Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "Congress Tells USAF to Leave the A-10 Alone – But Should it be Retired?" video.

  1. What's the price of the morale hit upon seeing A-10s get shot down?
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  2. That fails to take into account the psychological effects of seeing A-10s shot down.
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  3.  @naterbaternaterbater  900 bucks per hour? That's lower than the A-29, your number is messed up.
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  4.  @Gromit801  Not really. Congress is wrong in this case, as usual.
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  5. The B-1 performed CAS. With a straight face. Your incredulity is not an argument.
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  6.  @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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  7. 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 The capabilities of the A-10 are essentially what makes it outdated.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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  8.  @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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  9. 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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  10. 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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  11. 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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  12. 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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  13.  @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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  14. 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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  15. Helicopters can fight from behind terrain.
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  16. 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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  17. 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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  18.  @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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  19. Losing a pilot and an A-10 you can't get any more of has absolutely no monetary savings.
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  20. 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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  21. 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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  22. 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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  23. 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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  24. The F-16 is more survivable than the A-10 because it doesn't get hit in the fist place.
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  25.  @demos113  The alternative is already deployed. F-16s and F-15Es perform more CAS than the A-10.
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  26.  @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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  27.  @mikemontgomery2654  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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  28.  @mikemontgomery2654  "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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  29. Lipstick on a pig doesn't solve anything.
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  30.  @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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  31.  @mikemontgomery2654  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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  32.  @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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  33. 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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  34.  @mikemontgomery2654  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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  35. That's not true. The Army is allowed to perform air support with rotary wing assets.
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  36.  @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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  37.  @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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  38.  @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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  39. 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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  40.  @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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  41. It's actually extremely expensive for the job it does.
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  42. Wrong. Close simply means the proximity of troops in contact.
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  43. 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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  44.  @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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  45. 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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  46.  @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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  47. 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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  48. 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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  49. 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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  50. 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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  51.  @mhappy01  Can't fly them off carriers.
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  52.  @Sir_Godz  They have F-35Bs. They have no need for outdated and worn out airframes.
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  53.  @quadling101  The two wing contracts were around 2 billion total. That's a lot of F-35As.
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  54. 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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  55. 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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  56. lmao
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  57.  @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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  58.  @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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  59. Why would you want a match? The only thing that could match it is something equally outdated.
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  60.  @fishfuxors  Improvements such as stealth, higher speeds, etc? We have those already.
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  61. 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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  62.  @mikemontgomery2654  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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  63. No. Even with air superiority the A-10 is still vulnerable to ground defenses.
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