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It is almost as if certain tools have certain use cases. And tgat an organization as large as the US military might what to have those tools for all t

It is almost as if certain tools have certain use cases. And tgat an organization as large as the US military might what to have those tools for all the use cases they might run into. As large as the military's budget is, it's not unlimited. Money spent on one thing is money they don't have for another thing. So people who point out the A-10's weaknesses aren't saying the A-10 has literally no value at all, because it clearly does. They're questioning the cost vs. the alternatives. Benefit of the A-10? Lower speed, longer loitering in CAS, something quite valuable in combined arms. And faster than attack helicopters, so A-10s can move faster between mission sites. Yes, the A-10 has some absolutely unique attributes and strengths. It's just that the viable use cases dwindle by the year as MANPADs get cheaper and cheaper. It's hard to find reliable sources, but you can apparently get them for under $100K. Think about the list of adversaries we might possibly fight who: 1. Are willing to challenge the US military in direct combat 2. Can't scrape together $100K for a rocket launcher 3. Don't have sympathetic allies that will be happy to give them rocket launchers for free in order to harass the US by proxy

Dalewyn 4y ago
>They're questioning the cost vs. the alternatives. USAF already investigated and answered that question: The F-35 was slated to replace the A-10, but the plan was axed in favor of keeping the A-10 indefinitely upon finding the operational risks and costs of flying the F-35 for CAS missions were not feasible. Among the problems noted were: More dollars spent per flight hour, higher airframe cost (both in dollars and potential technology leakage) assuming an airframe loss, inferior protections afforded to the pilot, inferior airframe robustness and sturdiness, inferior payload, inferior flight range (and thus loitering time), and too fast minimum airspeed. In fact, the F-35 was slated to replace the A-10, F-15C/D and potentially -E, F-16C/D, F/A-18C/D/E/F, F-22, and AV-8. The only aircraft the F-35 has thus far successfully replaced is the AV-8 owing to STOVL being a unique and niche capability. In all other cases the F-35 has at best complimented the preceding aircraft, and at worst failed as their replacement.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  I'm not telling you the A-10 isn't great. It is! If an engineer can look at a cutaway drawing of an A-10 without feeling a great swelling in their heart, are they even truly alive? Yes, the A-10 is insanely superior for CAS, for all of the reasons you mentioned. If your enemy is so impoverished and cut off from allies that it doesn't have dirt cheap MANPADs or anything else from the last several decades of anti-aircraft technology. There are of course mitigation strategies for AA. Combined arms are a thing. SEAD is a thing. Utilizing weather/darkness/terrain is a thing. Cutting your enemies off from arms shipments is a thing. Hammering them with CAS until they have proven they can actually thwart it is a thing. It's just that a lot of those mitigations start to break down when your foe's AA is "a dude carrying a cheap, essentially fire-and-forget portable weapon who can duck back into a cave, a house, or a literal hole in the ground and instantly blend back in with the populace or otherwise become effectively invisible." This isn't theory. You can see countless examples for yourself of Russian choppers and slow (but faster than A-10, I think) Su-25 getting absolutely wrecked in Ukraine in exactly the manner I have described. As a result, the fight has largely turned into a ground war with Russia chucking missiles at Ukraine but only from safely within Russian airspace. And this is Russia's military we're talking about; they have copiously demonstrated that they're not particularly concerned about the casualties they're racking up. The US tends to be far more conservative and risk-averse. You can say that the US would utilize combined arms, SEAD, etc more effectively than Russia. I'd agree; it'd be hard to do much worse. But the fundamental reality is that AA (particularly against unstealthy foes) has gotten really good, really cheap, really portable, and much harder to suppress.

Dalewyn 4y ago

>They're questioning the cost vs. the alternatives. USAF already investigated and answered that question: The F-35 was slated to replace the A-10, but the plan was axed in favor of keeping the A-10 indefinitely upon finding the operational risks and costs of flying the F-35 for CAS missions were not feasible. Among the problems noted were: More dollars spent per flight hour, higher airframe cost (both in dollars and potential technology leakage) assuming an airframe loss, inferior protections afforded to the pilot, inferior airframe robustness and sturdiness, inferior payload, inferior flight range (and thus loitering time), and too fast minimum airspeed. In fact, the F-35 was slated to replace the A-10, F-15C/D and potentially -E, F-16C/D, F/A-18C/D/E/F, F-22, and AV-8. The only aircraft the F-35 has thus far successfully replaced is the AV-8 owing to STOVL being a unique and niche capability. In all other cases the F-35 has at best complimented the preceding aircraft, and at worst failed as their replacement.

JohnBooty 4y ago
I'm not telling you the A-10 isn't great. It is! If an engineer can look at a cutaway drawing of an A-10 without feeling a great swelling in their heart, are they even truly alive? Yes, the A-10 is insanely superior for CAS, for all of the reasons you mentioned. If your enemy is so impoverished and cut off from allies that it doesn't have dirt cheap MANPADs or anything else from the last several decades of anti-aircraft technology. There are of course mitigation strategies for AA. Combined arms are a thing. SEAD is a thing. Utilizing weather/darkness/terrain is a thing. Cutting your enemies off from arms shipments is a thing. Hammering them with CAS until they have proven they can actually thwart it is a thing. It's just that a lot of those mitigations start to break down when your foe's AA is "a dude carrying a cheap, essentially fire-and-forget portable weapon who can duck back into a cave, a house, or a literal hole in the ground and instantly blend back in with the populace or otherwise become effectively invisible." This isn't theory. You can see countless examples for yourself of Russian choppers and slow (but faster than A-10, I think) Su-25 getting absolutely wrecked in Ukraine in exactly the manner I have described. As a result, the fight has largely turned into a ground war with Russia chucking missiles at Ukraine but only from safely within Russian airspace. And this is Russia's military we're talking about; they have copiously demonstrated that they're not particularly concerned about the casualties they're racking up. The US tends to be far more conservative and risk-averse. You can say that the US would utilize combined arms, SEAD, etc more effectively than Russia. I'd agree; it'd be hard to do much worse. But the fundamental reality is that AA (particularly against unstealthy foes) has gotten really good, really cheap, really portable, and much harder to suppress.