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

  1. Which means the 20mm Vulcan is sufficient.
    12
  2. ​ @willw8011 The Brits had IFF markings on their vehicles and pilots got confused.
    12
  3. The problem is that such events did not change the outcome. Meanwhile "tank busters" in WW2 had the biggest impact in the war by strafing supply trucks and trains. Same as the A-10 - it did more damage against light armor and unarmored vehicles, while the F-111 with laser guided bombs claimed more tanks.
    12
  4. But you should have watched the video. Most tanks destroyed by A-10s in the Gulf War were by Maverick missile.
    10
  5. But its primary job has been counter insurgency for two decades.
    5
  6. Mobility kills work both ways, but they're much worse on airplanes.
    4
  7. To do a pass on the rear of a tank you'll have to fly over very unfriendly people.
    3
  8. Other aircraft use missiles so the justification to keep the A-10 around is "muh gun". Well, does the gun do anything that 20 or 25mm already won't do?
    3
  9. ​ @FarmerTed Survivor bias. You can only ask the troops in the ground after they survive the engagement. More effective weapons left less witnesses for you to interrogate.
    3
  10. Really only proves how silly it is to put a pilot in that death trap.
    2
  11.  @willw8011  So we went from "high tech fails, A-10 good because pilot has Mk 1 Mod 0 Eyeball" to "We've finally crammed enough high tech in the A-10 for it to do its job without effing up". If every ground element needs electronic IFF for deconfliction, we've already accepted the A-10 is irrelevant. I'm going to politely remind you that a big argument behind keeping the A-10 is that close air support needs low level flying and visual ID as a last resort because tech fails. If the visual ID doesn't work worth a fvck and we need electronics, there's no need to do low flybys. So the A-10 is a cheap aircraft that's literally priceless as you can't get replacements, has a huge cannon that in the end only reliably kills tanks with mobility kills and maybe damaging sensors, and its low and slow capabilities to look at the enemy requires IFF transponders because pilots can't tell friendlies and enemies apart. What's the actual point of keeping it?
    2
  12. ​ @sometoastxd It's not the best. What's even the metric for such a claim?
    2
  13. Ukraine has Su-25s. They didn't use it on the convoy for the same reason an A-10 pilot wouldn't be allowed to go. It's preferable to fly TB-2s until they get shot down than risk manned aircraft.
    2
  14. There's other 30mm, 25mm and even 20mm guns in service.
    2
  15. The F-111 got more tank kills than the A-10. The F-35 would do the same. Hit ad not get hit.
    2
  16. This is one of those instances were more context is helpful. In Ukraine there's been footage of tanks that appear destroyed because the bags with the crew gear bungied on the outside of the turret or ERA blocks themselves catch of fire. The tank looks like it's on fire but it's not.
    2
  17. ​ @Packer910 the DU round is the API.
    2
  18. Then why do you need 30mm rounds? 20mm will do the job.
    2
  19.  @nevisstkitts8264  The AH-64 does not use the same ammo as the A-10. The cartridge is smaller as the chain gun on the Apache doesn't have a breach and barrel strong enough for 30x173mm.
    2
  20. When you're out of smart weapons, you do like the Russians and Ukrainians - fire rockets into the air and turn back. You can't loiter over surface to air missiles.
    1
  21. The systems have not changed the dispersion of the gun or the level of penetration. They just make the pilot's job easier.
    1
  22.  @nevisstkitts8264  The C update was in the 2000s.
    1
  23. Unless they're well trained, determined and well equipped. The Iraqi Republican Guard stood their ground and punched the A-10 straight in the mouth. The A-10 was then sent on missions against the Iraqi Army because they had lower morale and worse equipment.
    1
  24. They have the Soviet A-10 aka the Su-25 and yet they use small commercial drones instead. What does that tell you?
    1
  25. A 50% increase in homicide in a small town is just 2 homicides instead of 1, while a 50% increase in homicide in Chicago is actually pretty concerning. Pure percentages are often meaningless within context.
    1
  26. ​ @VileCAESARB The US was already working behind the scenes to manipulate the world market to prevent Germany from accessing critical resources. The claim that the US was cowering at home when in fact it was already playing the chess moves to save Europe is pretty ungrateful.
    1
  27. There's plenty of aircraft caoable of shredding BMPs with their gun. The point is, what does the A-10 actually bring to the table?
    1
  28.  @brandonlevy8680  It's pretty sluggish when you load it with full ordnance (they couldn't take off from Bagram airfield with a full load: thin air = couldn't gain enough speed). Survivability is not getting hit in the first place. The A-10 was survivable when 14.5mm AA was the most common threat. Now missiles split aircraft in half. No surviving that. Those short crappy runways will need fuel, weapons and maintainers. So the A-10s will be based with all the other aircraft with proper bases and big runways because there's no point in endangering maintenance personnel by keeping them in remote airfields.
