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The A-10 was designed to mow down convoys of Russian tanks headed on roads from Russia into Europe. That role is outdated: the US realistically does not expect

The A-10 was designed to mow down convoys of Russian tanks headed on roads from Russia into Europe. That role is outdated: the US realistically does not expect a full-on war with Russia (though a hybrid war is a possibility, such as the Ukrainian conflict). Also, sending tanks in a single file column down roads is stupid. Russia knows this. What else can it do? Someone mentioned Close Air Support. The AC-130 and MQ-9 do it WAY better. The gun on the A-10 can't hit anything accurately (remember - to aim the gun you have to physically aim the aircraft - the A-10 is not a nimble plane, and human targets are TINY at altitude). The A-10 can also carry bombs for Close Air Support. The thing is... so can the MQ-9 and AC-130. the MQ-9 can loiter on target longer and is WAY cheaper, and the AC-130 has missiles AND guns that actually hit things AS WELL AS quickly engage targets. Can it kill tanks? Yes! But if you're taking out tanks onesy-twosy (again, not in convoys), then again, so can the AC-130 and MQ-9. The Hellfire was LITERALLY designed to kill tanks. Great thing about MQ-9s too is that they're remotely piloted; in a neer-peer conflict, the tanks would be protected by AA - but there'd be no pilot deaths if an MQ-9 goes down, so you can send them to risker places. It's an outdated plane for an outdated mission set that's expensive and ineffective for what it does. People just REALLY like it because "it's a flying tank!", and "brrrrrt! haha! Big gun!". In the end, it stays around solely because of it's "cultural value".

