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It's a relic of the cold war that everyone seems to have a completely unrealistic and romanticized view of. Yes it's a heavy slow plane that was designed around

It's a relic of the cold war that everyone seems to have a completely unrealistic and romanticized view of. Yes it's a heavy slow plane that was designed around a massive gun. But that gun actually isn't very effective against modern armor. The A-10 could not penetrate the T-62 from the front, let alone the better armored T-72. For a gun kill, it would need to attack from the rear, but that would put it at significant risk to soviet anti air. The solution was to use a Maverick missile against armor. There are now far more effective planes to lob missiles at armor. All while staying high and away from danger. The A-10 also was not designed with MANPAD's in mind, because they didn't exist then. Even if they do survive, there is down time in having to repair the platform. In a cold war gone hot scenario, the airforce estimated that they would have lost all of their A-10's within 2 weeks of conflict. For the CAS mission an Apache would be just as good. 16 Hellfire missiles along with strafing with a 30mm chain gun throws a hell of a punch, all while being slow enough to accompany ground troops.

hga 12y ago
The A-10 also was not designed with MANPAD's in mind, because they didn't exist then. Nonsense on stilts. US production of Redeyes was ended, at about 85,000 total produced, a year before the detailed specifications of the A-10 were finished. The Soviet equivalent went into service a couple years before the latter. As for penetrating MBT frontal armor, I was always under the impression that top hits were the objective if trying to destroy one without using a missile, which the A-10 can carry a lot of. Airplanes do have the advantage of being above land vehicles after all.
msandford 12y ago
Except that Apaches are fragile, while the A-10 can take a huge beating and stay in the air. Anything which claims to be CAS but can't take some hits without falling out of the sky isn't terribly useful. The reason Apaches are used is that they're not fixed wing, which means the Air Force isn't demanding to own them, meaning that they can get pilots and commanding officers who do more than pay lip service to the idea of CAS.
masklinn 12y ago
> For the CAS mission an Apache would be just as good. 16 Hellfire missiles along with strafing with a 30mm chain gun The A10 has triple the hardpoints (11 to 4) and 10 times the payload (7200kg to 770) of the Apache… So it's just as good if you have 4 or 5 times as many systems in flight.
protomyth 12y ago
"For the CAS mission an Apache would be just as good." No, the Apache cannot loiter on station as long as an A-10.
vacri 12y ago
But that gun actually isn't very effective against modern armor. How much 'modern armor' has the US come up against in practice in the last two decades? If you want to kill tanks, it's not like there isn't something else in the US military catalogue to use.
- hga 12y ago
  Well, we've had to bust a lot of T-72s in both Iraq wars. The M1A1 and later version's 120 mm canon's "Silver Bullet" amd later version sabot rounds turned out to be good enough to go through a sand berm and then penetrate T-72's frontal armor, negating a standard desert warfare technique. Getting back to the A-10, we expended 5,000 Maverick missiles in the first Iraq war, and nearly 1,000 in the second, mostly employed by F-16s and A-10s in the first (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-65_Maverick#Deployment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-65_Maverick#Deployment). Which brings up an interesting hack used in the first Iraq war: the Mavericks used at the time fed a 15 degree wide image to a screen in the A-10 cockpit. While officially a daytime plane, they found that by the expedient of mounting on and just using it for imagining, they could do all sorts of nighttime missions that e.g. F-16 declined to take. All this per a book on there deployment during the war, I'm pretty sure it's this one: http://www.amazon.com/Warthog-Flying-10-Gulf-War/dp/002881021X/ http://www.amazon.com/Warthog-Flying-10-Gulf-War/dp/00288102...
hydrogen18 12y ago
What does penetration of armor matter? The only relevant aspect of anti-tank warfare nowadays is mobility kills. Strafe the vehicle from the side, destroy its tracks and its just a big obstacle to the enemy now. There was an incident in which a mobility kill was scored against an M1. Crew was unharmed and was able to retreat thanks to the other tank covering it. The tank was ordered abandoned and destroyed. The problem was, even firing at it from the other M1 they weren't able to destroy it.

hga 12y ago

The A-10 also was not designed with MANPAD's in mind, because they didn't exist then. Nonsense on stilts. US production of Redeyes was ended, at about 85,000 total produced, a year before the detailed specifications of the A-10 were finished. The Soviet equivalent went into service a couple years before the latter. As for penetrating MBT frontal armor, I was always under the impression that top hits were the objective if trying to destroy one without using a missile, which the A-10 can carry a lot of. Airplanes do have the advantage of being above land vehicles after all.

msandford 12y ago

Except that Apaches are fragile, while the A-10 can take a huge beating and stay in the air. Anything which claims to be CAS but can't take some hits without falling out of the sky isn't terribly useful. The reason Apaches are used is that they're not fixed wing, which means the Air Force isn't demanding to own them, meaning that they can get pilots and commanding officers who do more than pay lip service to the idea of CAS.

masklinn 12y ago

> For the CAS mission an Apache would be just as good. 16 Hellfire missiles along with strafing with a 30mm chain gun The A10 has triple the hardpoints (11 to 4) and 10 times the payload (7200kg to 770) of the Apache… So it's just as good if you have 4 or 5 times as many systems in flight.

protomyth 12y ago

"For the CAS mission an Apache would be just as good." No, the Apache cannot loiter on station as long as an A-10.

vacri 12y ago

But that gun actually isn't very effective against modern armor. How much 'modern armor' has the US come up against in practice in the last two decades? If you want to kill tanks, it's not like there isn't something else in the US military catalogue to use.

hga 12y ago
Well, we've had to bust a lot of T-72s in both Iraq wars. The M1A1 and later version's 120 mm canon's "Silver Bullet" amd later version sabot rounds turned out to be good enough to go through a sand berm and then penetrate T-72's frontal armor, negating a standard desert warfare technique. Getting back to the A-10, we expended 5,000 Maverick missiles in the first Iraq war, and nearly 1,000 in the second, mostly employed by F-16s and A-10s in the first (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-65_Maverick#Deployment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-65_Maverick#Deployment). Which brings up an interesting hack used in the first Iraq war: the Mavericks used at the time fed a 15 degree wide image to a screen in the A-10 cockpit. While officially a daytime plane, they found that by the expedient of mounting on and just using it for imagining, they could do all sorts of nighttime missions that e.g. F-16 declined to take. All this per a book on there deployment during the war, I'm pretty sure it's this one: http://www.amazon.com/Warthog-Flying-10-Gulf-War/dp/002881021X/ http://www.amazon.com/Warthog-Flying-10-Gulf-War/dp/00288102...

hydrogen18 12y ago

What does penetration of armor matter? The only relevant aspect of anti-tank warfare nowadays is mobility kills. Strafe the vehicle from the side, destroy its tracks and its just a big obstacle to the enemy now. There was an incident in which a mobility kill was scored against an M1. Crew was unharmed and was able to retreat thanks to the other tank covering it. The tank was ordered abandoned and destroyed. The problem was, even firing at it from the other M1 they weren't able to destroy it.