    1
  29.  @artruisjoew5473  1. You can't loiter over a hostile that wants to swat you out of the sky. 2. You don't want to do strafing over enemies with the capability to punch back. Strike Eagle pilots learned how to strafe at night during the GWOT. You know what's risky? Trying to fly over hostiles with MANPADS and AAA. 3. Other aircraft also have IFF equipment.
    1
  30. ​ @LaikaTheG None of that changes what I said. People like to swing their peen around and claim they caused significant emotional events, but to the people on the receiving end it probably didn't make the top 5 of the day.
    1
  31. ​ @sometoastxd Air defense is always active when any Ivan or Yuri can swing around a 14.5mm or Igla and ruin your day. No massive amount of electronic warfare can help you with the fact that the ground guys are much closer to you than your support is. Electronic warfare isn't going to jump in front of you to take a bullet.
    1
  32.  @linusa2996  So what? What matters is that the tanks died. If they got killed at night, they don't fight the next day. You don't need to hang around if you do the job right in the first place.
    1
  33.  @linusa2996  And BDA isn't iffy when done visually during combat?
    1
  34. ​ @jintsuubest9331 You'd completely shift the center of mass of the aircraft by replacing the gun. You would need to move the engines forward.
    1
  35. ​​ @that.schamp What would I want? Strike Eagle. You cannot depend on anyone because nobody else can protect you from MANPADS. It's just a puff of smoke from the ground and you're out. Nobody else can suppress it, nobody else can somehow get between you and the missile going after you. You have to use your power and speed to deny missiles the kinetic energy.
    1
  36. ​ @Matt-mt2vi Even if the misses are only scaring the pilots off, they're doing their job. A MANPADS isn't a primary weapon to whittle down an air force, it's a "get off me" weapon. And because of it, Su-25s are shooting unguided rockets in ballistic arcs.
    1
  37.  @Matt-mt2vi  The F-15EX is a Boeing jobs program, or else they need to shut down the St. Louis plant. It makes no sense to buy more than needed. F-15s will be retired and numbers will decrease, then the F-15 and F-22 will start scaling back once NGAD is online. The F-15EX is as costly to operate as the F-35. The Strike Eagle is better than the A-10 at CAS. Having a WSO is a massive help. The A-10 is the airframe with the most friendly fire in operation. Strike Eagle pilots do gun runs. At night. Please do not disparage pilots like that. PGMs are more precise than guns. Psychology is fickle. I have talked to many JTAC/FAC. I have heard Strike Eagles, Hornets and Harriers were their favorites as much as the A-10. The A-10 is not everyone's favorite, it seems an equal split. If you can call artillery, why would you need the A-10. Other A-10 can be pelted with gunfire or another MANPADS. My brother in Christ Ukrainians wrecked Russian CAS by sending advance parties that slipped past the frontline. Whenever Russian forces came into contact and called in air support, Ukrainians shot down the jets/helicopters. They had Buks, MANPADS and Gepard AA. Flying over hostile territory isn't a videogame. You got the location of the MANPADS? Suit yourself. AA is firing from another location. You turn to the AA? The Buk hits you. SHORAD is designed to make life hell for A-10s and Su-25s. They're not viable anymore.
    1
  38.  @Matt-mt2vi  How do you shoot aircraft at 10,000ft AGL with small arms? Pushing the idea? It's no an idea. Strike Eagles have been doing CAS for almost two decades. The issue is Boeing. 80 airframes keep people employed. The F-15EX cost of operation is artificially lowered because the F-35 has the EW packages and targeting systems as internal parts, and the 15EX has them unbolted and sent to separate depots for maintenance. Your evidence is also anecdotal. Is that a joke? The Su-25 has been doing a shameful job of firing rockets into the air and tucking tail and running. If anything, the Ka-52 seems to be doing more work, and even that one is taking a pounding. Su-25s and HIMARS? What? Ground attack systems are simple? What? Your problem is that your idea of replacing the A-10 is getting the A-10 2.0. It's not. Things change. We don't use SR-71s anymore, we don't use A-5 Vigilantes anymore, etc. The replacement is multirole. There's really only one A-10 equivalent, the Su-25. The MiG-27 was a garbage fire. Everyone else either has the money to use multiroles for CAS, or are forced to use light attack/trainer jets. If the A-10 truly needed replacement, you'd see more countries buying aircraft for that job.
    1
  39. ​ @GreenBlueWalkthrough It's already been succeeded by the F-16 and Strike Eagle.
    1
  40. The gun hasn't got any better, in fact the API round was pulled from service and only brought back to fight ISIS. The A-10 is physically an A-10, better avionics do not solve the critical issues.
    1
  41. That's an old wive's tale. The GAO actually got all up in the USAF's business for buying 700 A-10s without any reasonable justification for buying that many.
