8 ms·

I've read some analyses of the F35 vs A10 which don't favour the F35 for CAS operations much. The main thing I saw was that F35 requires more maintenance and lo

I've read some analyses of the F35 vs A10 which don't favour the F35 for CAS operations much. The main thing I saw was that F35 requires more maintenance and longer runways than the A10 and is more fragile. It depends on what kind of a war that is being fought, but in a major great power war, you couldn't always guarantee having nice high quality air bases, runways, and support teams near the front. Sometimes it is preferable to have a low tech; that fancy new wifi connected oven can be great, until your wifi goes out for a few days and you find out that it won't turn on, and you have to get a special maintenance guy.

lumost 3y ago
It is unnecessary to have a manned CAS fighter doing strafing runs. A cheap Drone in the 1-5MM range could do the job better. Or rely on high altitude/stealth precision bombing. The A-10 was built for a war in Europe that never came. You can see how well the equivalent SU-25 Frogfoot fairs against Manpads in Ukraine today.
valec 3y ago
The F-35 has a much faster response time than the A-10--and, more importantly, survivability. In a contested environment, "suboptimal" CAS from an F-35 dropping precision munitions is much better than non at all (A-10 would get shot out of the sky by any near-peer before it could approach the theater). The A-10 also has high maintenance costs and a relatively low loiter time. For fighting terrorists in flipflops, something like a super-tucano does its job for a tenth of the operating cost. Fundamentally, the A-10 was not built for CAS. It was built as a last-ditch, suicide strafer of Soviet convoys during a land war in Europe. Very few were projected to survive past the first week.
- dogman144 3y ago
  This is an… unorthodox take from the ground commander/fires perspective or conversely the orthodox take from the USAF perspective. Hard lessons from the GWOT have firmly put the A10 as the most capable CAS platform, and it’s taught as such in all joint fires classes to forward observers and also via unit history/anecdotes fires units (“A10 saved my butt in ‘12”). A10 pilots and units also have a much better rep for CAS than F16 etc units (w/e the USAF name is?). As in, from the ground units perspective, the unit actually needing and coordinating the CAS, everything you’ve argued is against the grain. However, the USAF has been running the exact argument you’re using for years. What matters more - IRL combat experience and successes with the A10 platform, or the 10 year PR campaign to get rid of it for no good reason from the combat perspective.
  - lacksconfidence 3y ago
    Is the GWOT relevant though? It seems like one of the biggest issues the us military is facing a shift back towards "conventional" military matters, aka potential future faceoff's with China or Russia. These opponents field a significantly different set of weapons than we saw in GWOT.
    - dogman144 3y ago
      The mil has accounted for “Near-peer” training scenarios at the training centers (literal war prep, “enemy force” with their own tanks etc) since mid 2010’s. A10 still features in them.
  - kilolima 3y ago
    As long as the Air Farce runs CAS, instead of the army, they will continue to attempt to kill any mission that doesn't involve winning wars through the holy doctrine of Air Power (ie incinerating as many civilians as possible).
    - dralley 3y ago
      ...Is this supposed to be a defence of the A-10?
      - kilolima 3y ago
        Not really, but I think the A-10 drama is an example of what can happen when an organization that doesn't share your own goals is able to take over a task critical to you. Perhaps like outsourcing your engineering offshore. It may be more efficient to find cheap labor overseas, and push a button from 30,000 ft while going mach 2, but efficiency only makes a few people happy.
        dralley 3y ago
        My point is that if you hold incinerating civilians (and friendly troops) to be a bad thing, then the A-10 is a strange platform to idealize.
- LorenPechtel 3y ago
