How Would You Improve the A-10?

Yea, right.

Tell me when you want to talk about real world, and not Battlestar Galactica or Terminator.

No, the "pilots" of combat UAVs are generally sitting in air conditioned buildings back here in the US. They are indeed flying them from remote control via sattelites and radio signals, the "automation" is only when they are returning to their local airfield for refueling and rearming.

But please, if you can give a credible reference to a UAV system that can take off, attack a moving target, then fly itself back to base with 0 human interaction, then I will say you might have something. But that is simply not the case.

Waiting on credible references...

 

And what do you think the combat life expectency of something like that is in a modern battlefield? Even an M-240 or M-249 could knock that thing out of the sky.

Even an M-2 would barely make a dent in an A-10. Even 20mmand 30mm with explosive shells have rarely taken down an A-10 without a significant number of hits..

Sorry, you really do not know what you are talking about here. Suggesting we revert to using WWI era aircraft is simply stupid. Since even more modern versions of that aircraft are almost worthless in modern aircraft.

And yes, I have participated in air defense exercises where one of the targets was a Post-WWII era biplane, the AN-2 Colt (top speed 258 km/h). That makes even the VE-7 (top speed 171 km/h) look like an antiquated piece of crap.

And as a sidebar, that speed is with the original AN-2 Radial engine. More modern turboprop prototypes have been known to hit in excess of 280 km/h.

The biggest annoyance of the AN-2 Colt? Waiting around for it to even get close enough to shoot down. The thing was so damned slow it was a joke.

Oh, and the VE-7? A 2 seater with a single .30 machine gun. The Colt?

Well, they have been fitted with multiple 12.7mm machine guns, rocket pods, and even gravity bombs. Weapons the Ve-7 never even came close to carrying.

 

My thing... guns to strafe infantry. That can be a pair of 50 cal or a 30 cal mini gun. The GAU8.. is SCARY.. but overkill.. not cost effective if shooting up a bunch of foot soldiers or pickup trucks. I'd be FINE upgrading avionics to make it more 'all weather, night+day.

as for whatever sort of Russian 23 mm guns... those don't stop Warthogs well. Saddam HAD many. A Warthog can eject flares. The layout of the engines, the tail setup is ABOUT surviving small porta-Sams.

MEANWHILE.....there was AF guys who wanted to replace the Warthogs with F-16's that had Mavericks. Well....You CAN kill a F-16 with a 23 mm,or a shoulder fire missle. That's no doubt.

Also... I quite doubt a V22 could do a GAU 8. Those are LARGE. The Warthog is a VERY tough bird wrapped around a humongous machine gun. Could a V-22 mod do Close Air? Probably but... not the same way.

I WAS an AERO major. Aerodynamics, including swpt wings are important IF Speed is your thing. I guess you can get Supersonic with huge thrust... but... if it's unstable, hard to steer.. that's no fun. For Close Air... flying past at Mach 1....can you SEE stuff? Can you loiter? Are you TOUGH enough to take hits?

 

ISIS? They are so low tech the HARD thing is FINDING them. Then.....how much $ do you spend on two guys in a pickup truck?

IF..... we get in a hot war with Russia or China......THEY will want to negate a lot of our 'tech" and we will do likewise to them. SOME things... may NOT be that vulnerable.. but...some will be MORE vulnerable than expected. We CAN test. We may miss some tricks.

 

And I am sure that you have references proving this is the case?

Sorry, I am talking real world, not Terminator.

Not really, because the majority of aircraft are not 100% dependent upon their electronics.

Especially older aircraft like the A-10, which still have multiple hydraulic and wire systems to operate the aircraft manually. Eliminate most of their electronics, and they can still return to base and land safely.

And there is no such thing as a "pre-programmed self initiating drone", that is your science fiction fantasy again. The closest thing to what you describe is a Tomahawk Missile. Which is essentially a stupid kamakaze. It takes off, flies a pre-set route (nothing "self initiating"), then crashes into it's target and detonates. It does no thinking, it can make no decisions. It is not "guided" at all, it is just a more advanced dumb missile.

Hell, the Tomahawk can not even track a target, so in many ways even a STINGER is more advanced.

 

Flying by the seat of ones pants is only really possible up to a certain speed down low. Faster at medium altitudes but the accuracy falls off the higher you go. So it has limited military utility - but if everyone is blind then you might as well field something rather then nothing - but those platforms would be cheap and fast to build these days assuming the factories are running. But who'll fly them?

