Don't know about the hair on the chest part...
Posted on 01/29/2009 4:37:49 AM PST by markomalley
Its nickname is “warthog.”
That’s the first clue that flying an A-10 is not the Air Force’s most glamorous mission.
It’s designed to support ground troops, not to engage in the dogfighting that makes up the pop culture image of air combat.
The wars in the Middle East, though, have made close-air support — bombing targets near troops — one of the Air Force’s top missions.
“The A-10 was not the most sexy, popular weapon system the Air Force had,”said Lt. Col. Paul Johnson, the 414th Combat Training Squadron director of operations at Nellis Air Force Base. “But now since we invaded Afghanistan and we invaded Iraq, that is the mission du jour.”
Training, in turn, is adapting.
As a trial, the Air Force is adding a week of training on close-air support to the upcoming Red Flag, the aerial combat exercise run by Nellis. (This is in addition to Green Flag, an ever-evolving, joint exercise with ground forces that prepares units for deployment and focuses on close-air support.)
“It’s the reality of the time that we’re living in now; the fight that’s happening now,” Johnson said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others perceived a reluctance by the Air Force to shift focus to missions tailored for irregular warfare, such as close-air support, intelligence collection and troop movement.
Many just “didn’t think the Air Force was getting it,” according to Jeffrey White, a former, longtime military-capabilities analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Dominated by fighter pilots, Air Force leadership is sometimes derided by critics as fly boys or the fighter mafia. The service, the criticism goes, is interested only in the glamorous missions. And now that unconventional warfare is the dominant fight, some say the Air Force is only begrudgingly fulfilling its role.
“There are no aces for flying ground support,” White said.
The tension over priorities reflects a decades-long philosophical debate about the role of the Air Force: What mission should be predominant?
Gates, who never undermines the significant contribution the Air Force makes to the wars, has been pushing hard for more emphasis on intelligence collection using unmanned drones (much of which is done out of Creech Air Force Base, north of Las Vegas).
Last spring he vented publicly and forcefully, particularly toward the Air Force, that senior military leaders were “stuck in old ways of doing business.”
Shortly thereafter, and following a report detailing the erosion of the nuclear weapons program, Gates in an unprecedented action fired both the civilian Air Force secretary and the Air Force chief of staff.
Although the nuclear weapons issue is a valid reason alone for the firings, it’s telling that Gates then appointed as chief of staff a general who lacks a call sign, making it the first time the head of the Air Force doesn’t have a fighter or bomber pilot pedigree. Instead, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz has a background in transportation command and is more joint-forces minded.
Still, it would be wrong, White said, to paint the service as a dogmatic bureaucracy that can’t adapt. It can and does.
And, added Michael O’Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution, “the air-air and intense air-ground missions are still there, still driving most force structure, still absorbing most modernization dollars — not for these wars, but for deterrence and possible future wars.”
Success comes down to achieving a balance between the current needs and the ability to handle future threats. The Air Force would be called on to rapidly wage conventional air warfare if, say, things went bad with Iran or North Korea, White said.
Regardless, now A-10 pilots have a little more cachet, or as Johnson put it, “hair on their chest.”
Why a gun at all?
Newer UAV are carrying Hellfires, can carry the SDB, and there’s even a laser-guided 2.75” rocket now available.
Carrying a heavy gun with tons of dumb munitions is counterproductive for that kind of work. Especially when it requires the UAV to orient and close in with the target. Hellfires and rockets don’t.
Why a gun at all?
Newer UAV are carrying Hellfires, can carry the SDB, and there’s even a laser-guided 2.75” rocket now available.
Carrying a heavy gun with tons of dumb munitions is counterproductive for that kind of work. Especially when it requires the UAV to orient and close in with the target. Hellfires and rockets don’t.
The A-10 GAU-8 gun does not dump spent shell casings overboard.
It has a drum magazine that is a continuous loop. Live rounds come out one end and the spent casings go back in the other end. This is also the case for the 20mm M61 Vulcan used in most US fighters since the F-104.
A-10 GAU-8 Gatling:
<F-16 M61 Vulcan:
Know of at least one A-10 pilot that doesn't fit into the "hair on the chest" category. She goes by the name "KC" short for 'killer chick' and was featured on ABC's GMA back during the early months of the Iraq war. Someone out there in FReeper land probably has a picture they can post. She's one of those definitely not guilty types.
Another beautiful USAF creator of muzzie martyrs: 
We need an upgraded replacement. Troops shouldn’t be expected to fight without close air support.
You have that right, the trend right now is to increasingly capable and cheaper ground-to-air munitions. No argument that the A-10 is still the most capable ground-support a/c in the US Military but even with upgrades it is still a 1970s platform.
With all of its good qualities; weapons, protection and lengthy loiter time, I don't personally know how it can be greatly improved but we all know that it is in the bullseye of Russian and Chinese weapons developers. For the grunts, it is an angel in the sky, but for the enemy, it is a target for every new weapon.
Still, I predict that this will be one of the immortals, aircraft like the DC-3/C-47, P-51, Mig-17, F-15, B-52 and C-130. These define their age and role and all others are compared against them. They also have been great investments with long usage spans. The cost of the A-10 is now peanuts compared to its useage and pilots returned alive!
Wow! I had no idea the size of the gatling gun onboard the A10. It looks like the majority of the space in the fuselage is dominated by it.
THANK YOU. That is the lady I talked about in my former post. WHAT A LADY!
Recent proof of the durability of the A-10 was shown when then-Captain Kim Campbell, USAF, flying a ground support mission over Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, suffered extensive flak damage to her A-10. Enemy fire damaged one of the A-10's engines and crippled its hydraulic system, forcing the back-up mechanical system to operate the aircraft's stabilizer and flight controls. Despite this, Campbell managed to fly it for an hour and landed it safely at the air base in manual reversion mode.
This was actually part of the master design criteria. The gun is at the ceterpoint of the aircraft on the A-10. To accommodate it they had to offset the nose landing gear which is unique to the A-10 as a production aircraft. While claims that the A-10 stops in mid-air when the gun fires are wrong, Newton's 3rd law does significantly slow the airspeed.
I live in the flight path of the A-10’s at NAS Willow Grove. They cruise by in pairs. Appears to be student in front A-10 and an instructor off their wing. They ain’t pretty but they are the most survivable.
The locals have never seen them spitting fire and kickin’ ass.
Check out post 43.
No wait....
So you're saying that we should only prepare our military to fight limited insugent conflicts and ignore China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and other countries that have an Air Force?
Maybe what we need is a carrier version of the A 10
When you have troops in contact, the gun is the better choice.
I attended a briefing a few months ago where an A-10 pilot told how he and his wingman stopped an ambush against an Army convoy. They used only the gun.
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