5 ms·

The GAU-8, everybody's favorite reason to love the A-10; the autocannon the A-10 was built around, is obsolete. 30x173mm can no longer kill what it was meant f

by JackCh 8y ago

The GAU-8, everybody's favorite reason to love the A-10; the autocannon the A-10 was built around, is obsolete. 30x173mm can no longer kill what it was meant for killing, and what it's actually killing in practice today can be killed just as well by 25x137mm. If you built a new plane around a GAU-12 you'd get pound for pound more killing. Lighter smaller ammo means more of it, and trust me 25mm will kill anything you might plausibly be killing with 30mm in this century. Don't worry though, I'm pretty sure the USAF is too arrogant to actually adopt a turboprop airplane, so the A-10 will likely be with us for the foreseeable future...

rbanffy 8y ago
> I'm pretty sure the USAF is too arrogant to actually adopt a turboprop airplane They can at least try to make it look more modern. Adopt pusher engines and a canard wing.
- megaman22 8y ago
  The AF is still running AC-130s, aren't they? Granted, that fills a role where air-superiority is a given, and it is reasonably safe to fly a bus loaded with auto-cannons in lazy circles, blasting the daylights out of anything that moves.
  - RandomTisk 8y ago
    Those older planes can loiter like a teenager at a mall on Saturdays too.
  - mxvzr 8y ago
    They are, but ever since [1] they only do so at night. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khafji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khafji
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  Incidentally, Burt Rutan (the founder of Scaled Composites, who are making Virgin Galactic's space ships) almost made a prototype of exactly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_ARES https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_ARES > The original layout was of a low wing canard configuration, aircraft powered by a pusher turboprop, and built around a 30 mm Gatling gun capable of destroying light armored vehicles The actual prototype ended up with a turbofan. Still had a canard wing though. It also had a GAU-12 as the canon, just like GP wants. It's also made out of fancy composites. It sounds like the perfect plane for the Hacker News Air Force.
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    For the record, I was being sarcastic. And fancy shapes and materials resulted in the F-35 clusterfuck.
avoutthere 8y ago
> 30x173mm can no longer kill what it was meant for killing The GAU-8 can no longer kill top-line Russian armor? Source?
- madeuptempacct 8y ago
  "The GAU-8 can no longer kill top-line Russian armor? Source?" A 30mm cannon couldn't kill T-64s, T-72s(T-90s), T-80s for a long, long time. Neither can it's Russian counterpart, the SU-25 kill an M1Ax Abrams. What it CAN do is make a mission kill - it can destroy the tank's threads, cannon, and optics, which takes the tank out of action. Furthermore, the A-10 always had a close support role which a fast-high (F-35) or low-unarmored (Tucano, despite light armoring iirc) simple cannot do. To say that an AH-64 can fulfill the A-10s role is also delusional - it can't get in as fast or survive as well once it's in.
- kilo_bravo_3 8y ago
  The GAU-8 could not kill T-72s, which entered service during its development cycle. Everyone fawns over it, but the GAU-8 only had moderate penetrating abilities against T-62s, less against the T-64. In order to "kill" a T-62, the A-10 had to approach it from very specific directions, at very specific angles of attack. The Soviets knew this so they co-located anti-aircraft artillery with their armor units and any A-10 making a gun run on a tank would have been flying through a hail of anti-aircraft fire. In order to penetrate a thin sliver of armor on the sides of the T-62, an A-10 pilot HAD to fire from from the side of the tank at "1500 feet away, at 3 degrees of dive, at 320 knots". The Soviets knew this, too. What direction do you think the barrels of the ZSU-23-4 self-propelled radar-guided anti-aircraft vehicles were pointed, when moving in formation with T-62s? The PGU-14/B depleted-uranium armor piercing round, the most "anti-tank" bullet the GAU-8 fires, can penetrate 55mm of armor at 1,220 meters and 75mm at 300 meters. There are very few parts of the T-72 that have armor thinner than 75mm. Also, those penetration figures are for steel. Very rapidly after the introduction of the A-10, the Soviet Union started outfitting all of its main battle tanks with composite armor and additional external armor. So at best if you pepper a tank with a full magazine of PGU-14/B fired from a GAU-8 you're probably hoping to break its track, poke a hole in an external fuel tank, or puncture its main gun-- not destroy it. Crews inside modern main battle tanks would probably hardly notice being hit by fire from a GAU-8. Here is the "A-10 Coloring Book", written by cold war A-10 pilots as a training aid covering how to shoot at T-62. T-62s were only vulnerable from the rear, and thin (hard to hit) slivers along the sides. https://imgur.com/gallery/fd4sK https://imgur.com/gallery/fd4sK The T-64 was harder to kill, and the T-72 almost impossible. Due to anti-aircraft assets being closely-coupled to Soviet tank formations it was predicted that every single A-10 pilot would be dead two weeks into a hypothetical war with the Soviet Union, and this was 40 years ago.
deleted 8y ago
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dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>The GAU-8, everybody's favorite reason to love the A-10 Some people love it because it's a high capacity, high accuracy bomb truck. One A10 can provide a lot of close air support with just what's hanging from the wing.
- JackCh 8y ago
  Sure. But it could carry even more bombs if it had an autocannon that wasn't oversized. The fully loaded GAU-8 weighs something like 1/4th the A-10s maximum bomb load.