secondcoming 5y ago
Hearing the Brrrt of a flying gattling gun must be pretty demoralising for enemy troops though. It doesn't necessarily need to be highly accurate.
- rualca 5y ago
  > Hearing the Brrrt of a flying gattling gun must be pretty demoralising for enemy troops though. I guess that OP's point is that the AC130 not only has two Gatling guns but also a 40mm canon and a 105mm Howitzer. Also, the AC130 can loiter longer, and doesn't require fly-bys to even be able to target. It just does pylon turns while showering a target with everything it has. Given the alternatives, people have to ask what does the A-10 bring to the table, and the answer is hard to come by.
  - nobodyandproud 5y ago
    The AC-130 seems to be a low flyer as well (not like the a-10, but still), so mostly runs night missions and with other planes flying as support? I am not an expert at this stuff.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    > Given the alternatives, people have to ask what does the A-10 bring to the table, and the answer is hard to come by. Gets on target faster, is much cheaper, doesn't need half a brigade to crew, and can take a lot more punishment (especially compared to the barely armored AC130J).
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    The AC130 no longer has a Gatling gun, or any mutli-barrel gun for that matter as the Spooky/II and Specter variants have been retired. The Ghostrider / Stinger II variants which are in service today have 1 30mm bushmaster auto cannon, 1 howitzer and a bunch of guided munitions. The recent variants have been criticized for not being able to provide the same level of air support as the older variants or the A-10 in built up areas or for danger close missions. They lack the volume of fire needed to effectively suppress enemy infantry as the 30mm bushmaster has a rate of fire of only about 100 rpm and the next thing in line is either a 105mm howitzer or a hellfire missile/SDB which might be too high profile for many engagements. And most importantly unlike the A-10 the air force isn’t willing to employ the AC-130 in anything that even comes close to a denied air space so if the baddies have anything larger than a Dushka good luck…
- BariumBlue 5y ago
  Literally anything coming to kill you from the air is going to be demoralizing. I respect the concept of "the bigger boom" (the concept being that the person with the larger/scarier gun feels like they're winning, and the inverse that if the opponent has the larger/scarier gun you feel like you're losing), but I don't think we should rely on frightening the enemy into submission.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    Also with the religiously motivated enemy, they’re not as afraid of death as a professional soldier.
    - loonster 5y ago
      Among many comabt infantry marines I knew, more were afraid of being a coward than dying. I would imagine it would be similar for soldiers.
  - loonster 5y ago
    Bullshit. Aircraft that can be seen are much scarier to the enemy. The enemy never came out to play when we had helicopters on station. Planes high in the sky didn't stop attacks until they dropped bombs. The same concept can be seen with infantry and crowd control. The best way to keep a crowd away is to fix bayonets.
hunterb123 5y ago
Very false. It excels at close air support. Period. It's the main thing used in infantry skirmishes. It's incredibly nimble and precise compared to an AC-130. It's also very cheap. I don't think you'll find anything more precise in terms of air support. You'd be surprised how low they go, and how close the pilot can get. An MQ-9 is not going give much support, it's great for blowing up an innocent family like recently or proper assassinations, one off hits. The support an AC-130 gives is immense, but it can't see everywhere and most of it's weapons are too close for some skirmishes. Sometimes you do need a flying machine gun for those hard to reach areas. The A-10 is the attachment suction tube on your vacuum. AC-130 would be the main vacuum itself. MQ-9 is the spot cleaner for before or after.
- BariumBlue 5y ago
  > MQ-9s great at blowing up innocents MQ-9s are a tool. They're a very useful/versatile tool for the military, which is why they're used a lot, even though they are easy to misuse and use unethically. We don't hear about A-10s killing people because they're not used for it because they're trash at it.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    My point was they are great (and not so great) for planned assassinations. Not really for providing cover. An A-10 pilot might even be close enough to see there are children in the car and abort. An MQ-9 you are much higher up and you are relying on intel mostly.
protomyth 5y ago
The gun on the A-10 can't hit anything accurately I had a cousin who was in Afghanistan that would disagree. It was quite accurate in putting bullets into a trench near them. He said, with the A-10 providing cover, it was the first sleep he got in days. Sustainable CAS and the troops view matter. Tanks?!? It has missiles too, but we don't face tanks.
nobodyandproud 5y ago
The A-10 seems to be the AK-47 of the air, though. Meaning it’s designed to work and be maintained in harsh and sub-optimal battle conditions. Not to mention it’s battle proven. Other than the AF wanting to retire it, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be modernized to some degree (like the guns). So you may be right, but if the Army is willing to take it from the Airforce then the question is “why”.
siod 5y ago
It might have been originally designed to kill tanks, but it's incredibly well suited to current asymmetric warfare. - Massive Payload capacity; it's a missile truck, 5x what a reaper can bring. - Cannon can hit infantry in closer quarters than any explosive missile/bomb. - Armoured and extremely tough, designed to survive small arms fire, loss of wing, loss of engine. AC-130 might be the king of CAS but it's also crewed by 13 people and has a top speed half that of a hog... which is important when people need support _now_. The US airforce don't like the A-10 because it's a platform that primarily does grunt work for the army and they'd rather spend that money on their own missions.
- BariumBlue 5y ago
  > Massive Payload capacity; it's a missile truck, 5x what a reaper can bring If you need a bunch of munitions, bring a B-1 or B-52. Those things are GREAT at annihilating a whole training camp. > Cannon can hit infantry in closer quarters than any explosive missile/bomb. A small (18lb warhead) hyper-accurate missile is better than a cannon than can easily shoot way off. If there's a bad guy hiding behind a building, you want to frag the guy, not shred the building. > AC-130 has a top speed half that of a hog What's better than something that can take off and get into position quickly is something that's already there and watching the situation - MQ-9s are GREAT at that, and AC-130s are almost always providing overwatch when they're up. > Armoured and extremely tough, designed to survive small arms fire, Important if you're constantly flying very low. Why are you constantly flying low though? MQ-9s and AC-130s don't need to do that.
- masklinn 5y ago
  > AC-130 might be the king of CAS but it's also crewed by 13 people and has a top speed half that of a hog... which is important when people need support _now_. It's also not suited for very low flying, it wants to perform large circles around the target to get the side-guns pointed at it. And the AF made it even less suited for very low flying as the J revision reduces the armor dramatically compared to previous variants: where H had enough armor for 37mm J is only armored against 7.62, and not even all posts (gunner is unarmored).
- bell-cot 5y ago
captainredbeard 5y ago
> the A-10 is not a nimble plane ...err, what? It is a very nimble plane.
- BariumBlue 5y ago
  I double checked by searching on google and fond this: "The A-10 is not agile, nimble, fast or quick,” A-10 Lt. Col. Ryan Haden said. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/tough-nails-10-warthog-just-simply-unstoppable-190496 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/tough-nails-10-wartho... Haha, straight from the horse's mouth, I did not expect to get such a perfect quote.
  - captainredbeard 5y ago
    Well, compared to an F-16 or other fighter that is true. Compared to everything else, e.g. general aviation, they are quite nimble. I've watched them perform aerobatic maneuvers.
spoonjim 5y ago
What if you have a building full of enemies taking cover? Can’t you just riddle the whole thing to pieces with an A-10?

