Bigger is Better.
Posted on 04/16/2014 8:12:40 AM PDT by SandRat
A top Air Force official had one word to describe the proposed cuts threatening to ground the A-10 fleet.
“Heinous.”
Rep. Ron Barber relayed the comments from Gen. Michael Hostage, the commander of the Air Combat Command, shortly after the pair toured Davis-Monthan Air Force Base to discuss the fate of the iconic attack aircraft known as the Warthog.
The commander of the Air Combat Command, Hostage oversees the 355th Fighter Wing at Davis-Monthan which flies more than 80 A-10s.
Barber, flanked by community leaders, asked Hostage to come to Tucson to see the overwhelming community support for the air base and the A-10.
Last week, Barber wrote to Air Force officials asking them to consider reassigning F-16 squadrons from Luke Air Force Base to D-M when squadrons of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters arrive.
After the tour with Hostage, Barber said he is still working with senators and key members in the House for a legislative solution.
Barber continues to blame the budget sequester as the true motivation for mothballing the A-10 fleet.
Former A-10 pilot Martha McSally, one of four Republicans vying to run against Barber this fall, accused the Tucson Democrat is playing political games using soldiers as backdrop as he runs for re-election.
“When it mattered most and he could have had an impact, Congressman Barber flat out ignored the threat to the A-10, denied it was at risk and was asleep at the switch to the point of skipping the committee hearing that shaped this crucial decision,” McSally said.
“Now he’s using active duty military to desperately play politics and cover his tracks. “
Barber has consistently disputed McSally’s assertions over the A-10 to the point of releasing a timeline of various actions he has taken since being elected into office in 2012.
The Tucson Democrat concedes he missed a committee hearing last year, but only to chair a subcommittee hearing on sequestration at the same time as the Air Force posture hearing.
So, with that in mind, why do some fighter pilots think they have an automatic right to run the Air Force?
Because for all their age the remaining B-52 airframes have very little time on them. A-10’s fly a lot.
That said, the A-10 is design simplicity itself. Easy to maintain in primitive conditions. It simply can’t cost that much to keep flying.
“Fact is, the USAF fighter mafia has been trying to rid themselves of the A-10 since it was fielded.”
Careful with the term “Fighter Mafia”. The original use of that term was for some Pentagon analysts put together by USAF Colonel John Boyd. One of them, Pierre Spey, was instrumental in the A-10 program.
The original “Fighter Mafia” favored relatively simple, straight forward aircraft designs optimized for a single mission, ie. A2A, Ground Attack, Interdiction.
The F-15, F-16 & A-10 were products of their work (although the F-16 morphed into a multi-mission strike fighter).
This has been a longstanding issue, from way before I started my AF career. They see themselves as the point of the sword, for everything. In the 70s and 80s they saw themselves this way even in a nuclear conflict. A friend at the time was fighter jock out of Spain who had a nuclear mission. In a discussion with him he made it clear that the fighters were the heroes in any conflict, being first on the scene when the Soviets came pouring through the Fulda Gap. I pointed out to him that they were in a worse position than the front-line ground troops. They went in first, cannon fodder, and nobody expected them to return. In a tactical nuclear mission, I asked him if he ever missed any of his timing points and he said yes, sometimes by several minutes or more. I then pointed out that timing was so critical in a nuclear conflict that if he missed one or two timing points in his flight to target that he would have just enough time to pickle his nuke, turn and be taken out by one of the MIRV warheads that were also covering his target. The MIRVs would arrive on time, even when he didn’t. He went pale at the thought and never again boasted of the superiority of fighter jocks. They are but one essential cog in the overall plan of conflicts.
I think those SPAD’s had 20mm cannons for ground attack. They lacked effective lead-computing gun-sights. But then when a MiG-19 makes a head-on pass at a 2-ship formation of SPAD’s... well... the weight of the broadside goes to the Skyraiders.
Scuttling the A-10 is the USAF version of what was done to the F-14 in the Navy, IMO. As a former artillery Fire Support Officer, I know I’d like to have the CAS capability of the A-10 available in any FSCOORD plan I’d write or be required to execute.
Bingo. The A-10 is simple, effective, reliable, and cheap. I guess that’s why it has to go!
I have a deep, abiding respect for A-10s and their crews from two perspectives. First, as a former grunt. Nothing as heartwarming as a pair of A-10s that you called in, streaking by at treetop level letting off a burst of 30mm. Secondly, as an AH-64 pilot. I have participated in numerous Joint Air Attack Team (JAAT) exercises with A-10 crews. Their piloting and steel on target skills are a thing of beauty. Best of all, A-10 “drivers” have a deep appreciation for their ground support mission.
I’m referring to the 5 sided building types more interested in empire building than warfighting.
This is why the F-35 is a failure — it is hyped up as being good at everything, but in reality it ends up being less than adequate for anything.
(This is also why it is being pushed so hard: because to field such a deficient, vision-less system would guarantee much in the way of time, energy, and money be poured into it — just like the M-16 has had tons of monies [and energies] poured into it to cover its design failures*.)