  And the A-10 was built before the MANPAD threat become serious. Sneak in at treetop level against gunners in turrets and you very well might be able to get in and get out in reasonable safety. Now, you'll be getting out with a missile (or maybe even more--the response will not be coordinated, those who have a launcher and a shot will take it) on your tail--it can't be evaded, you have to decoy it or blind it.
- elihu 3y ago
  > "The A-10 also has high maintenance costs..." Isn't the A-10 the cheapest-to-operate combat jet the U.S. uses? I mean, maybe you could argue that you get more capability per dollar for some other platform, but A-10s aren't expensive. (Or at least, historically they aren't. Maybe they've been getting more expensive because the airframes are so old.)
dragontamer 3y ago
The replacement for the A10 is the AC-130. F35 is the multirole fighter. You build it because you don't know if you are doing a stealth mission, a dogfight, CAS or wild weasel. F35 can do it all, but as a jack of all trades master of none. ------- Consider the A10 in the current Ukrainian war: CAS is impossible because both sides have too much antiair. You need wild weasel (aka: anti-air defense) fighters right now. Eventually, one sides air defense will be destroyed to the point where CAS is needed. A multirole fighter can perform both jobs. While a specialized wild weasel (ex: stealth bombers) would be kinda useless after air defenses are down. While A10 is useless before air defenses are down.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  I think MANPADs somewhat negate traditional Wild Weasel tactics. Wild Weasel worked because you could use a jet as bait to find the position of a SAM site. That worked fine when a SAM site was multiple trailers, and took a day to move. With MANPADs, you don't have a fixed base, and if you discover where one is (because it shot at you), that information isn't useful, because by the time you know where it is, it isn't a SAM site anymore. I suspect that when fighting wars against people that aren't insurgents, we end up being much better off with remote piloting, and relatively cheap guided munitions for air support. I.E. its a strategic win to get your $3k drones shot down by $50k MANPADs.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    MANPADs can't even shoot at a jet because they're flying too high. There's only so much rocket propellant you can put onto a shoulder-mounted device that humans have to carry around. If you're only guarded by MANPADs, then a traditional bomber will blast your position repeatedly. The MANPADs are really there to deal with low-flying aircraft (A10 and Helicopters). EDIT: I guess the AC-130 cruises at high speeds, but since its gun-based it has to drop relatively low... 7000 ft or less, which might open it up to MANPADs. But the lower your aircraft, the more at risk vs MANPADs. Helicopters and A10 are probably the worst off since they're far lower to the ground than even an AC-130. Furthermore, the AC-130 has the AN/AAR-44 Missile Approach Warning Systems, and a _TON_ of flares to misdirect missiles like a MANPAD. The A10 doesn't have nearly as many flares and is therefore far more vulnerable. ------------- Anyway, CAS are vulnerable to MANPADs (be it A10 or AC-130) because of their mission type. But jet fighters and fighter-bombers, like the F35 or F16 (or at least, fighters that can play the fighter-bomber role) fly too high and too fast to ever be hit by a MANPAD. They're only worried about the bigger missiles who have enough propulsion to actually reach 10,000+ feet.
Spooky23 3y ago
IMO it's more a multirole/strike aircraft. The A-10 is great, but you can replace 1 A-10 with 100 loitering drones and get 90% of the capability.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
The F-35 is for deleting (or helping others delete) air defenses and other fighter aircraft. Once those are gone you can use whatever you want for CAS. I can't imagine troops being so far forward that the air above is still contested.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Also this cannot be stressed enough: you can't fly under radar anymore. Modern radar can detect and track low flying aircraft just fine.
  - histriosum 3y ago
    Genuinely interested in how modern radar would get around the line of sight issues? Doesn't line of sight mean that yes, you absolutely can still fly under radar?
    - XorNot 3y ago