secondcoming 5y ago

Hearing the Brrrt of a flying gattling gun must be pretty demoralising for enemy troops though. It doesn't necessarily need to be highly accurate.

rualca 5y ago
> Hearing the Brrrt of a flying gattling gun must be pretty demoralising for enemy troops though. I guess that OP's point is that the AC130 not only has two Gatling guns but also a 40mm canon and a 105mm Howitzer. Also, the AC130 can loiter longer, and doesn't require fly-bys to even be able to target. It just does pylon turns while showering a target with everything it has. Given the alternatives, people have to ask what does the A-10 bring to the table, and the answer is hard to come by.
- nobodyandproud 5y ago
  The AC-130 seems to be a low flyer as well (not like the a-10, but still), so mostly runs night missions and with other planes flying as support? I am not an expert at this stuff.
- masklinn 5y ago
  > Given the alternatives, people have to ask what does the A-10 bring to the table, and the answer is hard to come by. Gets on target faster, is much cheaper, doesn't need half a brigade to crew, and can take a lot more punishment (especially compared to the barely armored AC130J).
- dogma1138 5y ago
  The AC130 no longer has a Gatling gun, or any mutli-barrel gun for that matter as the Spooky/II and Specter variants have been retired. The Ghostrider / Stinger II variants which are in service today have 1 30mm bushmaster auto cannon, 1 howitzer and a bunch of guided munitions. The recent variants have been criticized for not being able to provide the same level of air support as the older variants or the A-10 in built up areas or for danger close missions. They lack the volume of fire needed to effectively suppress enemy infantry as the 30mm bushmaster has a rate of fire of only about 100 rpm and the next thing in line is either a 105mm howitzer or a hellfire missile/SDB which might be too high profile for many engagements. And most importantly unlike the A-10 the air force isn’t willing to employ the AC-130 in anything that even comes close to a denied air space so if the baddies have anything larger than a Dushka good luck…
BariumBlue 5y ago
Literally anything coming to kill you from the air is going to be demoralizing. I respect the concept of "the bigger boom" (the concept being that the person with the larger/scarier gun feels like they're winning, and the inverse that if the opponent has the larger/scarier gun you feel like you're losing), but I don't think we should rely on frightening the enemy into submission.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  Also with the religiously motivated enemy, they’re not as afraid of death as a professional soldier.
  - loonster 5y ago
    Among many comabt infantry marines I knew, more were afraid of being a coward than dying. I would imagine it would be similar for soldiers.
- loonster 5y ago
  Bullshit. Aircraft that can be seen are much scarier to the enemy. The enemy never came out to play when we had helicopters on station. Planes high in the sky didn't stop attacks until they dropped bombs. The same concept can be seen with infantry and crowd control. The best way to keep a crowd away is to fix bayonets.

hunterb123 5y ago

Very false. It excels at close air support. Period. It's the main thing used in infantry skirmishes. It's incredibly nimble and precise compared to an AC-130. It's also very cheap. I don't think you'll find anything more precise in terms of air support. You'd be surprised how low they go, and how close the pilot can get. An MQ-9 is not going give much support, it's great for blowing up an innocent family like recently or proper assassinations, one off hits. The support an AC-130 gives is immense, but it can't see everywhere and most of it's weapons are too close for some skirmishes. Sometimes you do need a flying machine gun for those hard to reach areas. The A-10 is the attachment suction tube on your vacuum. AC-130 would be the main vacuum itself. MQ-9 is the spot cleaner for before or after.