I'd imagine ideally future UCAV operators would have a greater sensory immersion then sitting in front of a couple of flatscreens - unfortunately that will not be needed because the human in the loop will be relegated to authorizations and macro level objective and program management of the UCAV's systems rather then actually flying at any stage. Still even at that mundane level of user interaction I reckon it would be beneficial for next gen drone operators to achieve some basic flying instruction in real aircraft up to cross country flying - just so they understand the interaction of the environment, aircraft systems, flight planning and airspace penetration and control in real terms rather then theory alone.

 

Well, the gun is made for taking out tanks and APCs, not Infantry. And generally it is used against individuals in bunkers, where a .30 or .50 would not do the job.

And the "pickup-trucks" you put down is not really accurate. The vehicles they are most commonly targeting are to be accurate "Technicals". Yes, they have a pick-up as the basic chassis and engine most of the time, but the similarity ends there.



More and more armored Technicals are appearing on battlefields.

And the most sure way to loose the next war is to plan to fight the most recent war again. Just because over the past 12 years we have not been fighting tanks does not mean we will not be fighting them next time. As recently as 2003 the A-10 was indeed using it's main gun to take out tanks, exactly as it was designed to do.

 

I guess there's pickups with improved armour... not sure a .50 cal can't handle that. The GAU-8.. is THERE... MOST ...whether a machine gun is in the truck bed or not.. ARE basically a pickup truck in terms of knocking it out. You can't take a basic Toyota and weld on a ton of armor. My POINT though is that I'd want A-10's to be efficient at killing infantry, random vehicles.. without having to use up the 30 mm ammo. I know there's usually a "next war" and we can't be certain what's involved. Were a war us vs N Korea or Iran... we'd be dealing with some tanks,armor. If we get into some fight with ISIS, Boko Harum... there's not much armor. EITHER way....Close air can be attacking infantry,light vehicles. In some of the rather small scale/low tech situations... probably a few A-1 Skyraiders would be quite handy....BECAUSE they have machine guns. OBVIOUSLY...a Warthog with better means to strafe things that ain't major armor...could be handy. WOULD have helped a lot in Afghanistan.


Some years back.. the USAF talked about A-16.... F-16s with Maverick missles. The F-16..or a variant..is NOT designed to take groundfire, not made to loiter,maneuver at low altitude. No f-35 variant will be armored. LOOK at a Warthog. The Engines are set up such that a HIT by a heatseeker.. would wreck an engine...but NOT the whole plane (typically) look at the TAIL.. there's redundant controls on an A-10, a surplus of Ailerons, wings etc.. Put a heatseeker into most fighters and that blows the engines AND the tail controls.

In the thread, there's pics of Russian made stuff with 23 mm guns. Those ain't new. The Warthog is one bird we havee that can take 23 mm hits.

I'd also mention AC 130. Intense firepower but it CAN't operate where there's serious Anti-Air assets. As with other stuff..including Warthogs... much assumes we have Air Superiority,and short of a full war with China or Russia... Our Air superiority won't face much challenge.

 

Before I start, welcome to PF.

The closest we have had in recent decades to a fighter that was converted to a CAS aircraft was the F-14B "Bombcat". The VSW allowed it to operate at slower speeds and be able to operate effectively as a CAS platform, and more specific variants for just this role were in the works when the Navy cancelled the program and retired all of them.

The biggest problem with "conventional fighters" being used in CAS is not the ability to take ground fire, but the speeds at which they operate.

An F-16 pilot would find it a real pain in the ass to fly their bird at 150 mph without stalling out in straight and level flight with flaps and gear extended. For the A-10, the answer is not so clear because of classification. But it is admitted their stall speed with gear and flaps retracted is 138 mph. Extend flaps, and it is in the range of 100 mph if not lower. Having seen them both in the field and at air shows, a well trained operator can make them almost literally turn on a dime and leave you wondering which end is up.

[video=youtube;hIFyjVf1-vs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIFyjVf1-vs[/video]

This maneuver ability is what really makes this aircraft the finest CAS aircraft in the world. And why it was built, to replace the CAS aircraft that came before it, WWII era prop driven A-1 Skyraider. To be effective in CAS, an aircraft has to be slow enough to see and identify targets on the ground before it engages them.

Now for smaller caliber guns, take that up with the Air Force. After Vietnam they largely abandoned the concept of "Gun Pods", leaving future research to the Army for use on it's helicopters. The A-10 has 11 hardpoints (4 under each wing, 3 on the body) in which to mount things like 7.62 and .50 cal gun pods. But you seem to forget that the main gun was also used highly effectively to strike at targets in bunkers and buildings, something a smaller and lighter round may not be able to do. Yes, it was designed to take out tanks, but in areas of the world where pretty much every building is a bunker, something like this was critical.

