12 ms·

The A-10 Warthog May Be Kept Out of Retirement by Law

61 points by ourmandave 11y ago

maxerickson 11y ago
This is something congress really shouldn't be doing. For example, how much of the scope ambition and scope creep for the F 35 came from congressional meddling? Someone recognized for their expertise in infantry strategy and tactics should be placed in charge of close air support procurement, given a preliminary budget to try to meet and then be given free reign to figure out what they can get from that budget.
- the_ancient 11y ago
  >>This is something congress really shouldn't be doing. Then who should? Should we simple give the military a Trillion Dollar a year blank check and say "go forth and spend it however you want" the F35 is a terrible plane and should have been scraped a long time ago, the A10 is proven plane... the Airforce has never liked the A10, it is not fast enough or shiney enough for them... I think the better plan is to bring back the USAAF and let the army start doing close air support again with more than just Helicopters... They are better at it anyway..
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Almost. The discussion at the congressional level should be over what sort of capabilities the military needs and can be justified. So the pentagon can bring a mission and budget to congress and ask them to approve that mission and the budget for it. This is different quite than an unrestrained lump sum.
    - the_ancient 11y ago
      Umm, that is exactly what they are going They are bring forth the mission to decommission the A10, congress is saying no....
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        In my comment, a mission would be something like "close air support", not the level of maintenance to do on a specific set of aircraft.
        the_ancient 11y ago
        So it is arbitrary definition you are making I fail to see how that is different than simply coming to congress with "We protect America now give us a trillion dollars of stolen money you pried from the citizens and do not dare ask us how we will spend it" I think every damn screw the military buys should be heavily scrutinized by someone outside the military, maybe congress is not the right venue but the idea that the military should just be allowed to spend money however they see fit is moronic on a level I can not even comprehend The military, above all other federal agencies, have proven they can not be trusted with the money they are given, they have simpley "lost" (literally unaccounted for) more money than most agencies have for their entire budget.
        maxerickson 11y ago
        Because doing it in smaller pieces would enable more oversight than doing it in one chunk. I agree that it is subjective as to how detailed to get at the congressional level, but the person running my arbitrary close air support mission can go to congress and explain how much support they can provide at a certain funding level. Congress can clearly reason about that and base decisions about increasing or decreasing the budget on what sort of capability seems reasonable. In this case, Congress is mandating maintenance of the aircraft whether the military uses them or not. That's moronic.
        the_ancient 11y ago
        What is moronic is the Airforce has spent over a Trillion Dollars on a plane that still does not work, and wants to decommission a proven air system so it divert that money into the failed F35 program, and wants to decommission a proven air system with out having a proven replacement. That is moronic....
- yourapostasy 11y ago
  Wouldn't that preliminary budget, issued by Congress, be considered meddling? Is it akin to software development managers with the sheerest excuses for domain expertise accepting whatever budget and mandate is handed down from managers with zero domain expertise, and then they set about browbeating anyone and everyone they can lay their hands on to meet the hazy objectives? This direction of development sounds to me like the reverse of what would really meet the mission objectives when the problem space is so controversial/undefined: find out from the users/stakeholders/beneficiaries what non-negotiables they must have and will not give up without a huge fight, what they lack from the current solution, and what their annoyances-but-will-put-up-with-it issues are today, what evolutions they anticipate in several future timeframes, then with their buy-in build up implementation scenarios with accompanying budgets. But I'm just an outsider with no domain expertise, so all I have are questions. From what I hear as a civilian, armed forces procurement with these big stakes rarely take into account all but the most basic survival needs of the grunts on the front lines, and is more akin to enterprise software procurement than SaaS-with-a-credit-card procurement to fix a point need (CAS in this case, and I might even be wrong characterizing CAS as a well-defined point need). Can someone with direct military procurement experience chime in and illuminate from their perspective what is going on for the civilians in this particular case?
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    As below, I agree that it is subjective as to what is meddling. I think setting a budget based on a high level discussion is what Congress is supposed to be doing. The military side can explain what capabilities they can get with a certain budget, Congress can decide if that is a reasonable level of capability and set the budget at the requested level or lower or even higher.
    - yourapostasy 11y ago