* Granted, from what I hear the original Stoner design was much better, but was screwed up by a group adapting it to military use.
As an intel puke who did mission support (at the squadron and wing level) and threat assessments for nuclear strike missions, I can affirm your comments.
Looking at the laydown plan (and timing) for nuclear war in western Europe was sobering. One of my units was based stateside, but we had squadrons that would deploy to Germany and Italy if the balloon had gone up. Some of their scheduled “lines” represented the third or fourth nuke on a target. If a pilot or crew was off on their timing by just a few minutes for any reason (late takeoff, dodging enemy fighters or SAMs, etc) they could arrive in the target area at the same time as another weapon, with a bigger yield. At that point, plane, crew and weapon would become one with the cosmos.
My work in the tactical nuke arena was with F-4s and F-16s. All of our missions promised pilots or crews the possibility of return if everything went according to plan-and there was little margin for error. I had friends in the F-111 community who told me there were lines out of Lakenheath that were truly “one-way” missions; the distance, laydown timing and threats gave the Aardvark crews virtually no chance of survival.
But even that pales with the Buff crews who (in the pre-ALCM days) were supposed to go deep inside the Soviet Union and put nukes on target. I was in SAC during my enlisted days and some of the “landing” bases for B-52s and KC-135s were diverse, to say the least. Can’t recall any of the Buffs returning to home station under SIOP and very few of the tankers; it was assumed that their bases would be vaporized early in the conflict, so (if they survived their trip to Russia) they would land at another base and take it from there.
Tanker crews were under orders to give every pound of gas to the bomber, saving just enough for safe separation after the refueling. The Buff or FB-111 would go on to their target; the tanker would crash in northern Canada, on the polar ice cap or somewhere in the ocean.
We have manual reversion flight capability, meaning if the two hydraulic flight controls systems are shot out then you can manually fly the jet. This was to allow you to fly out of the combat zone and get somewhere safe to eject. However, some have returned and landed in manual mode. . .one Col lived but in another case the young Lt died.
No, they don't really debate the question as too many factors come into play.
Great jet, BIG gun, 30mm, 3500-3600 ft per second out the barrel, 120,800 RPM, able to penetrate an inch of armor at 8,000’ (F-16’s and others need to close to get that at 2,000’). Personally, back in the 80’s, I strafed soft targets out to 12,000’. . .and that was before advanced stabilization was added. . .
Its very resilient but thats not a winning argument. The response to that argument is other aircraft aren’t subject to the fire in the first place so its a moot point. The air force would prefer to drop a 500lbs bomb from an altitude where small arms cannot reach them moving fast enough the bigger stuff misses.
IMO where the A10 is so much better is its ability to provide close cover and loiter for long periods.
Something many forget.
Side story: As a Gulf War I ALO, I was sitting in the desert, mosquito net covering my head and MRE, covered by huge flies. As I ate, suffering the heat and dust, stinking because as a ruck-sack carrying ALO I had no access to showers (lived with the Army), every so often some young grunt would sit next to me and grumble something about “You Air Force guys get all the high speed stuff and live an easy life.” I never got angry or frustrated, as I appreciated his world (being there how could I not?), and merely smiled and went back to eating. . .
A-10’s never carried nukes. . .couldn’t figure out how to put a calendar timer on the fuze to give the A-10 enough time to get away. . .LOL. . .
I see a sex scandal and a pink slip in the general’s future.
There is a book I bought and read many years ago, Inside The Soviet Army, by Viktor Suvarov. He was a Soviet general who defected. Anyway, he wrote the first thing that was going to happen if the Soviets had decided to attack the West was their fighter aircraft were going to fly in and nuke the NATO air bases.
In his book he stated the Soviets did not separate nuclear from conventional warfare and that they were going to hit all NATO HQs, airfields, and every other high value target before their troops moved. Our fighters over in USAFE were almost all crispy critters before the pilots got them off the ground.
Bigger is Better.
CAS does not require the jet to fly “close”. In CAS, “close” means close delivery of weapons and weapons effects.
With advances in accuracy and targeting, stand-off is becoming more and more usual and accurate.
The A-10’s strength was its ability to loiter in the target area, deliver ordnance multiple times over multiple passes. Low altitude CAS was driven by the A/A threat. That is why the A-10 took it high after the first few days of Gulf War I. . the A/A threat went away so they now flew high to remain out of range of most small arms.
The A-10 became a ripe target when the US decided to reap the ‘peace dividend’ and invest in multi-mission aircraft as opposed to a single-mission aircraft like the A-10. Gulf War I derailed that effort for a while. Heck, even Gen Horner, big anti-A-10 guy, admitted the A-10's "saved our asses.".
Oh, and last thing, I did a study of BD jets from Gulf War I. If an A-10 took a hit, it had an 84% chance of surviving the hit and getting home, whereas with the other fighters, if they took a hit, they had an 86% chance of losing the jet.
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