They barely do any CAS as their aircraft are hesitant to go on risky missions over Ukraine. They prefer to strike from long range, hitting arms and fuel depots.
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  96. Except that general leading the red team was caught cheating by having the simulation run with small ships fitted with missiles too heavy for them.
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  97. Sure, a Marine F/A-18 could be recording it.
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  98. It's already filled to the brim with upgrades. Doesn't matter, it's still outdated. The B-52 is a much larger airframe which gives more allowance for changes.
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  99.  @rodrigogoncalves6165  That's now how real life works. Most military does not advance at the pace of technology due to the fact that projects can take years to complete, they prioritize reliability/dependability over having the latest specs, secure supply chains, testing and certification, and then it might take a year or two to introduce the upgrade to the entire fleet. So right there the "pace" of technology is not an argument because the military works at its own pace. On the other hand, this isn't a circuitry or technology problem but a physics problem. What we're asking of the B-52 is essentially what it has been doing since inception. Meanwhile the A-10 was designed for a world that does not exist anymore. Upgrade it all you want, it doesn't fix the underlying issues. You can't get a Ferrari out of a Fiero with a body kit. I'm not sure how the A-10 is going to help against swarms considering that the same job can be accomplished by other fighters, and it's not a navalized aircraft.
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  100.  @rodrigogoncalves6165  I can't believe I have to simplify this even further. The B-52 has remained in inventory because it has characteristics the B-2 and B-1 do not have, and there's no suitable replacement or value in creating a dedicated replacement that's going to be replaced by next gen bombers anyway. The new missions just require it to do what it has always done. The A-10 needs to be faster. It can't do it. It needs to be less vulnerable. It can't do that. You have to make changes that require an entirely new aircraft. The B-52 just keeps trucking. The sturdy construction dates back to the 1980s, and even then it came off the factory with structural flaws that had to be fixed after it had already been adopted.
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  101. ​ @JD-tn5lz  You do realize we have the footage of the attacks at Vuhledar, right? There's no 40 tanks.
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  102. Each Switchblade system includes the firing unit and multiple drones.
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  103. ​ @N17C1  It would make zero sense, because the tank crews would be trained on the wrong tank.
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  104. Nothing? It's an antique meant for past wars. The Stuka and Sturmovik were more myth than reality. The Stuka is plagued by unrealistic kill claims and it was seen as outpaced by 1942. The Sturmovik also suffers from unrealistic kill claims and it did poorly in Finland. The Skyraider losses were pretty unsustainable. Not just due to MiGs but anti air as a whole. Being tough means nothing because tough aircraft go down. None of them are tough hitting the ground.
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  105. ​ @Chuck_Hooks  AGM-88 needs altitude and speed for standoff. A-10s are too weak in the engine department.
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  106. ​ @Chuck_Hooks  Using brains? Okay, remember middle school physics: what gives projectiles range? Altitude, speed and angle of throw/firing. Assuming angle to be the same, the A-10 is bad at gaining speed and altitude. Standoff weapons hate being released at slow speeds.
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  107. Being bought and paid for doesn't mean anything when it soaks up resources in the form of pilots and maintainers that the USAF desperately needs for other aircraft. The Pentagon sent plenty of money to friends with the A-10. Two billion for the re-winging programs.
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  108. It's already been upgraded with modern avionics. Standoff weapons benefit from altitude and speed. The A-10 struggles to go over 15k feet and over 300 knots.
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  109. ​ @uflux  The 70 year old B-52s aren't flying. B-52s started getting retired in the 60s and 70s. B-52Gs were destroyed after the fall of the Soviet Union. Only B-52Hs remain.
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  110. ​ @uflux  What heavy weapons load? A F-35 could deploy more payload because of safety. Meanwhile non stealth aircraft pitch up, fire two rocket pods and turn back to run away and fly home. That's dismal. An F-35 could drop JDAMs or SDBs.
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  111. ​ @Rampant16  The airframes are okay because they were found to be defective from factory and had a strengthening fix applied to them a long time ago. The wings are what was going to break first so Boeing manufactured new ones for the A-10.