      LoS is different to the original concept of "flying below radar". The original concept was based on the problem of ground scatter - below a certain altitude the radar beam is hitting the ground and producing spurious returns which mean they swamp out any interesting signals. But modern radar is much more sensitive, and the noise-handling algorithms better - basically it's much more able to distinguish "I hit some trees with my beam" versus "metal". Combine that with modern transmitters which can also produce tighter beams and all the other electronic goodness, and the net effect is that you can scan just as low as you can see in all directions and filter out everything which is boring (i.e. the ground doesn't actually move very much, so really it's a fixed background on your radio image). The other element of this, is AWACS: AWACS radars are higher, and look down. So not only do they go much further, but there is no "below radar" with them - they can be operated from much further away, and have all the same advantages (i.e. much better signal return discrimination). An AWACS will see you on radar long before you're in weapons range (hence the body of them orbiting near the Ukraine border these days). The final element is that "flying below radar" was also just plain never that effective. You can test this by asking how often it's actually been done, if it's so effective. If it worked all the time, then that's what military's would train to do. Instead the only real advantage it provides is it reduces light of sight, and that's not uniformly applicable - i.e. a radar on elevated terrain would be able to spot aircraft making low approaches around it because it can just look down and pick out the airplane-like returns and ignore the ground scatter - and said radar can be far behind the lines.
LegitShady 3y ago
The A-10 would be shot out of the sky at impressive rates with today's proliferation of MANPADs, the same way the ukrainians are shooting down russion KA-52s in ukraine whenever they get too close to the line of contact. The F-35 could require 100x more maintenance than the A-10 but it will accomplish the mission and come home afterwards. The A-10 is useful for shooting someone who can't shoot missiles back at your planes.
- hajile 3y ago
  Look at actual kills of SU-25 and KA-52 vs the damage they have done. I've seen a single KA-52 mission take down around a half-dozen vehicles and completely halt an advance. That helicopter more than paid for itself in just that one interaction. There have been no doubt thousands to tens of thousands of missions flown over the past year and a half by Russia, but only around 28 SU-25 losses and 36 KA-52 losses[0]. At 19 months into the war, that's 1-2 per month which would be more than acceptable losses. Even looking at total aircraft losses per side per month, the worst case is Ukraine with 307 losses over 19 months or 16.2 per month. Perspective is important. We lost 2,714 planes in the Korean War[1] over 37 months. That is 73.4 aircraft per month or a little more than 4.5x as many each month and it was considered acceptable losses. I don't care to add up all the things, but even in far less heated wars with basically zero anti-air capability, there are still a ton of aircraft losses[2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War#Total_losses_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_during... [1] https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaFamWebInKoreanAirBattles https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaFamWebInKoreanAirBat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_accidents_and_incidents_in_the_war_in_Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_accidents_and...
  - _kbh_ 3y ago
    > Even looking at total aircraft losses per side per month, the worst case is Ukraine with 307 losses over 19 months or 16.2 per month. Unless this includes UAV's (which would be a bit strange) I don't see how this is even possible Ukraines airforce doesn't even have 300 combat aircraft. Looking at most sources I cannot find where this number could have come from. Going per oryx's numbers. Ukraine (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-ukrainian.html https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...). - 71 Aircraft - 35 Helicopters - 25 UAV's - 166 Recon UAV's. 297 total. But. Russia (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...) - 90 Aircraft - 105 Helicopters - 14 UAV's - 286 Recon UAV's. 495 total.