      If the DoD gives Congress guidance on budget bands and what capabilities are given up in each band below the "ideal" band, especially in projected political terms, then I can see Congress setting a preliminary budget and finalizing after some more detailed DoD analysis of what is projected to be accomplished under that budget. For example, tell Congress for a $1B ideal budget of a weapons program, a $750-800M budget band would mean response time to deploy the weapon drops from 6 hours to 6 days. Not such a big deal for a littoral combat operations boat, but a huge deal for a cruise missile block upgrade. But we're all outsiders here, and I'd love to hear inside baseball on what the real factors are behind these procurement processes.
- rjsw 11y ago
  Congress should also pass a law banning other countries from owning ground-to-air missiles.
- dforrestwilson1 11y ago
  This is a real moral dilemma for me. I served in the military, and the A-10 is simply the best manned aircraft we have for CAS. However, I also hate the defense lobby. One one hand there's probably a job interest in keeping the A-10 running. Mac Thornberry has taken campaign donations from lots of defense contractors, including some related to the A-10: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/pacs.php?cycle=2016&cid=N00006052&sector=D&seclong=Defense&cat=D01&induslong=Defense+Aerospace&newMem=N http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/pacs.php?cycle=2016&c... On the other hand, no other aircraft does what the A-10 does as well, and the Air Force would shut it down if simply given the money in a lump sum with no conditions. The defense contractors associated with the F-35 would love to replace the low-margin A-10 with their newest shiny toy even if it is not as effective. The fact that this is a debate right now is a sad testament to the power of the defense lobby and poor defense procurement. They ought to think ahead and refit the A-10 fleet as ground-piloted drones.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    > They ought to think ahead and refit the A-10 fleet as ground-piloted drones. Curious as to whether this is even possible. Even if it was, I doubt the pilot requirement is the only thing keeping the Air Force from wanting to keep it around. Edit: Quora FTW https://www.quora.com/U-S-Air-Force-Could-you-turn-the-A-10-into-a-drone https://www.quora.com/U-S-Air-Force-Could-you-turn-the-A-10-...
    - dforrestwilson1 11y ago
      I don't know why you were downvoted but I think it's a fair question. I think the biggest limitations would be keeping a solid comms link (you don't want to lose connection in mid-dive for instance), and air speed (you want more reaction time due to the potential for lag or lost connections). You would want to build in auto-pilot redundancies to have the drones fly home if they lose communications links. For speed, the A-10 would be one of the better candidates, due to its slower loitering speed of about 300 Mph which is still significantly faster than an MQ-9 Reaper (200 Mph or so), but in-line with the MQ-9's top speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunde... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper Another interesting option would be to strip out the gun mount from the A-10 and slap it on the underside of a quadcopter drone as a turret.
- dsfyu404ed 11y ago
  I see this as more of a "you've wasted so much time effort and $ on this argument that we're stepping in" two of you (army, marines) say you want it, one of you wants to replace it with something that can't do it's job as well so we're going best two of three and keeping it.
- GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
  What would be reasonable is the Air Force pulling its head out its ass and just giving the CAS role back to the Army, since they hate it so much. Seriously, just give the Army the CAS roles, and the Air Force can go zoom around in their shiny supersonic invisible aircraft, and the soldiers and marines on the ground can get the close air support they so need from an organization not doing everything it can to stop giving them that support.
  - dsfyu404ed 11y ago
    x2. The marines do this for the most part.
    - arca_vorago 11y ago
      In my experience, we got better support from Marine Supercobras in Iraq than any other air entity, and in Afghanistan A-10s. Theyve been talking about getting rid of Warthogs for years, but all the guys I talked to saw right through it and knew it was just to pad the Virginia old boys pockets some more. Of course Im biased, because Ive literally had my life saved by close air support from hogs.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Yeah, I think separation of forces should also be done around capabilities rather than modes of transport. CAS should be part of some sort of infantry command.
  - 55acdda48ab5 11y ago
    The problem is that the CAS mission the A-10 performs is effectively impossible against any modern enemy with modern missile systems and manpads. The A-10 is for shooting up poor brown people we're messing with for no particular reason, not for fighting a real war. The solution here is to get rid of the A-10 and simply not do "nation building" and counter-insurgency in poor countries. We don't need the A-10 because it's useless for any war worth fighting in today's world.
    - 11y ago
- hosh 11y ago