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  112. They already said they don't want them.
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  113. Because not only is the USAF heavily invested in mud moving, especially in the last twenty years, all those branches know that the Army can't fly A-10s due to the Key West agreement. And Marines want something that can fly off carriers.
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  114. Wrong. Close simply means the proximity of troops in contact.
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  115.  @elstevobevo  I'm pretty sure that the meaning of CAS always meant proximity to friendly troops. Otherwise any form of ground attack not performed by bombers had to be close air support due to the way bombs were dropped and the close range required for .50 caliber to be effective.
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  116.  @startrekmike  There's no aggressive push. The A-10 was meant to be retired in the 1990s. Congress keeps the aircraft in life support where it soaks up resources needed elsewhere. You see it as an aggressive push because you don't understand how insane the A-10 life extension has been for decades.
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  117.  @monty2654  You're mad because you don't understand the topic. The majority of CAS is performed by fast movers. The A-10 is a fallacy, it's not the main CAS aircraft anymore. Hasn't been in over 20 years.
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  118.  @startrekmike  What's bizarre is the undeserved fanboyism the A-10 gets. Maybe you're just seeing a reaction to that?
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  119.  @monty2654  How is the B-52 related to the topic? You get your information from watching Youtube videos? Have you maybe thought that your perspective is skewed because there's more videos of cinematic aircraft? Because F-16s perform more CAS than the A-10. Congress keeps blocking the retirement because there's jobs involved where the A-10 is stationed. Simple. Are you actually arguing Congress knows their stuff? That's insane.
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  120.  @elstevobevo  The definition never morphed. Pierre Sprey was never a designer. He was a defense analyst and consulted for the A-X program in its infancy, but he never worked for Fairchild aviation. He never designed any aircraft and the proximity is only related to the lack of precision guidance. Again, close air support never meant that the aircraft needs to be close. Aircraft used to need to be close to the target or else the bomb would fall hundreds of yards away from the intended target.
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  121.  @monty2654  The B-52 has qualities that are still useful and the supposed replacements were not built in enough numbers. The A-10 has qualities that were useful in 1960, and most of its job is performed by multirole aircraft. Being part of a military branch doesn't mean much. Just the other day I came across someone who had been in the Army and had to be explained how the trigger mechanism in the M16/M4 works, and stopped responding to me out of embarrassment. Plenty of people think they're experts on things they never learned. Another thing: members of congress are also not on the young side, so their knowledge can be severely out of date. The argument is not about other aircraft. This is about the A-10 being a money issue like everything else. There's representatives with vested interest in it. Just like Bernie Sanders was pro-F-35 because of the jobs it would bring to Vermont. YouTube videos on history. And what do these videos on history have to say that outweighs primary sources and actual documents?
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  122.  @monty2654  You don't want to linger on any area that has combat capable enemies. The A-10 is essentially only useful against groups of enemies that can be easily dealt with by drones. They didn't put interest on the A-10, they wanted a turboprop. SOCOM got a turboprop. That's not an A-10.
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  123.  @monty2654  "That was the whole point of dedicated CAS platforms in the first place" - First, the original "dedicated CAS" aircraft in the Air Force was the A-7. It was a fast mover. The A-X program was put in motion because despite being an excellent bombing aircraft it was not suitable for Vietnam. The A-10 was birthed from a war where it was feasible to linger around troops in contact. If it has been used in the Fulda Gap scenario, it was understood that the A-10 pilots would be massacred. The only mental gymnastics here is trying to twist oneself into a pretzel to explain how the A-10 is going to survive in close contact with the enemy after the embarrassing losses of Desert Storm.
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  124. ​ @SoloRenegade  So you're going to waste money refurbishing an aircraft that is too aged to fly? Airframes have limits. After a point they either need to be rebuilt or scrapped as they become unsafe to fly. Put them in reserve, refurbish them... now you need to rebuild them anyway! What was the point? Aircraft are not cars or tanks. Every hour in the air, every take off and landing cycle, it leaves a microscopic defect in the structure. After thousands of hours, they're unsafe.