lumost 3y ago

It is unnecessary to have a manned CAS fighter doing strafing runs. A cheap Drone in the 1-5MM range could do the job better. Or rely on high altitude/stealth precision bombing. The A-10 was built for a war in Europe that never came. You can see how well the equivalent SU-25 Frogfoot fairs against Manpads in Ukraine today.

valec 3y ago

The F-35 has a much faster response time than the A-10--and, more importantly, survivability. In a contested environment, "suboptimal" CAS from an F-35 dropping precision munitions is much better than non at all (A-10 would get shot out of the sky by any near-peer before it could approach the theater). The A-10 also has high maintenance costs and a relatively low loiter time. For fighting terrorists in flipflops, something like a super-tucano does its job for a tenth of the operating cost. Fundamentally, the A-10 was not built for CAS. It was built as a last-ditch, suicide strafer of Soviet convoys during a land war in Europe. Very few were projected to survive past the first week.

dogman144 3y ago
This is an… unorthodox take from the ground commander/fires perspective or conversely the orthodox take from the USAF perspective. Hard lessons from the GWOT have firmly put the A10 as the most capable CAS platform, and it’s taught as such in all joint fires classes to forward observers and also via unit history/anecdotes fires units (“A10 saved my butt in ‘12”). A10 pilots and units also have a much better rep for CAS than F16 etc units (w/e the USAF name is?). As in, from the ground units perspective, the unit actually needing and coordinating the CAS, everything you’ve argued is against the grain. However, the USAF has been running the exact argument you’re using for years. What matters more - IRL combat experience and successes with the A10 platform, or the 10 year PR campaign to get rid of it for no good reason from the combat perspective.
- lacksconfidence 3y ago
  Is the GWOT relevant though? It seems like one of the biggest issues the us military is facing a shift back towards "conventional" military matters, aka potential future faceoff's with China or Russia. These opponents field a significantly different set of weapons than we saw in GWOT.
  - dogman144 3y ago
    The mil has accounted for “Near-peer” training scenarios at the training centers (literal war prep, “enemy force” with their own tanks etc) since mid 2010’s. A10 still features in them.
- kilolima 3y ago
  As long as the Air Farce runs CAS, instead of the army, they will continue to attempt to kill any mission that doesn't involve winning wars through the holy doctrine of Air Power (ie incinerating as many civilians as possible).
  - dralley 3y ago
    ...Is this supposed to be a defence of the A-10?
    - kilolima 3y ago
      Not really, but I think the A-10 drama is an example of what can happen when an organization that doesn't share your own goals is able to take over a task critical to you. Perhaps like outsourcing your engineering offshore. It may be more efficient to find cheap labor overseas, and push a button from 30,000 ft while going mach 2, but efficiency only makes a few people happy.
      - dralley 3y ago
        My point is that if you hold incinerating civilians (and friendly troops) to be a bad thing, then the A-10 is a strange platform to idealize.
LorenPechtel 3y ago
And the A-10 was built before the MANPAD threat become serious. Sneak in at treetop level against gunners in turrets and you very well might be able to get in and get out in reasonable safety. Now, you'll be getting out with a missile (or maybe even more--the response will not be coordinated, those who have a launcher and a shot will take it) on your tail--it can't be evaded, you have to decoy it or blind it.
elihu 3y ago
> "The A-10 also has high maintenance costs..." Isn't the A-10 the cheapest-to-operate combat jet the U.S. uses? I mean, maybe you could argue that you get more capability per dollar for some other platform, but A-10s aren't expensive. (Or at least, historically they aren't. Maybe they've been getting more expensive because the airframes are so old.)

dragontamer 3y ago

The replacement for the A10 is the AC-130. F35 is the multirole fighter. You build it because you don't know if you are doing a stealth mission, a dogfight, CAS or wild weasel. F35 can do it all, but as a jack of all trades master of none. ------- Consider the A10 in the current Ukrainian war: CAS is impossible because both sides have too much antiair. You need wild weasel (aka: anti-air defense) fighters right now. Eventually, one sides air defense will be destroyed to the point where CAS is needed. A multirole fighter can perform both jobs. While a specialized wild weasel (ex: stealth bombers) would be kinda useless after air defenses are down. While A10 is useless before air defenses are down.

dghlsakjg 3y ago
I think MANPADs somewhat negate traditional Wild Weasel tactics. Wild Weasel worked because you could use a jet as bait to find the position of a SAM site. That worked fine when a SAM site was multiple trailers, and took a day to move. With MANPADs, you don't have a fixed base, and if you discover where one is (because it shot at you), that information isn't useful, because by the time you know where it is, it isn't a SAM site anymore. I suspect that when fighting wars against people that aren't insurgents, we end up being much better off with remote piloting, and relatively cheap guided munitions for air support. I.E. its a strategic win to get your $3k drones shot down by $50k MANPADs.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  MANPADs can't even shoot at a jet because they're flying too high. There's only so much rocket propellant you can put onto a shoulder-mounted device that humans have to carry around. If you're only guarded by MANPADs, then a traditional bomber will blast your position repeatedly. The MANPADs are really there to deal with low-flying aircraft (A10 and Helicopters). EDIT: I guess the AC-130 cruises at high speeds, but since its gun-based it has to drop relatively low... 7000 ft or less, which might open it up to MANPADs. But the lower your aircraft, the more at risk vs MANPADs. Helicopters and A10 are probably the worst off since they're far lower to the ground than even an AC-130. Furthermore, the AC-130 has the AN/AAR-44 Missile Approach Warning Systems, and a _TON_ of flares to misdirect missiles like a MANPAD. The A10 doesn't have nearly as many flares and is therefore far more vulnerable. ------------- Anyway, CAS are vulnerable to MANPADs (be it A10 or AC-130) because of their mission type. But jet fighters and fighter-bombers, like the F35 or F16 (or at least, fighters that can play the fighter-bomber role) fly too high and too fast to ever be hit by a MANPAD. They're only worried about the bigger missiles who have enough propulsion to actually reach 10,000+ feet.