  Ever read USAF Col. John Boyd's biography? He developed of maneuver warfare and pretty much invented warfighter doctrine adopted by all the modern air forces around the world. He generalized his ideas, and it became a core part of US Marines doctrine. However, the generals in charge of the USAF rejected his ideas. In their minds, you have Boyd was the one who pushed to developed the F-16 based around the ideas maneuver warfare. (The F-16 was designed to out-maneuver anything else). One of his disciple was the one that developed the A-10, specifically for close-air support mission, using the same principles applied in a different way. CAS missions was something the USAF inherited back when the organization was part of the US Army. It's treated as the step-child that the USAF "bomber generals" don't want, and want to get rid of, and can't because that was part of the original agreement when the USAF was formed as a separate military organization. In their minds, if you develop a plane that can fly fast enough, stealthy enough, and click a button to shoot out missiles, then you don't need to be agile at all. The politics around the A-10 is discussed thoroughly in Robert Coram's biography, "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art of War". Boyd has been dead for about 15 years now; what I'm reading here, the same politicking is still going on.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    The Key West Agreement isn't like the Constitution. Honestly, if CAS is important to the Army and Congress thinks the Army knows better than the Air Force how to handle CAS, then the Congress could (and if actually considered about effectiveness, should) transfer the mission, equipment, and personnel to the Army.
    - GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
      They really should do it. It's not like the Army isn't already operating the world's largest fleet of combat helicopters.
      - coredog64 11y ago
        The Army is overspending on helicopters to skirt the letter of the agreement. I agree they should be allowed fixed wing aircraft if only for the improvement in safety and lower operating costs.
discardorama 11y ago
How is it that a bunch of elected people without much military knowledge "know" more about these things than the men/women in uniform, with decades of experience?
- the_ancient 11y ago
  The Airforce does not want the A-10 The Army and Marines are begging to keep it I trust the Army and Marines more than the fucking Airforce
  - nosequel 11y ago
    Why is that exactly? I love the A-10, and so does the Army and Marines, it is by far the best CAS weapon we have. The airforce knows more about aircraft and keeping those aircraft in the air than both the army and marines. Unfortunately the A-10 is old, and no one is manufacturing replacement parts for it. So as of right now the air force is happy with AC-130 gunship and the F-15E, F35. I hate the idea of the A-10 going away, and certainly the pilots are the same way. Keeping planes in the air on old parts is a hard thing though.
    - jblow 11y ago
      You act as if it's somehow not easier to commission the remanufacture of parts for a well-understood plane than it is to manufacture a whole new, untested plane. Come on, seriously.
      - omegaham 11y ago
        Having worked in requisitions, that's exactly how it works. Design new radar? "Here you go, have fifty parts!" Trying to get a power supply for a radar that's been around for sixty years? "Nope, no one's made those in forty years. Put the request into the system, and maybe we'll do a limited parts run in five years." It makes sense if you're willing to contort your mind to military logic.
    - the_ancient 11y ago
onetimePete 11y ago
Why not scrap the USAF instead? It all breaks down into mission support and drones in the long run? So why not scrap the organization that warps the strategic decisions ? Give everything ground mission related to the army, break everything that is strategic, as in supply, and the useless ICBMs of the sky to the new drone Department.
Havoc 11y ago
They seem to be very popular with both pilots and ground crews so I say if the people risking their lives are comfortable with it then more power to them. I'm not going to arm-chair-general that away and neither should the law makers. (They should be planning ahead though for replacement because that comfort won't last forever).
GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
The Air Force has proven they hate doing CAS. The CAS role should be removed from the Air Force and given back to the Army.
cyberpanther 11y ago
And now we have two problems! Yes its a problem to keep an old plane flying but it does the job. But the bigger problem is the turd costing us an arm and leg to build that doesn't do the job. Its so idiotic things have to be done in such a round about way. Just cancel the F-35 and spend the money on something useful to society.
london888 11y ago
There should be parts of the armed services that are stuck in various decades. So you could join the 1980's air force for example, but you weren't allowed to use any equipment made after 1990. For each conflict the Pentagon would decide which decade's forces would be most effective.
Pxtl 11y ago
I think people are unfair to the air force on the A-10. Obviously discontinuing it should be reconsidered, but they've made massive investment in standardizing on a handful of modern planes instead of zillion overspecialized vehicles. The F-35, for all its frustrations, is a staggering piece of technology. Plus, consider that this is a plane expected to take fire. Everyone loves he story of the A-10 that kept flying with half a wing blown off... But imagine being the crew. I'm sure they'd rather be in a vehicle that wasn't hit in the first place, or controlling it remotely. That said, the biggest failing has been ignoring the new role of NATO in the ME. But yes, there should be a joint project for a fixed-wing CAS gunship drone to replace the A-10. The Avenger weapon is overkill, you could build a vehicle half its size around a Vulcan. Do the same role as an A-10, but without risking crew and the other a smaller, modern, cheaper vehicle.
- justin66 11y ago
  > The F-35, for all its frustrations, is a staggering piece of technology. It's staggering alright.
  - Pxtl 11y ago
    It's an invisible supersonic vectored thrust vtol jet fighter. That's goddamned science fiction. The fact that it even exists is remarkable... which makes the debacle of its development unsurprising.