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  125.  @SoloRenegade  They don't deteriorate in the desert. They deteriorate by being flown. Take an aircraft that was flown until the end of life, put in in the desert, when you come back for it it's still at the end of life. You don't understand. The A-10 has flown 30 years past its original retirement date. When parts wear out you replace them. Sure. The airframe itself is a part. It's a structure. If you're going to rebuild the entire thing, you're buying a new aircraft. Yeah, they got new wings. A total waste of money because everyone knew this would happen. A car's monocoque chassis lasts millions and millions of miles without appreciable wear as long as it doesn't crash or rust. Aircraft are built to be lightweight so they flex and strain with flight hours, depressurization and landing/take off cycles. Your Cessna's never exceed speed is what, 170 knots? Make it pull 7-8 Gs at 280 knots like an A-10 and see what happens.
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  126. That's not true. The USAF and Army joint chiefs of staff had meetings about it and agreed to not step on each others' toes. Congress also determined that the Cheyenne, A-10 and Harrier (USMC) were all different enough to not be redundant and each of the services was free to purpose their projects. The USAF didn't lobby at all. The Cheyenne was a project that was suffering so many delays, Lockheed was still just figuring out a mechanical solution for their stability problems by the time other aircraft were introducing reliable digital controls. If anything, the fact that Lyndon Johnson had been president during the delays and he had connections with Bell played a greater part in the cancellation than the USAF.
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  127. Less. A jet only retrieves enough energy from the hot exhaust to drive the compressor blades, then sends the rest to the rear for thrust. A turboprop slaps an extra turbine section to collect more energy, and uses it to drive the prop. By the time the exhaust exits the turbine, it's colder than on a turbojet. And then the prop wash also mixes the exhaust with colder air.
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  128.  @martythemartian99  "I simply think multi role aircraft are to expensive and riddled with problems that take too much time and money to fix" - F-16s and F/A-18s are some of the most successful fighters in service and they're multiroles. The F-15 is an excellent strike platform built on an air superiority airframe. "Multi role was easier back in the days of the propeller" - Why? "More modern multi role aircraft are less capable than specialized aircraft" - But they are more capable. That's why specialized aircraft are on the way out.
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  129. Lipstick on a pig doesn't solve anything.
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  130. Because none have been made in decades, so they'd have to be re-engineered from scratch to adapt them to modern factories and processes. It contributes by supporting forces that won't get jets, helicopters or artillery support otherwise.
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  131.  @mhappy01  The siren was ineffective and eventually removed. Troops were startled at first but once the whaling becomes a common occurrence you forget about it.
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  132. Every country runs a deficit my guy. Austerity may be necessary if you have to pay off loans but it hamstrings your economic development.
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  133. They have replaced it. F-16s, Strike Eagles, etc do the A-10s job. It's just Congress that insists on keeping it in the air.
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  134.  @michaelmancini5773  Yes, it has. As of 2014 the F-16 provides 33 percent of CAS, while the A-10 only does 11 percent. Loitering time doesn't matter. A single bomb drop turns people into pink mist, and those that survive run away. Typically as soon as something explodes the insurgents scatter. That's why the Carl Gustav was adopted as a counter to long range PK fire, to give infantry the chance to make things go boom close enough for them to pack up and leave. The A-10 is heavily limited in payload capacity in Afghanistan because of the altitude. Look at the footage of A-10s in Bagram. They carry very little payload or else they hit the fence trying to take off at 5,000ft where the air is thinner. Even if there were no issues with altitude, there's no point in maxing out carrying capacity when you're going to have to bring it all back again. The 30mm hasn't been able to destroy tanks since the 70s. For someone who tells others to get a clue, you didn't even look up the 1979 test that determined that the 30mm could barely penetrate M47 tanks. And by the way, the DU round has been discontinued so the A-10 has to use lower penetration HE rounds. Also, most CAS in the modern theaters do not involve tanks. So why would tank killing be necessary?
