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What fool told you that?
It was designed to operate in an environment including the ZSU23-4:
Posted on 01/19/2021 7:05:59 AM PST by Onthebrink
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What fool told you that?
It was designed to operate in an environment including the ZSU23-4:
I want one!
Brraaarrrt.
5.5+6mm
Damn, I want a Pair!
There is no drop-dead for replacement. The Air Force said recently that it has finished installing new wings on the last of A-10 Thunderbolt IIs. The re-winging of the venerable attack aircraft is expected to allow it to keep flying until the late 2030s, Air Force Materiel Command said in a release.
Because of the flexibility of sortie for the F-35, it will be used for a number of different reasons. I just mentioned the one way the 35 could be used. And they may decide on another aircraft altogether to replace both over the next 10 to 15 years. Neither one of us works as skunkworks so we aren’t kept in the know of everything. LMC keeps things to the themselves.
wy69
Skunkworks is working concept stuff that may have application on different platforms.
I could have been more clear, A-10s through 2030’s, there is no specific retirement date and we all know how firm those expected dates are. Heck, how many times was the Buff extended beyond its original retirement decade. Same wit the Hog.
JSF is multi-mission but when it comes to CAS, severe limitations. A jet can be good at a mission, but in my experience, a jet can’t do all missions well.
IMHO
“....a jet can’t do all missions well.”
I agree. The Hog was the first Air Force aircraft specially designed for close air support of ground forces. They are simple, effective and survivable twin-engine jet aircraft that can be used against all ground targets, including tanks and other armored vehicles. But air to air, they are too slow and don’t pack the firepower used for that.
With the military bottom line, especially with the new liberal administration and their historical notorious cutting of the military budget, there will be a number of one size fits all vehicles being developed and purchased. I feel the only reason they didn’t retire the Hog is because they don’t have enough replacement aircraft to cover its mission.
Another is parts capacity. During the rewinging of the Hogs at Hill and Osan, the Air Force had to pull spare A-10 parts up from the 309th AMRG at Davis-Monthan, better known as the Boneyard. New parts for the plane’s fuselage also had to be created. So parts have become an issue. This is what normally signals the end if the aircraft can be replaced. But Boeing received a $1.1 billion contract in 2007 to build the replacement wings so they have a good amount of chump change to justify worth while.
You mentioned Buff. Even the people that fly it think it should be put to pasture. In an interview with the Seattle Times, one pilot said this:
“It’s like stepping back in time,” said Capt. Lance Adsit, 28, the pilot. He banked left to start a mock bombing run, wrestling a control yoke forged decades before he was born. Time had stripped it of paint. “I love the B-52,” Adsit said. “But the fact that this is still flying is really insane.”
Much of the rest of the mammoth B-52 bomber is just as antiquated. Vacuum tubes have been replaced with microchips, and the once-standard ashtrays are gone. But eight engines along the wings still connect to the cockpit by yards of cables and pulleys, and the navigator often charts a course with a slide rule. And shortly after takeoff on this sortie his onboard navigation computers crashed.
But they’re still flying as even though they are falling apart and lack a lot of the technology they need, they are still in the air as there hasn’t been any successful replacements.
The first B-1 unveiled in 1985, before a crowd of 30,000, failed to start. Design flaws and engine fires sidelined the plane during the Persian Gulf War and have limited its use since.
Next came the B-2 stealth bomber in 1997. But the B-2, with its delicate radar-evading coating, had to be stored in a climate-controlled hangar to be effective, and its sensors at first could not tell a storm cloud from a mountain. It soon became known as the $2 billion bomber that cannot go out in the rain.
On a recent training flight out of Barksdale Air Force Base after three days of rain, leaks in a Buff left its seats soaked and the control panel glistening. One engine refused to start, and then some wiring shorted. Kind of like some people I limp to to visit in a rest home near me.
The Hog is a great aircraft for what it does. But when the worth of the cost runs over, it will be replaced and a do two things fair aircraft will do it. The contract for the rewinging was in 2007. We’ll see how long it takes congress to forget it’s there and over shoots the dates. With money, they can be awfully forget full. And they’re a lot like babies, they know they want something, they just don’t know what and will take the first thing offered.
wy69
Thanks for the history.
“I feel the only reason they didn’t retire the Hog is because they don’t have enough replacement aircraft to cover its mission.”
Sort of. The production line closed well before the Hog was used in any real combat scenario, and once it was, huge revelation (except for Hog drivers), it performed its mission well beyond the “fast jet” community thought possible. Too late to fire up the line, too costly to re-tool a facility, so, the Boneyeard was the obvious choice.
The Boneyard doesn’t only have obsolete jets in it. It also has modern jets, too, all because “we” (the powers that be, actually), wanted to cash in the peace dividend and reduce the number of jets, a reduction in force.
The Hogs, with their gun and their AIM-9’s, can really reach out and touch someone. When flying low fly missions in Low Fly 7 in Germany, “fast jets” would only try and maneuver to an unobserved shot otherwise they left Hogs alone. Hogs would take’em on easily in the dogfight.
Anyway, like I said, a jet may be able to fly various missions but I have yet to see a jet that can do multiple missions well.
I was at Dyess when the first B-1 showed up. It had potential but was hurt by budget battles and such so the manufacture was interrupted a few times and the mission changed mid-delivery (no need to be nuke certified).
The Buff comment was to make clear that even though we have expected retirement dates, they don’t usually happen like the A8 planners hope.
Nex Gen Long Range Bomber was supposed to replace the Buffs and B-1,s, and possibly B-2’s, but too many times budgets were slashed in DC by the know-it-alls. The dweebs have no clue that they actually increase budget costs rather than reduce budget costs. They don’t understand the basics: You design a new washing machine, the cost to research, design, test, refine and market is costly if you only buy a couple (cost per unit). But if you manufacture thousands the cost per unit is lower, much lower. Same with jets.
Bean-counters seem to be unaware of basic accounting.
Politicians scream about how costly new platforms are, then they cut budgets and then scream about how much more costly the new platform costs and they cut more and scream more about rising costs of the platform.
Idiots.
“Politicians scream about how costly new platforms are, then they cut budgets and then scream about how much more costly the new platform costs and they cut more and scream more about rising costs of the platform.”
You are astute. We used to call it a mongolian -——— ——. Pretty soon they cut the platform down to less than the worth of the aircraft they are trying to replace. And it is my understanding that the new not yet on the drawing board A-10 is going to be stealth. Truly putting a bow on a pig.
wy69
Hah.. .true, true. . .
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