61 points by ourmandave 11y ago

This is something congress really shouldn't be doing. For example, how much of the scope ambition and scope creep for the F 35 came from congressional meddling? Someone recognized for their expertise in infantry strategy and tactics should be placed in charge of close air support procurement, given a preliminary budget to try to meet and then be given free reign to figure out what they can get from that budget.

the_ancient 11y ago
>>This is something congress really shouldn't be doing. Then who should? Should we simple give the military a Trillion Dollar a year blank check and say "go forth and spend it however you want" the F35 is a terrible plane and should have been scraped a long time ago, the A10 is proven plane... the Airforce has never liked the A10, it is not fast enough or shiney enough for them... I think the better plan is to bring back the USAAF and let the army start doing close air support again with more than just Helicopters... They are better at it anyway..
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Almost. The discussion at the congressional level should be over what sort of capabilities the military needs and can be justified. So the pentagon can bring a mission and budget to congress and ask them to approve that mission and the budget for it. This is different quite than an unrestrained lump sum.
  - the_ancient 11y ago
    Umm, that is exactly what they are going They are bring forth the mission to decommission the A10, congress is saying no....
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      In my comment, a mission would be something like "close air support", not the level of maintenance to do on a specific set of aircraft.
      - the_ancient 11y ago
        So it is arbitrary definition you are making I fail to see how that is different than simply coming to congress with "We protect America now give us a trillion dollars of stolen money you pried from the citizens and do not dare ask us how we will spend it" I think every damn screw the military buys should be heavily scrutinized by someone outside the military, maybe congress is not the right venue but the idea that the military should just be allowed to spend money however they see fit is moronic on a level I can not even comprehend The military, above all other federal agencies, have proven they can not be trusted with the money they are given, they have simpley "lost" (literally unaccounted for) more money than most agencies have for their entire budget.
        maxerickson 11y ago
        Because doing it in smaller pieces would enable more oversight than doing it in one chunk. I agree that it is subjective as to how detailed to get at the congressional level, but the person running my arbitrary close air support mission can go to congress and explain how much support they can provide at a certain funding level. Congress can clearly reason about that and base decisions about increasing or decreasing the budget on what sort of capability seems reasonable. In this case, Congress is mandating maintenance of the aircraft whether the military uses them or not. That's moronic.
        the_ancient 11y ago
        What is moronic is the Airforce has spent over a Trillion Dollars on a plane that still does not work, and wants to decommission a proven air system so it divert that money into the failed F35 program, and wants to decommission a proven air system with out having a proven replacement. That is moronic....
yourapostasy 11y ago
Wouldn't that preliminary budget, issued by Congress, be considered meddling? Is it akin to software development managers with the sheerest excuses for domain expertise accepting whatever budget and mandate is handed down from managers with zero domain expertise, and then they set about browbeating anyone and everyone they can lay their hands on to meet the hazy objectives? This direction of development sounds to me like the reverse of what would really meet the mission objectives when the problem space is so controversial/undefined: find out from the users/stakeholders/beneficiaries what non-negotiables they must have and will not give up without a huge fight, what they lack from the current solution, and what their annoyances-but-will-put-up-with-it issues are today, what evolutions they anticipate in several