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  135.  @michaelmancini5773  It sounds credible because it is credible. Your fellow Marines calling in CAS probably enjoyed getting F/A-18s as much as A-10s, as I've talked to more than a few and they loved the Hornet. Desert Storm had the A-10 pulled out of attacks against the Republican Guard, and the F-16 was sent in its place. Seems to me that the A-10 couldn't handle the heat and there are in fact substitutes. The Republican Guard gave the A-10 a concussion and bloody nose, it had to run with its tail between its legs and be fed lesser trained and less equipped Iraqi Army forces. 6 losses in 8,000 sorties while the F-16 had 3 losses in almost 13,000. For perspective, the Tornado suffered 7 losses in Desert Storm and this was considered such a failure that doctrinal changes had to be introduced, and the missions the Tornado were tasked with were much more dangerous than the ones the A-10 did.
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  136.  @michaelmancini5773  The depleted uranium was discontinued years ago. The last time it was used it was probably in 2015 and they were supposed to be scrapped in 2018.
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  137. Pilots can take more Gs than airframes. How many times have you heard of fighter pilots overstressing their aircraft?
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  138. Name any other suitable Harrier replacement.
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  139. That's not true. The Army is allowed to perform air support with rotary wing assets.
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  140.  @A_Nice_Guy.  So at the same time they're backed up by the most powerful alliance (backup means nothing if you can't fight), but at the same time they're getting garbage. Do you see how that contradicts your argument?
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  141.  @A_Nice_Guy.  Okay. They seem to have used the M113, HIMARS, Stinger and HARM properly.
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  142.  @A_Nice_Guy.  Amazing how the HIMARS found time to utterly break the spine of the Russian army last summer between the civilian killings.
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  143.  @itsapittie  That's not a serious solution. It would take so much time to transfer the pilots, mechanics and schools to the Army, by the time the transfer was complete the A-10 would be forced into retirement.
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  144.  @marktucker7454  No other plane can do what the A10 does - maybe that's an indication that it's a dead end?
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  145. Company that made them hasn't existed in two decades, the factory that made them stopped A-10 production in 1984.
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  146.  @tombombadil8709  The hell does that mean, T-62 weren't present at the start???
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  147. The USAF did have the OA-X program. It's simply too little, too late.
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  148. All the critical F-14 parts were scrapped to make sure Iran can't get to them.
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  149. Air dominance won't do anything to protect A-10s. The biggest threat to the A-10 comes from the ground. The Russian ground forces would easily clap it out of the sky. Just like the Russians limited Su-25 operations in Ukraine to when they had the enemy already encircled, because they knew that if they sent Su-25s out to duke it out with Ukraine they'd suffer losses.
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  150. These aircraft remained grounded as they couldn't get the Martin Baker ejection seats, the Australian Hornets were used up.
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  151. I'm sure the Army is going to spend billions to accept an aircraft with a thousand hours or so left before it snaps mid air.
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  152. It's actually extremely expensive for the job it does.
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  153. Any radar that make stealth obsolete, will work even better against non-stealth aircraft.
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  154. All the early B-52s were retired. B-52Gs were destroyed to comply with START after the fall of the Soviet Union and only B-52Hs remain.
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  155. Most drones do not have 40 years of stress and strain in their airframes.
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  156.  @duncanbennett2898  That's an outright falsehood. The rotary wing supremacists in the Army instructed their officers to call USAF support less often. The birth of the A-10 was the USAF chief of staff discovering through studies that Army troops were satisfied with USAF support, but wondered why they weren't called more often.
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  157.  @yes_head  No, it's related to representatives having jobs ties to the A-10 in their districts. The "boys on the ground" is just the excuse, as with everything else the real reason is money.
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  158. They don't want it. It's a death trap.
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  159. And if I recall correctly, even infantry attacks and AT mines claimed more German tanks than IL-2s.
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  160. ​ @venator5  a T-62 was destroyed in Marinka, March 15 2023. Please stop lying.