I just had to bring this up seperately. Actually, you have to understand where in the battlefield the A-10 is designed and intended to operate. Do not assume it will be used in a war like we have been fighting the last 15 years, with little to no air or anti-air threat. Look at it's original intended area and conflict.

A Cold War gone hot, WWIII, against the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe. That was where and when it was designed to operate, and it was designed perfect, with a great many things being considered. I have gone over these many times before, but let me give you a quick snapshot answer.

There are a great many "zones" in any combat. To simplify it, let's call it "Behind Our Lines" (BOL), "Behind Their Lines" (BTL), and "Forward Edge of the Battle Area" (FEBA). FEBA is where the Infantry are all shooting back and forth, and where the artillery and tanks are trying to attack and push off assaults. These are the "Front Lines", everything else is either "where we want to get to", or "where we want to keep them out of".

Now conventional fighters during a conflict will be doing their own intricate dances at 35,000+ feet of altitude. Our fighters will be trying to penetrate BTL, and at the same time trying to keep the enemy from penetrating BOL. They are patrolling and attacking and reacting at very high altitudes, primarily concerned with what the other fighters and bombers are doing. They really could not care less what is going on down in the mud, unless their air fields are in danger of being taken.

Down near ground level, this is the realm of the helicopter, and attack aircraft like the AV8B and A-10. Low and slow, able to operate from crude and unimproved runways, these craft are what operates right on the FEBA. Any penetrations they make to BTL is generally minimal, they are scouting, trying to find enemy formations and take them out (or at least blunt them) before they strike our side. Or they are reacting when a force does attack our side, trying to weaken them to give us the upper hand. They generally stay within 5-10 miles of the FEBA, leaving deeper penetration missions to the fighters, which can get in and out fast and hopefully avoid enemy ground fire.

Now as for anti-air assets, I assume you mean from the ground. That is something altogether different. You see, other then heavy machine guns (ZSU-23) or MANPADS (STINGER), there is little to no air defenses in the FEBA. Those systems are all kept well to the rear of the FEBA, protecting things like theatre command posts, theatre hospitals, major logistical posts, air bases, and the like. Nobody puts their most effective air defense weapons anywhere near the front lines, they are simply not effective there. In addition to being to slow to move, to demanding in logistical supply, and to vulnerable to attack.

In other words, in the FEBA, attack craft like the A-10, AV8B, AH-1 and AH-64 have target rich environments, with little to no actual threats to a careful driver.

 

Energy weapons is going to kill (no pun intended) any manned platform within visual range, in the near future. What we are seeing at the moment is the shift from slow and low overhead CAS, to medium offset and high overhead altitude CAS which does not require the same type of airframe survivability as the A10. Higher targets naturally require radar for AAA targeting and of course, assuming no jamming, the real SEADious stuff can begin. For areas where AAA is dense or denied and not radar guided, the CAS can still be provided by using glide bombs to try and penetrate the AAA fires. And UCAV's of course allow that penetration which is required to unbalance and swamp defenders without having to risk human lives. Its just the UCAV's will probably be limited to BAI and Strike missions in support of manned high level CAS platforms. If troops on the ground want to watch strafing runs in the near future high intensity conflict they might have to wait till they get back to the training range back home. Don't let the permissive environments we've been used to in the last 2 decades fool ya!!

 

I pretty much agree. I have an odd love for the Warhog. I may be "Liberal' but always was into military strategy/tactics. I was an Aero major in college. As a kid I knew every major plane in WWII.

IMO....the Warthog is MADE to be a Mud fighter. It's a unique thing and the USAF brass.. loves sleek + Fast... stuff that's "multi mission" The TROOPS....know the Warthogs ain't busy off on some other thing..they are your 911 when you need impact Close air. The Air Force...won't ALLOW the Army to DO fix wing CAS.....they wanted to convert the A-10's to mostly a recon, spotter role. Our wars in the mid east....showed just how major Warthogs can be. Iraqis often say...it is TERRIFYING. Like a flying dragon you can NOT stop...that can destroy anything.

If I'm a foot soldier.....getting blasted to bits by a GAU-8...is a nightmare.. but from OUR POV.. that's NOT cheap and the GAU-8 can use up its ammo FAST. I'd want a gun more suited to shooting up infantry.....so...I don't need to use the GAU-8 as the main option. I quite agree on how some avionic upgrades help. Pilots used the Maverick's system to do IR stuff. At an Airshow.. I got to touch a Warthog, see the beast, talk to a pilot who flew it,in combat. I quite GET how the WHOLE design is ..CAS. NOTHING....is so well made for that. I CAN see how it can be enhanced... but..I like the BASIS of it. NOTHING else can do that job the same..NOTHING.