future timeframes, then with their buy-in build up implementation scenarios with accompanying budgets. But I'm just an outsider with no domain expertise, so all I have are questions. From what I hear as a civilian, armed forces procurement with these big stakes rarely take into account all but the most basic survival needs of the grunts on the front lines, and is more akin to enterprise software procurement than SaaS-with-a-credit-card procurement to fix a point need (CAS in this case, and I might even be wrong characterizing CAS as a well-defined point need). Can someone with direct military procurement experience chime in and illuminate from their perspective what is going on for the civilians in this particular case?
- maxerickson 11y ago
  As below, I agree that it is subjective as to what is meddling. I think setting a budget based on a high level discussion is what Congress is supposed to be doing. The military side can explain what capabilities they can get with a certain budget, Congress can decide if that is a reasonable level of capability and set the budget at the requested level or lower or even higher.
  - yourapostasy 11y ago
    If the DoD gives Congress guidance on budget bands and what capabilities are given up in each band below the "ideal" band, especially in projected political terms, then I can see Congress setting a preliminary budget and finalizing after some more detailed DoD analysis of what is projected to be accomplished under that budget. For example, tell Congress for a $1B ideal budget of a weapons program, a $750-800M budget band would mean response time to deploy the weapon drops from 6 hours to 6 days. Not such a big deal for a littoral combat operations boat, but a huge deal for a cruise missile block upgrade. But we're all outsiders here, and I'd love to hear inside baseball on what the real factors are behind these procurement processes.
rjsw 11y ago
Congress should also pass a law banning other countries from owning ground-to-air missiles.
dforrestwilson1 11y ago
This is a real moral dilemma for me. I served in the military, and the A-10 is simply the best manned aircraft we have for CAS. However, I also hate the defense lobby. One one hand there's probably a job interest in keeping the A-10 running. Mac Thornberry has taken campaign donations from lots of defense contractors, including some related to the A-10: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/pacs.php?cycle=2016&cid=N00006052&sector=D&seclong=Defense&cat=D01&induslong=Defense+Aerospace&newMem=N http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/pacs.php?cycle=2016&c... On the other hand, no other aircraft does what the A-10 does as well, and the Air Force would shut it down if simply given the money in a lump sum with no conditions. The defense contractors associated with the F-35 would love to replace the low-margin A-10 with their newest shiny toy even if it is not as effective. The fact that this is a debate right now is a sad testament to the power of the defense lobby and poor defense procurement. They ought to think ahead and refit the A-10 fleet as ground-piloted drones.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  > They ought to think ahead and refit the A-10 fleet as ground-piloted drones. Curious as to whether this is even possible. Even if it was, I doubt the pilot requirement is the only thing keeping the Air Force from wanting to keep it around. Edit: Quora FTW https://www.quora.com/U-S-Air-Force-Could-you-turn-the-A-10-into-a-drone https://www.quora.com/U-S-Air-Force-Could-you-turn-the-A-10-...
  - dforrestwilson1 11y ago
    I don't know why you were downvoted but I think it's a fair question. I think the biggest limitations would be keeping a solid comms link (you don't want to lose connection in mid-dive for instance), and air speed (you want more reaction time due to the potential for lag or lost connections). You would want to build in auto-pilot redundancies to have the drones fly home if they lose communications links. For speed, the A-10 would be one of the better candidates, due to its slower loitering speed of about 300 Mph which is still significantly faster than an MQ-9 Reaper (200 Mph or so), but in-line with the MQ-9's top speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunde... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper Another interesting option would be to strip out the gun mount from the A-10 and slap it on the underside of a quadcopter drone as a turret.
