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 ...
German ones, sans Gatling gun.
Are you kidding?
The B-29 caught fire at altitude. It was a death trap.
The reason for the low level fire bombings of Japan was that they couldn’t be depended on for the high altitude daylight precision bombings the B-17s & B-24s did in Europe.
By the time of the Korean War, the B-29 was improved. But, on the way out.
I was a USMC FAC and later ALO and worked A-6 dry runs in Korea and live bomb & strafe with F-4 & A-4 at Crow Valley, RP. Prior to that I was a USMC 81 mortars FO in Vietnam. There I was "up close & personal" with CAS delivered by A-4, F-4 and A-1 "Spads".
I've had an F-4 drop 2 tanks nape & (6) 250# Snakes (all at once), releasing 75 yds BEHIND me to hit a target about 40 yards in front of me. I'd guess he was about 75 feet AGL.
Believe me, the guys in the mud prefer "low & slow".
That said, I have zero experience with Smart weapons - waaaay after my time.
Loiter time is very important to ground pounders. When you're engaged with enemy infantry, lots of small ordnance and LOTS of gun ammo is important. If you run out of that, creative use of afterburner (if so equipped) is greatly appreciated. Just ask the grunts on Hill 881.
From the perspective of the guys on the ground, zoomies are there to provide the SERVICE of fairly quick, heavier ordnance than we are carrying, because we NEED it - 5 minutes ago. We are not here to give the fast movers a place to drop before RTB clean.
More low & slow, affordable aircraft carrying LOTS of cheap ordnance is better that golly-gee-whiz 21st century aircraft and Einstein weapons costing gigabucks.
Perhaps we need to fully fund the XM1156 Precision Guidance Kit for 155mm arty instead?
You got that right.
The smart weapons and targeting pods are a huge change. I loved dropping manual bombs by scrapping them off the wing, so to speak...but that is no longer the most accurate way to drop a bomb.
Loiter time is huge, and the USAF forgets that. I also was in the F-111. In GW1, the F-111Fs blew up a huge number of tanks - more than the A-10s, I was told - by hanging out in kill boxes with lots of time and lots of PGMs.
I fully understand the love for the A-10. I was in Afghanistan in 2007 & talked to some Army guys who told me they were both on their last clip & thinking it might be good to save their last bullets for themselves when some A-10s showed up. I guess they must have gunned the enemy to hell. The guys said there were corpses all around, and they would forever after love the A-10.
I would ideally like to have both. I did have a small chance to work briefly with the A-10C upgrade before I retired, and I live near Davis-Monthan. The A-10 is a great plane.
But I also have books from the 1970s predicting the total worthlessness of the F-15, F-16 & F-18. One predicted the F-15 would be the biggest failure in aviation history. And when I first saw some of the new targeting pods in test, my gut reaction was, “These things could change CAS”. Unless you’ve seen what they can do, it is hard to appreciate how things have changed.
Good luck to you and yours, regardless. My Dad flew helicopters in Vietnam in 1972, but he didn’t come back.
Thanks for the info!
Sorry about your dad.
I spent a lot of time in the back of a CH-46 in ‘Nam, and they (mostly) kept us in “beans, bullets & band-aids”. After ‘Nam I went to OCS and flight school and flew (mostly) the CH-53D. (BTW, about 90 hours in the T-28B/C was a kick!)
Interesting times!
Semper Fi, and thanks for “scrapping them off the wing” in support of your less enlightened brethren playing in the mud!
It seemed to be a death trap. As it passed into supersonic there was a shock wave from the nose that would enter the air intakes of the outboard engines. That often caused flame-out or even engine destruction. It was a truly nice looking airplane. It had a short service life because it was a bucket of headaches.
“The reason for the low level fire bombings of Japan was that they couldn’t be depended on for the high altitude daylight precision bombings the B-17s & B-24s did in Europe.”
The fire bombings were run at 1500 feet at night! The B-29 flew farther, faster and with a larger payload than the B-17. The reason B-17’s weren’t used on Japan was because they were not capable of bombing Japan.
Precision bombing during WWII did not exist. For example:
” It took 108 B-17 bombers, crewed by 1,080 airmen, dropping 648 bombs to guarantee a 96 percent chance of getting just two hits inside a 400 x 500 ft (150 m) German power-generation plant.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_bombing
The A-10 is not carrier capable.
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