    1
  42.  @jackharter660  That's great. Still doesn't disprove the fact that the Air Force was buying too many A-10s. If they hated it like you claimed, they'd have bought 350 and be down to 0 after those 6 months. Problem solved. Literally listen to any pilot. There's TONS of podcasts now. There's pilots with youtube channels. You can listen to them tell you that they LOVE air to ground. Jesus. It's the information age and you're partoting stuff that was written in the 70s and 80s to sell books.
    1
  43.  @jackharter660  This just in, no pilot ever made General in the USAF. Privates in the air force are airmen. Pilots are Lts. Only the Army has enlisted pilots through "highschool to flight school", in the USAF you have to be an officer. Yes, F-15s have been doing the A-10s job since the 2000s. He said it because it's true. In the early 2000s A-10s only ran 20% of CAS missions. As of 2014, only 11%. Most CAS is done by F-16s and Strike Eagles.
    1
  44.  @jackharter660  It's literally their name. In the Army you're a private, in the Navy you're a seaman and in the Air Force you're an airman. It's not an exaggeration. The branches have different names for their ranks. Just like the army doesn't have admirals, the air force doesn't have privates. Air Force Generals are often former pilots. They loved their job. The A-10 isn't cheap.
    1
  45.  @jackharter660  But it requires billions in parts and entire sections being reinforced or remade because they already ran out of useful hours. They already flew past the point where they should have been scrapped. They're not saving money, they're requiring more money to keep in flying condition. It's not cheap to purchase. Taking into account inflation and upgrades, each A-10 is about 50-60 million USD worth. Being able to take damage is moot when it can't help but get hit. Other aircraft simply get hit less often.
    1
  46.  @jackharter660  But it isn't. Not only does keeping the A-10 in service makes every other aircraft more expensive to run because of the drain in resources it causes, its cost estimates ignore the added costs of keeping the aircraft in the air. There's maintenance, and there's the fact that the USAF has to pay to rebuild entire sections of the aircraft. They don't do a better job.
    1
  47.  @jackharter660  It's not cheap. If it costs you less fuel to drive an old car but every year it costs you thousands in repairs, your fuel costs are misleading. You're sinking money into driving a wreck, but you claim the fuel costs are lower. This is what the A-10 does. Nominally cheap to run, massively expensive to keep in the air because these contracts are not added to the per hour running cost.
    1
  48.  @jackharter660  The B-52 was never replaced so it can still do jobs other aircraft won't. But the A-10 had its job taken away by the F-16 and F-15E.
    1
  49.  @jackharter660  I never said you said the B-52 was replaced. I swear, people don't read anymore. Do you know how many times I've presented an argument clear as water and people get back to me "I never said". I know. Point to me where I said you said it. Read again. Memories are emotional and based on feelings. They're fallible. Even witness testimony can be manipulated just by asking questions differently. The opposite, actually - you don't keep planes in the air without a very good reason. They're only meant to fly for X amount of hours. After that they either need to be partially rebuilt and re-certified, or scrapped. Scrapping planes is the default. It's necessary for safety reasons. Sorry, but we have a ton of scrap planes. We don't need a reason, hours alone are enough to take them off duty. The air force hasn't decided anything. They actually requested for the retirement of more A-10s.
    1
  50.  @ABCantonese  It's more powerful, but not enough to make a difference. There is only one aircraft that carries it, so it's incredibly hard to justify keeping it in the air. Modern cartridge design (like 25mm APEX) can compensate for the smaller payload. If you want even more explosive filler, a APKWS rocket has around 5-6 miles of range and it gives you a pinpoint rocket strike at a comparatively low cost as you don't have to put millions of dollars worth of aircraft and pilot within 2500 feet of the enemy. The 30mm isn't going to be shared with ground troops. First, that's a logistical nightmare to rob Peter to pay Paul, only the most dire of situations would require it. Second, you don't know what "near the frontlines" is. Third, there's only a small amount of Stryker Dragoons with the Bushmaster 30mm cannon. Sorry, the USAF won't keep fuel, weapons, pilots and maintainers (very precious resources) near the frontline where a good MLRS attack could wipe out an entire air base.
    1
  51. Right. There's plenty of aircraft with smaller guns perfectly capable of shredding trucks.
    1
  52.  @charleshixon1458  You don't want to be caught lacking at slow speeds. You kill and disable tanks by damaging them externally rather than penetrating, same as the 30mm. In a contested environment, the A-10 won't be allowed to fly. It's just reality.
    1
  53.  @charleshixon1458  "you also cannot fire a gun accurately from high altitude at high speed" - If you need to be at high altitude, you wouldn't use the gun. If you're in a gun fight, don't mount the bayonet and rush through an open field. It's not about safe environments, but sane environments. Combat involves risk. But you don't do risky things when you can do the same job with less risk.
    1