dsfyu404ed 11y ago
I see this as more of a "you've wasted so much time effort and $ on this argument that we're stepping in" two of you (army, marines) say you want it, one of you wants to replace it with something that can't do it's job as well so we're going best two of three and keeping it.
GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
What would be reasonable is the Air Force pulling its head out its ass and just giving the CAS role back to the Army, since they hate it so much. Seriously, just give the Army the CAS roles, and the Air Force can go zoom around in their shiny supersonic invisible aircraft, and the soldiers and marines on the ground can get the close air support they so need from an organization not doing everything it can to stop giving them that support.
- dsfyu404ed 11y ago
  x2. The marines do this for the most part.
  - arca_vorago 11y ago
    In my experience, we got better support from Marine Supercobras in Iraq than any other air entity, and in Afghanistan A-10s. Theyve been talking about getting rid of Warthogs for years, but all the guys I talked to saw right through it and knew it was just to pad the Virginia old boys pockets some more. Of course Im biased, because Ive literally had my life saved by close air support from hogs.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Yeah, I think separation of forces should also be done around capabilities rather than modes of transport. CAS should be part of some sort of infantry command.
- 55acdda48ab5 11y ago
  The problem is that the CAS mission the A-10 performs is effectively impossible against any modern enemy with modern missile systems and manpads. The A-10 is for shooting up poor brown people we're messing with for no particular reason, not for fighting a real war. The solution here is to get rid of the A-10 and simply not do "nation building" and counter-insurgency in poor countries. We don't need the A-10 because it's useless for any war worth fighting in today's world.
  - 11y ago
hosh 11y ago
Ever read USAF Col. John Boyd's biography? He developed of maneuver warfare and pretty much invented warfighter doctrine adopted by all the modern air forces around the world. He generalized his ideas, and it became a core part of US Marines doctrine. However, the generals in charge of the USAF rejected his ideas. In their minds, you have Boyd was the one who pushed to developed the F-16 based around the ideas maneuver warfare. (The F-16 was designed to out-maneuver anything else). One of his disciple was the one that developed the A-10, specifically for close-air support mission, using the same principles applied in a different way. CAS missions was something the USAF inherited back when the organization was part of the US Army. It's treated as the step-child that the USAF "bomber generals" don't want, and want to get rid of, and can't because that was part of the original agreement when the USAF was formed as a separate military organization. In their minds, if you develop a plane that can fly fast enough, stealthy enough, and click a button to shoot out missiles, then you don't need to be agile at all. The politics around the A-10 is discussed thoroughly in Robert Coram's biography, "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art of War". Boyd has been dead for about 15 years now; what I'm reading here, the same politicking is still going on.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  The Key West Agreement isn't like the Constitution. Honestly, if CAS is important to the Army and Congress thinks the Army knows better than the Air Force how to handle CAS, then the Congress could (and if actually considered about effectiveness, should) transfer the mission, equipment, and personnel to the Army.
  - GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
    They really should do it. It's not like the Army isn't already operating the world's largest fleet of combat helicopters.
    - coredog64 11y ago
      The Army is overspending on helicopters to skirt the letter of the agreement. I agree they should be allowed fixed wing aircraft if only for the improvement in safety and lower operating costs.