Spooky23 3y ago

IMO it's more a multirole/strike aircraft. The A-10 is great, but you can replace 1 A-10 with 100 loitering drones and get 90% of the capability.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

The F-35 is for deleting (or helping others delete) air defenses and other fighter aircraft. Once those are gone you can use whatever you want for CAS. I can't imagine troops being so far forward that the air above is still contested.

XorNot 3y ago
Also this cannot be stressed enough: you can't fly under radar anymore. Modern radar can detect and track low flying aircraft just fine.
- histriosum 3y ago
  Genuinely interested in how modern radar would get around the line of sight issues? Doesn't line of sight mean that yes, you absolutely can still fly under radar?
  - XorNot 3y ago
    LoS is different to the original concept of "flying below radar". The original concept was based on the problem of ground scatter - below a certain altitude the radar beam is hitting the ground and producing spurious returns which mean they swamp out any interesting signals. But modern radar is much more sensitive, and the noise-handling algorithms better - basically it's much more able to distinguish "I hit some trees with my beam" versus "metal". Combine that with modern transmitters which can also produce tighter beams and all the other electronic goodness, and the net effect is that you can scan just as low as you can see in all directions and filter out everything which is boring (i.e. the ground doesn't actually move very much, so really it's a fixed background on your radio image). The other element of this, is AWACS: AWACS radars are higher, and look down. So not only do they go much further, but there is no "below radar" with them - they can be operated from much further away, and have all the same advantages (i.e. much better signal return discrimination). An AWACS will see you on radar long before you're in weapons range (hence the body of them orbiting near the Ukraine border these days). The final element is that "flying below radar" was also just plain never that effective. You can test this by asking how often it's actually been done, if it's so effective. If it worked all the time, then that's what military's would train to do. Instead the only real advantage it provides is it reduces light of sight, and that's not uniformly applicable - i.e. a radar on elevated terrain would be able to spot aircraft making low approaches around it because it can just look down and pick out the airplane-like returns and ignore the ground scatter - and said radar can be far behind the lines.

LegitShady 3y ago

The A-10 would be shot out of the sky at impressive rates with today's proliferation of MANPADs, the same way the ukrainians are shooting down russion KA-52s in ukraine whenever they get too close to the line of contact. The F-35 could require 100x more maintenance than the A-10 but it will accomplish the mission and come home afterwards. The A-10 is useful for shooting someone who can't shoot missiles back at your planes.

hajile 3y ago
Look at actual kills of SU-25 and KA-52 vs the damage they have done. I've seen a single KA-52 mission take down around a half-dozen vehicles and completely halt an advance. That helicopter more than paid for itself in just that one interaction. There have been no doubt thousands to tens of thousands of missions flown over the past year and a half by Russia, but only around 28 SU-25 losses and 36 KA-52 losses[0]. At 19 months into the war, that's 1-2 per month which would be more than acceptable losses. Even looking at total aircraft losses per side per month, the worst case is Ukraine with 307 losses over 19 months or 16.2 per month. Perspective is important. We lost 2,714 planes in the Korean War[1] over 37 months. That is 73.4 aircraft per month or a little more than 4.5x as many each month and it was considered acceptable losses. I don't care to add up all the things, but even in far less heated wars with basically zero anti-air capability, there are still a ton of aircraft losses[2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War#Total_losses_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_during... [1] https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaFamWebInKoreanAirBattles https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaFamWebInKoreanAirBat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_accidents_and_incidents_in_the_war_in_Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_accidents_and...
- _kbh_ 3y ago
  > Even looking at total aircraft losses per side per month, the worst case is Ukraine with 307 losses over 19 months or 16.2 per month. Unless this includes UAV's (which would be a bit strange) I don't see how this is even possible Ukraines airforce doesn't even have 300 combat aircraft. Looking at most sources I cannot find where this number could have come from. Going per oryx's numbers. Ukraine (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-ukrainian.html https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...). - 71 Aircraft - 35 Helicopters - 25 UAV's - 166 Recon UAV's. 297 total. But. Russia (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...) - 90 Aircraft - 105 Helicopters - 14 UAV's - 286 Recon UAV's. 495 total.