BariumBlue 5y ago
> MQ-9s great at blowing up innocents MQ-9s are a tool. They're a very useful/versatile tool for the military, which is why they're used a lot, even though they are easy to misuse and use unethically. We don't hear about A-10s killing people because they're not used for it because they're trash at it.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  My point was they are great (and not so great) for planned assassinations. Not really for providing cover. An A-10 pilot might even be close enough to see there are children in the car and abort. An MQ-9 you are much higher up and you are relying on intel mostly.

protomyth 5y ago

The gun on the A-10 can't hit anything accurately I had a cousin who was in Afghanistan that would disagree. It was quite accurate in putting bullets into a trench near them. He said, with the A-10 providing cover, it was the first sleep he got in days. Sustainable CAS and the troops view matter. Tanks?!? It has missiles too, but we don't face tanks.

nobodyandproud 5y ago

The A-10 seems to be the AK-47 of the air, though. Meaning it’s designed to work and be maintained in harsh and sub-optimal battle conditions. Not to mention it’s battle proven. Other than the AF wanting to retire it, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be modernized to some degree (like the guns). So you may be right, but if the Army is willing to take it from the Airforce then the question is “why”.

siod 5y ago

It might have been originally designed to kill tanks, but it's incredibly well suited to current asymmetric warfare. - Massive Payload capacity; it's a missile truck, 5x what a reaper can bring. - Cannon can hit infantry in closer quarters than any explosive missile/bomb. - Armoured and extremely tough, designed to survive small arms fire, loss of wing, loss of engine. AC-130 might be the king of CAS but it's also crewed by 13 people and has a top speed half that of a hog... which is important when people need support _now_. The US airforce don't like the A-10 because it's a platform that primarily does grunt work for the army and they'd rather spend that money on their own missions.

BariumBlue 5y ago
> Massive Payload capacity; it's a missile truck, 5x what a reaper can bring If you need a bunch of munitions, bring a B-1 or B-52. Those things are GREAT at annihilating a whole training camp. > Cannon can hit infantry in closer quarters than any explosive missile/bomb. A small (18lb warhead) hyper-accurate missile is better than a cannon than can easily shoot way off. If there's a bad guy hiding behind a building, you want to frag the guy, not shred the building. > AC-130 has a top speed half that of a hog What's better than something that can take off and get into position quickly is something that's already there and watching the situation - MQ-9s are GREAT at that, and AC-130s are almost always providing overwatch when they're up. > Armoured and extremely tough, designed to survive small arms fire, Important if you're constantly flying very low. Why are you constantly flying low though? MQ-9s and AC-130s don't need to do that.
masklinn 5y ago
> AC-130 might be the king of CAS but it's also crewed by 13 people and has a top speed half that of a hog... which is important when people need support _now_. It's also not suited for very low flying, it wants to perform large circles around the target to get the side-guns pointed at it. And the AF made it even less suited for very low flying as the J revision reduces the armor dramatically compared to previous variants: where H had enough armor for 37mm J is only armored against 7.62, and not even all posts (gunner is unarmored).
bell-cot 5y ago

captainredbeard 5y ago

> the A-10 is not a nimble plane ...err, what? It is a very nimble plane.

BariumBlue 5y ago
I double checked by searching on google and fond this: "The A-10 is not agile, nimble, fast or quick,” A-10 Lt. Col. Ryan Haden said. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/tough-nails-10-warthog-just-simply-unstoppable-190496 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/tough-nails-10-wartho... Haha, straight from the horse's mouth, I did not expect to get such a perfect quote.
- captainredbeard 5y ago
  Well, compared to an F-16 or other fighter that is true. Compared to everything else, e.g. general aviation, they are quite nimble. I've watched them perform aerobatic maneuvers.

spoonjim 5y ago

What if you have a building full of enemies taking cover? Can’t you just riddle the whole thing to pieces with an A-10?