 

If our "next war" is WWIII with China or Russia.....even THEN.... you got more risk/losses...more TARGETS.. High stakes. We have not fought a hot war with a top power since.....well.. WWII. If it's us vs a superpower... it's gonna be bloody. We WILL need the best Close Air.. and we will have losses.

 

Austrian Pilatus PC-7 aircraft fly close air support strafing runs over a U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade JTAC Team and Slovenian M-84 tanks during exercise Adriatic Strike 2015.
https://youtu.be/OqdSXLXkUMQ

 

The issue of what the Air Force will "allow" is actually quite simple. And it is all laid out in the Key West Agreement of 1948. This is essentially the "divorce decree" between the Army and the Air Force and assigned the duties to each. Part of which was that the Army could not have any airplanes with attack capabilities, other then in very strict situations. There is simply no way the Air Force would turn over such a ket role as CAS over to the Army.

 

All those targets have gotten a lot better, and will continue to get a lot better, at shooting back. The doctrine's of the late 20th century around scenario's like the Fulda Gap were designed on the technology being bought to the ground then, but things have changed and continue to change. I have not heard one convincing argument for keeping the A10 in anything other then a COIN type of role... which all things considered is what Afghanistan and Syria and even Iraq were. If someone actually puts up a ground and air fight, then airspace becomes less permissive not more. It would be disastrous to operate an air campaign where you end up relegating the ground maneuver & its supports to act as an anvil for air superiority taskings! Dedicated ground support platforms would be decimated early on leaving multi-roles to fulfill multiple roles, which they can but we are not talking about platform capabilities but capability integration and planning - they are instead meant to fill a capability niche while providing an overlap. The capability overlap must remain secondary otherwise a force would become over-extended... all other things being equally paced. Obviously anything can happen, and there are unlimited variations of how things like that could play out but we're assuming a sustained combined arms ground war with associated air war and can make some general scenario models with a fair degree of universality or predictability.

 

The A-10 is not suited for or is capable of fulfilling the mission as a light attack COIN aircraft. Not even the Douglas A-1 Skyraider was able to fulfill that mission in Vietnam. Even though the A-1 Skyraider is considered the best CAS attack aircraft to every fly. Even A-10 pilots who flew the A-10 and also flew the A-1 Skyraider during the Vietnam War say the A-1 was the best CAS aircraft ever to fly.

The best light attack COIN aircraft America ever had was the North American OV-10 Bronco.

The link I provided above of the Pilatus PC-7 is a COIN light attack aircraft. < https://youtu.be/OqdSXLXkUMQ >

What I found very interesting from watching the video as the PC-7 was conducting it's strafing runs was that either the American JTAC team and or the Austrians really don't understand CAS and how to conduct a CAS strafing run. What I noticed that the tactic that the PC-7's were using was the old "Rectangular Box Orbit" tactics, first developed during the Korean War. It was the same tactics that A-1 Skyraider's used during the Vietnam War but they were able to take hits from AAA and keep on flying.

Jet fighters and jet attack aircraft providing CAS usually used the "Circular Attack Pattern" tactics or the "Floating Wheel Pattern" tactics.

Rule of thumb for CAS strafing missions. 7.62 machine guns, .50 cal. heavy machine guns or up to 20 MM cannons.
25 MM and 30 MM cannons really don't get the job done unless it's knocking out armored vehicles or hardened bunkers.

 

Fast jets doing A/G train in various different attack patterns depending on the airspace & weapons being employed, including strafing, and the only difference for those guys between circular pattern and a box is the runin and base legs proportion to the cross legs, but anyway my posts have stated I was taking about future trends. Your points are all perfectly relevant to the tech post WW2 up to the broader proliferation of MANPAD's. Technological advancements which push the A10 out of the FEBA also will trickle down to poorer nations or non-state actors. The A10 has the speed and clout options to do the job of the turbine fixed wing CAS in the COIN role. It's more versatile in the particular provision of A/G in a modern COIN situation. These day's COIN would have greater air mobility as organic to itself then was possibly in the 1940-80's. The OV10 was perfect for its time because it did more of what was needed for COIN then just versatile slow speed CAS, but again this is vulnerable to the changing types of weapons it might run into and it loses out in key areas needed to provide things which would now be duplicated such as surveillance, relay & light transport. The best things about fixed wing props for COIN is the low logistic footprint to host them in remote locations and ease of use. Which is why they make great training platforms for FAC and CAS pilots, it just slows things down a lot - but technology is rapidly removing the workload for delivery of effective CAS also.... so just reiterating how things have evolved to be done now is not the answer to solving future procurement and force structures - they inform, but it would be foolhardy to let them dictate.