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  161. Even the loyal wingman program is not ready for prime time. The F-35 is combat capable.
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  162.  @peternystrom921  Yes, it is absolutely needed.
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  163. The other way around. Jets like the Su-25 are a MANPADS magnet. This is hard to target because the exhaust is much cooler.
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  164.  @donjones4719  Congress is composed by out of touch and incompetent people, so it checks out.
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  165.  @LucioFercho  The ANA should have not been included in the treaty for the same reason the ANA couldn't fight: lots of people at the top made a lot of money while the people doing the fighting were underpaid, underfed and underequipped.
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  166.  @LucioFercho  "YOU PUT THOSE PEOPLE IN POWER, YOU TRAINED THEM, YOU ARMED THEM" - No, I didn't. I was against the invasion since 2001. I have spoken against the massive scam that was the nation building process. Don't blame me for not noticing what was out in the open for everyone to see, and don't blame me for being the one who has to tell you. I'm also amazed that you call me a trumptard when this was not a discussion about politics. You seem upset.
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  167. The A-1 suffered extensive losses over Vietnam.
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  168. And now F-16s perform more CAS missions than A-10s. They were right, people were just not ready to accept it.
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  169. The crew costs more than the Javelin. Either way, Ukrainians have FPV drones with RPG-7 warheads zip tied to the bottom. The warheads are free.99 and FPV drones with enough power are most likely 600-1000 bucks.
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  170.  @buckstarchaser2376  The RPG warhead is a HEAT round, which are employed precisely because they still work at range. Is there a slight difference in warhead behavior? Sure. But once set off, the explosive drives a copper slug into armor independently of forward velocity of the warhead. HEAT works even when the charge is static. lmao the POW schizo cope. Okay bro, lay off the /pol/ copium.
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  171.  @buckstarchaser2376  Nobody said anything about melting. Drones fly over berms. Fuzes can be altered. Some are triggered electronically, there's video of a Russian soldier hitting a downed drone with a stick, and the impact is enough to touch the wires. They don't drop it like bombs. They fly it kamikaze style to crash into IFVs. There's plenty of footage, the best pilots even aim for the open hatches so that the explosion takes out the crew. I forgive you for not paying attention to the war.
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  172. No. Even with air superiority the A-10 is still vulnerable to ground defenses.
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  173.  @TheShrike616  "Might I suggest some fact checking" - You'd benefit from your own advice.
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  174.  @TheShrike616  How is it funny? You made a claim. I don't have to provide anything.
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  175. It's not cost effective, people just refuse to account for the costs of maintaining old aircraft by contracting small batches of replacement parts.
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  176.  Meat Salad  If it's false, why did Ukraine get the 4th GTA tanks?
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  177.  @thethirdman225  It means that whatever it takes, pilots are going in. With CAP following along to fight the battle, or with just enough missiles to fight off the enemy air power.
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  178. Did you see the footage of Russian assaults in Vuhledar? The first wave rolls over AT mines, the second wave gets shelled. Survivors are hunted by quadcopter drones.
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  179. Because they can't fly them off carriers? Plus, they have F-35Bs. Why would they care about old trash when they have modern jets?
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  180.  @dkoz8321  The Ju87 was an aircraft that became outdated during WWII itself. Tank kill claims by aircraft are overinflated. Both the Soviets and Germans made such exaggerated kill claims that they came back from battles with more tanks claimed than the enemy actually had in the battlefield.
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  181.  @dkoz8321  I can only find a source labeled Coram 2004, page 235 which is probably a Robert Coram book about Boyd, and the origin of the claim is attributed to Pierre Sprey. Do you have any idea how little confidence that inspires? Sprey was not on the Fairchild A-X team. He was a DoD analyst. He says he required the team to read it. Him saying that doesn't mean it happened, and even if it did the Fairchild engineers could have tossed the books straight into the bin and he'd be none the wiser.
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  182.  @mhappy01  Can't fly them off carriers.
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  183.  @Sir_Godz  They have F-35Bs. They have no need for outdated and worn out airframes.