by JackCh 8y ago

rbanffy 8y ago

> I'm pretty sure the USAF is too arrogant to actually adopt a turboprop airplane They can at least try to make it look more modern. Adopt pusher engines and a canard wing.

megaman22 8y ago
The AF is still running AC-130s, aren't they? Granted, that fills a role where air-superiority is a given, and it is reasonably safe to fly a bus loaded with auto-cannons in lazy circles, blasting the daylights out of anything that moves.
- RandomTisk 8y ago
  Those older planes can loiter like a teenager at a mall on Saturdays too.
- mxvzr 8y ago
  They are, but ever since [1] they only do so at night. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khafji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khafji
toomanybeersies 8y ago
Incidentally, Burt Rutan (the founder of Scaled Composites, who are making Virgin Galactic's space ships) almost made a prototype of exactly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_ARES https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_ARES > The original layout was of a low wing canard configuration, aircraft powered by a pusher turboprop, and built around a 30 mm Gatling gun capable of destroying light armored vehicles The actual prototype ended up with a turbofan. Still had a canard wing though. It also had a GAU-12 as the canon, just like GP wants. It's also made out of fancy composites. It sounds like the perfect plane for the Hacker News Air Force.
- rbanffy 8y ago
  For the record, I was being sarcastic. And fancy shapes and materials resulted in the F-35 clusterfuck.

avoutthere 8y ago

> 30x173mm can no longer kill what it was meant for killing The GAU-8 can no longer kill top-line Russian armor? Source?

madeuptempacct 8y ago
"The GAU-8 can no longer kill top-line Russian armor? Source?" A 30mm cannon couldn't kill T-64s, T-72s(T-90s), T-80s for a long, long time. Neither can it's Russian counterpart, the SU-25 kill an M1Ax Abrams. What it CAN do is make a mission kill - it can destroy the tank's threads, cannon, and optics, which takes the tank out of action. Furthermore, the A-10 always had a close support role which a fast-high (F-35) or low-unarmored (Tucano, despite light armoring iirc) simple cannot do. To say that an AH-64 can fulfill the A-10s role is also delusional - it can't get in as fast or survive as well once it's in.
kilo_bravo_3 8y ago
The GAU-8 could not kill T-72s, which entered service during its development cycle. Everyone fawns over it, but the GAU-8 only had moderate penetrating abilities against T-62s, less against the T-64. In order to "kill" a T-62, the A-10 had to approach it from very specific directions, at very specific angles of attack. The Soviets knew this so they co-located anti-aircraft artillery with their armor units and any A-10 making a gun run on a tank would have been flying through a hail of anti-aircraft fire. In order to penetrate a thin sliver of armor on the sides of the T-62, an A-10 pilot HAD to fire from from the side of the tank at "1500 feet away, at 3 degrees of dive, at 320 knots". The Soviets knew this, too. What direction do you think the barrels of the ZSU-23-4 self-propelled radar-guided anti-aircraft vehicles were pointed, when moving in formation with T-62s? The PGU-14/B depleted-uranium armor piercing round, the most "anti-tank" bullet the GAU-8 fires, can penetrate 55mm of armor at 1,220 meters and 75mm at 300 meters. There are very few parts of the T-72 that have armor thinner than 75mm. Also, those penetration figures are for steel. Very rapidly after the introduction of the A-10, the Soviet Union started outfitting all of its main battle tanks with composite armor and additional external armor. So at best if you pepper a tank with a full magazine of PGU-14/B fired from a GAU-8 you're probably hoping to break its track, poke a hole in an external fuel tank, or puncture its main gun-- not destroy it. Crews inside modern main battle tanks would probably hardly notice being hit by fire from a GAU-8. Here is the "A-10 Coloring Book", written by cold war A-10 pilots as a training aid covering how to shoot at T-62. T-62s were only vulnerable from the rear, and thin (hard to hit) slivers along the sides. https://imgur.com/gallery/fd4sK https://imgur.com/gallery/fd4sK The T-64 was harder to kill, and the T-72 almost impossible. Due to anti-aircraft assets being closely-coupled to Soviet tank formations it was predicted that every single A-10 pilot would be dead two weeks into a hypothetical war with the Soviet Union, and this was 40 years ago.

deleted 8y ago

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dsfyu404ed 8y ago

>The GAU-8, everybody's favorite reason to love the A-10 Some people love it because it's a high capacity, high accuracy bomb truck. One A10 can provide a lot of close air support with just what's hanging from the wing.

JackCh 8y ago
Sure. But it could carry even more bombs if it had an autocannon that wasn't oversized. The fully loaded GAU-8 weighs something like 1/4th the A-10s maximum bomb load.