discardorama 11y ago

How is it that a bunch of elected people without much military knowledge "know" more about these things than the men/women in uniform, with decades of experience?

the_ancient 11y ago
The Airforce does not want the A-10 The Army and Marines are begging to keep it I trust the Army and Marines more than the fucking Airforce
- nosequel 11y ago
  Why is that exactly? I love the A-10, and so does the Army and Marines, it is by far the best CAS weapon we have. The airforce knows more about aircraft and keeping those aircraft in the air than both the army and marines. Unfortunately the A-10 is old, and no one is manufacturing replacement parts for it. So as of right now the air force is happy with AC-130 gunship and the F-15E, F35. I hate the idea of the A-10 going away, and certainly the pilots are the same way. Keeping planes in the air on old parts is a hard thing though.
  - jblow 11y ago
    You act as if it's somehow not easier to commission the remanufacture of parts for a well-understood plane than it is to manufacture a whole new, untested plane. Come on, seriously.
    - omegaham 11y ago
      Having worked in requisitions, that's exactly how it works. Design new radar? "Here you go, have fifty parts!" Trying to get a power supply for a radar that's been around for sixty years? "Nope, no one's made those in forty years. Put the request into the system, and maybe we'll do a limited parts run in five years." It makes sense if you're willing to contort your mind to military logic.
  - the_ancient 11y ago

onetimePete 11y ago

Why not scrap the USAF instead? It all breaks down into mission support and drones in the long run? So why not scrap the organization that warps the strategic decisions ? Give everything ground mission related to the army, break everything that is strategic, as in supply, and the useless ICBMs of the sky to the new drone Department.

Havoc 11y ago

They seem to be very popular with both pilots and ground crews so I say if the people risking their lives are comfortable with it then more power to them. I'm not going to arm-chair-general that away and neither should the law makers. (They should be planning ahead though for replacement because that comfort won't last forever).

GunboatDiplomat 11y ago

The Air Force has proven they hate doing CAS. The CAS role should be removed from the Air Force and given back to the Army.

cyberpanther 11y ago

And now we have two problems! Yes its a problem to keep an old plane flying but it does the job. But the bigger problem is the turd costing us an arm and leg to build that doesn't do the job. Its so idiotic things have to be done in such a round about way. Just cancel the F-35 and spend the money on something useful to society.

london888 11y ago

There should be parts of the armed services that are stuck in various decades. So you could join the 1980's air force for example, but you weren't allowed to use any equipment made after 1990. For each conflict the Pentagon would decide which decade's forces would be most effective.

Pxtl 11y ago

I think people are unfair to the air force on the A-10. Obviously discontinuing it should be reconsidered, but they've made massive investment in standardizing on a handful of modern planes instead of zillion overspecialized vehicles. The F-35, for all its frustrations, is a staggering piece of technology. Plus, consider that this is a plane expected to take fire. Everyone loves he story of the A-10 that kept flying with half a wing blown off... But imagine being the crew. I'm sure they'd rather be in a vehicle that wasn't hit in the first place, or controlling it remotely. That said, the biggest failing has been ignoring the new role of NATO in the ME. But yes, there should be a joint project for a fixed-wing CAS gunship drone to replace the A-10. The Avenger weapon is overkill, you could build a vehicle half its size around a Vulcan. Do the same role as an A-10, but without risking crew and the other a smaller, modern, cheaper vehicle.

justin66 11y ago
> The F-35, for all its frustrations, is a staggering piece of technology. It's staggering alright.
- Pxtl 11y ago
  It's an invisible supersonic vectored thrust vtol jet fighter. That's goddamned science fiction. The fact that it even exists is remarkable... which makes the debacle of its development unsurprising.