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  184.  @bennuredjedi  Yeah, those were Army pilots in WW2 because the Air Force was only created in 1947... Bruh...
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  185. Not equivalent to the F-35.
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  186.  @quadling101  The two wing contracts were around 2 billion total. That's a lot of F-35As.
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  187.  @ofekk213  Not the Arie. A F-4 Phantom. With water+methanol injection to cool the engine and further compress the incoming air.
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  188. That's a lie. The USAF acquired 700 of them and the GAO slammed the Air Force for buying so many A-10s without a justification for such a high number. If they hated it they wouldn't have bought so many.
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  189.  @ChairmanMo  Because it's falling apart from old age. It cost 2 billion to remake the wings.
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  190.  @ChairmanMo  Because the company went out of business in the early 2000s. It's essentially a 1960s design. No point in starting over.
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  191. Upgrades? You mean essentially remaking that thing from scratch to replace all the aged parts?
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  192. Why would the Marines want something they can't fly off carriers? The photos are pure survivorship bias. You don't see the ones that got shot down after receiving similar damage.
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  193. The Australian F/A-18s were absolutely ran through. Making them flyable would take billions and a couple years.
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  194. 2017. A Super Hornet shot down a Su-22.
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  195. You're speaking like pilots have to be grown on vats. You think the Ukrainian air force has not recruited a single pilot in two years?
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  196. Pretty much no lives would be lost. In fact the A-10 is known for being at the top in terms of friendly fire.
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  197. Same excuse as the T-62. It was later used in the frontline.
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  198. It eventually sank. They were correct, just ahead of time.
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  199. @Aqua Fyre If it was true then, why are you still saying it now?
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  200. They already said they don't want them.
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  201. Why would you want a match? The only thing that could match it is something equally outdated.
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  202.  @fishfuxors  Improvements such as stealth, higher speeds, etc? We have those already.
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  203.  @lantinian  The YF-23 would need to be replaced too at this point.
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  204.  @pdoylemi  It was designed for Vietnam. By the time it was repurposed to fight the Soviets, it was already outdated.
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  205.  @pdoylemi  Yes, the project started in the 60s as a Skyraider replacement. The design considerations were chosen in accordance with the conflict being fought at the time. Close air support "is what it is", and almost nobody in the world uses A-10 equivalent aircraft for close air support. They either use light attack aircraft, bespoke attack aircraft or multiroles for the most part. What you think CAS is has the hallmarks of a narrow and romanticized view, but everything from F-16s to B-1Bs provides CAS.
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  206.  @zackthebongripper7274  That rumor is a load of baloney that came from a general in the early 90s. And he had nothing to do with the decision and was just spitballing because the Key West agreements prevent such a thing.
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  207.  @LupusAries  "or do you see the russians getting rid of their Frogfoots?" - The Ukrainians already lost 4 Frogfoots against the Russians, and the Russians only seem to have acknowledged using them in Debaltseve which was encircled by pro-Russian forces.
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  208. Well, the IL-2 is overrated as evidenced by the comparison between claimed kills and actual German losses, and the USAF did not try to ditch the A-10, in fact they were slammed by the GAO for purchasing an excess of A-10 without justification. The move to try and ditch the A-10 started in the 90s, which was the preplanned retirement age for the A-10. It's congress that insisted on keeping it in service despite that.
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  209.  @exharkhun5605  When doctrine is based on lies rather than what actually works, it's garbage. The USAF did not ditch its CAS doctrine. This is an old lie promoted by alternative outlets that enjoyed being contrarians, writing books and articles about how everyone except them was wrong. They are retaining the A-10 because they're legally bound to. In fact the USAF requested the retirement of 42 A-10s to be able to put that budget where it's actually needed. The F-22 will only be retired when the NGAD project is fruitful. Don't throw around fallacies. The fact is that IL-2s, Stukas, etc are overrated and doctrines derived from faulty numbers are not worth pursuing. Of course there would be military planes left. Those that actually work.
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