5 ms·
For some, yes. Works for stationary sites. For mobile or previously concealed systems, not so much. You need a way to re-target the weapon in flight, securely,
by ckozlowski 11y ago
For some, yes. Works for stationary sites. For mobile or previously concealed systems, not so much. You need a way to re-target the weapon in flight, securely, and that's assuming you detect it. If it's a manned platform doing this, then it's more efficient to bomb it where you are (assuming it hasn't detected you in turn!) If it's a different platform, say, a stealthy drone, then you could conceivably direct a cruise missile strike, but this has its own challenges. Cruise missiles take a while to reach their destination, both because they're standoff weapons (hundreds of nm) and their relatively slow speed needed to achieve that range. All cruise missiles in the US inventory are subsonic, and the few international ones that are supersonic are good for only a few dozen km. Hunting mobile systems with cruise missiles isn't too practical for these reasons. Adversaries have been paying attention, and that all of us here can recognize that a US opening move will be "cruise missile wave" should tell you how well you can expect an adversary to be prepared for that.
I posted a link above where it went into detail the vulnerability the A-10 has to small mobile and man-portable missile systems. These warnings became evident in Desert Storm and only got more pronounced as this level of technology trickled down.
The A-10 was viewed as capable in the 70s and 80s, where your primary threats were guns and early mobile missile systems. And even then, the expectation was that the expected lifetime was not very long. They would delay and harass Soviet first-echelon forces, and pay a heavy cost for doing so.
That they took notable losses from a second-rate ground force that had been heavily attributed for 8 years against Iran told the Air Force that this day they would need to be retired would come sooner than expected. They were fine enough for the Balkans and Iraq in '03 when you could reasonably expect to eliminate most anti-air threats with the F-16, but this isn't expected to be feasible in the next conflict. Speed, sensors, and countermeasures (stealth and ECM) are what's needed. Low and slow won't be sufficient unfortunately. The A-10C got some of these improvements in the sensors and ECM department, but unfortunately it's not enough.
- JupiterMoon 11y agoThe point about mobile air defence actually makes a lot of sense. It still seems to me that a dedicated replacement to the A10 would be preferable to what the F35 has become.