This is the aircraft the article was written about.
Posted on 09/19/2015 11:40:53 AM PDT by Forgotten Amendments
...“The A-10 is the best ‘close attack’ plane ever made, period,” Sprey tells me. “But the Air Force hates that mission. They’ll do anything they can to kill that plane.” He says retiring the iconic A-10, a twin-engine attack jet with 30-mm cannons that hit with 14 times the kinetic energy of the 20-mm guns mounted on America’s current fleet of supersonic fighters, became an article of faith among high ranking Air Force officers, generations of whom had been raised to believe in the redemptive power of technological innovation.
That mentality drove production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the world’s first $1 trillion weapons system. Development of the F-35 was going on in the background throughout the Afghan War despite mountains of evidence that the stealthy jet would never be able to attack ground targets like the A-10 could. Far away from the fighting, the generals in Washington, DC supported the F-35 because they believed “more technology is always better.”
This same thinking drove the push for armed drones over Afghanistan too. But no matter their technological wizardry, remote-piloted hunter-killer aircraft like the Predator and Reaper were arguably even worse at helping ground troops than even the highest-tech manned jets...
(Excerpt) Read more at motherboard.vice.com ...
The big feature was to put the engine air intake on one side of the fuselage and the muzzles of the guns on the other.
IIRC, early A-10s had problems with gun exhaust causing the engine to flame out. Not a lot of fun while in a dive on a target!
“The A-10 engines were initially susceptible to flameout when subjected to gases generated in the firing of the gun. When the GAU-8 is being fired, the smoke from the gun can make the engines stop, and this did occur during initial flight testing.[2] Gun exhaust is essentially oxygen-free, and is certainly capable of causing flame-outs of gas turbines. The A-10 engines now have a self-sustaining combustion section. When the gun is fired the igniters come on to reduce the possibility of a flame-out.” - Wikipedia
Again, I’m sorry. They are referring to the A-29 Super Tucano. My excerpt didn’t include that.
There’s a better chance it will wind up in the Marine Corps.
This is the aircraft the article was written about.
The whole article reads like an ad for a Brazilian aircraft manufacturer.
and y'kin add ... working outside the box too !
Absolutely. This Army-Air Force relationship has been stupid for decades. Let the Army do it's mission with whatever tools it needs.
A-10 should be flown by Marines not Air Force.
“The Army wouldn’t know how to employ it. I say that as a former ALO who has tried to explain airpower to brigade commanders. They are not flying tanks.”
And in a nutshell, you explained the problem. It’s those USAF goggles that cannot see others needs as mattering in the slightest. The Air Force loves to dream of deep interdiction, strategic planning, and everything else except a flying tank. The problem is that flying tanks are indeed needed. They resent a ground commander telling him what they need blown up. The Air Force loves to discuss taking out the bridge 40 miles away, and the benefits that will reap. And the ground commander sees the dug in position 700 yards out front.
“than risk getting killed by an errant bomb dropped from a high-tech jet from 30,000 feet up, where a pilot can’t even see the target.”
“The guy writing this is an idiot,”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/dec/06/afghanistan.duncancampbell
That never happened I guess
Somehow, a ground attack bird named "The Flyin' Flapjack" just doesn't seem right and proper...
DJ, Thank you for the picture. I’m adding that it is the Brazilian Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano. and as some else said, definitely NOT WWII, it is an improvement from the 1980s “Tucano” design.
They also brought in ex-Soviet IL-2 Sturmovik pilots to advise on the A-X program. Many of the A-10’s key features, like the armored bathtub surrounding the pilot and key avionics, the heavy armor surrounding the other components, the ability to take ridiculous punishment through redundancy plus overbuilt construction and the non-fully-retractable landing gear, are directly lifted from the IL-2.
The A-10 is the direct heir to the Ju-87 Stuka and the IL-2 Sturmovik. Unsurprisingly, it really isn’t that much different from either of its progenitors.
Don’t get rid of them!
I will be glad to foster one in my barn.
Turn the starter motors once a month.
Most crews never flew more than one type of bomber in WWII, so what they preferred is a dubious statement. Many crews loved the B-24s and the B-29 was a totally different beast flying a totally different mission.
The B-17 ditched better than the B-24s given its low wing.
Turbo props also didn’t exist in WWII.
We had Spads giving us CAS in Vietnam. Low, slow and right on target!
‘Zactly!
“A helicopter is a mass of machinery forced into the air against its will, a collection of spare parts flying in loose formation!”
Airplanes, mechanically, size for size, are dead simple compared to helos.
Of course, fixed-wing usually get all the whiz-bang avionics long before (if ever) helos, and that can get complicated.
On the other hand.. The Vietnam-era A-1 (prop plane, single engine, single pilot) outperformed the WWII B-17, B-24, and B-29 for all but extended time-of-flight and unrefueled range. And, with the A-4 jet as a strike plane, A-1 as a stand-by area attack, and A-10 Warthog as specific ground attack plane, 3 pilots could provide better accuracy over the target for more hours per day over every day and night of theyear than could 30 10-man vrew B-24 or B-17’s flying (at most!) one mission every two days carrying far fewer bombs.
Get the story right. The guys on the ground gave the wrong geographical coordinates and blew themselves up.
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