 

How I determined that the PC-7 were using the "rectangular box orbit" in the video was that the aircraft in each pass was coming in straight and always making the same run in the same direction.

The "circular attack pattern" actually consist of the aircraft (2, 3 or 4 aircraft) orbiting in two separate oval orbits, one section of aircraft flying clock wise while the other flying counter clockwise. Somewhere the two patterns would intersect the target.

The "floating wheel pattern" is one round circle orbiting pattern.

All runs are suppose to be parallel to friendly positions if it's a CAS mission to avoid fratricide.

The A-1 Skyraiders, A-4 Skyhawks all had wing mounted cannons where some where the rounds would converge. The older model A-7 Corsair ll also had two 20 MM cannons. So the idea was that the rounds should hit the ground target either before or after the rounds converged to cover a large pattern on a strafing run. The F-4 Phantoms and the A-10 Warthogs have chain or gatling guns, there is no converging of the rounds, it's just a long stream of projectiles, no cone of fire. Great for hitting individual targets like tanks, armored vehicles, hardened targets like a bunker but not for area targets like enemy troops out in the open who are occupying an area maybe a 1/4 long and a hundred yards wide.

Also most fighter aircraft guns/cannons are sighted in for AA not for ground strafing. As you may have noticed in the video that the PC-7 that the aircraft angle of attack was less than 15 degrees and because it was so slow it was able to stay on target for a longer time than a jet powered aircraft could.

COIN aircraft are more than just used for CAS but are used as FAC's, spotting artillery and naval gunfire support, armed reconnaissance and providing escort for helicopter assaults and truck convoys. The later two was what the USAF used the A-1 Skyraider for in Vietnam and also providing escort and CAS for Air Force combat search and rescue missions. (CASR) The Navy used it's A-1 for deep strike bombing missions over North Vietnam. (*)(*)(*)(*), Navy A-1's shot down two Mig-17's in air to air combat.

 

Oh, I'm only familiar with circular orbits both overhead and offset as holding patterns to be cleared to run-in on marked or called targets. I'm not sure how they'd manage timing with ground requests in what you describe, unless what your describing is actually just an overhead circular hold - which is not an attack pattern but a holding pattern - which was my reply to this point.

There is not much else the A10's cannon is meant for them shooting stuff on the ground.

I know..... but I'm not suggesting it's designed for COIN - its not, its clearly custom made for BAI. I think these days and going into the future COIN operations are going to have heavily armed rotary assets already assigned as part of the COIN force so they do most of what COIN needs, except the escort - but an A10 can fly slow enough to escort them. Most interesting the AC130 of course has big benefits for COIN with its sustained provision of fire support, but if it meets some harder targets I think the A10 could find a niche there to support as the A10 can move faster to CAS requests and ensure the ground threats are sufficiently dealt with before the AC130 can get on station. Otherwise the way JTAC systems and integration with aircraft are going the A10 will not be needed for CAS, and BAI is too dangerous these days for the A10 in a full war.

 

You probably misunderstood, the three patterns I mentioned are not holding patterns but the actual pattern that the aircraft take up while conducting a close air support mission.

CAS aircraft are usually assigned a box, it can be from 400 square miles to cover up to 2,500 square miles. Some times a larger box. Today they are probably larger because the Air Force took a huge hit during the Clinton administration over down sizing during the 1990's so there aren't enough CAS aircraft available today. We saw that during the Iraq war, our ground troops were moving faster than the artillery could keep up and having to wait twenty minutes or more for aircraft to show up to conduct a CAS mission.

Also CAS missions can't be conducted if artillery support missions are being conducted in the area for obvious reasons.

I believe the aircraft will have a holding pattern high above the box they have been assigned.

But as we have seen, these aircraft like the A-10 are more likely be conducting battlefield interdiction strikes beyond the front lines and these aren't CAS missions.

 

Well the A-10 cannon isn't aimed , sighted in or positioned for AA.

Where as the F-16 cannon is set up for AA so if it's conducting a CAS strafing run, it has to be at a steeper angle of attack.

 

Have you ever heard of the PA-48 Enforcer ? Back during the 60's and 70's there were still hundreds of WW ll era P-51 Mustangs sitting in the bone yard at Davis Monthan AFB. Maybe the ultimate attack COIN aircraft ever built ???

The best part of this website < http://www.aviastar.org/index2.html > is not the articles, you can find the same info on dozens of other websites on each aircraft but the comment section. Comments by those who actually know the aircraft or flew it or maintained them.

Excerpts from the PA-48 comment section: