The replacement for the A-10 looks like it will get a trial by fire

This is kind of unusual -- as in, I don't think the U.S. military has ever done this before -- but it looks like the Air Force is planning to test-drive proposed replacements for the A-10 ground-attack aircraft in combat. Holy, as in shit:

The U.S. Air Force is sending two of the four aircraft involved in its OA-X light attack aircraft competition to the battlefield. The move, likely unprecedented, will allow the service to evaluate both airplanes in combat missions before a final purchase decision is made.
Aviation Week & Space Technology reports that the Air Force is sending the Embraer/Sierra Nevada A-29 Super Tucano and the Textron AT-6 Wolverine to a yet-to-be-determined war zone. Under a program nicknamed Combat Sent III, the Air Force will stand up an experimental squadron and send two A-29s and two AT-6s, along with seventy pilots and maintainers, to test the aircraft under combat conditions.

Both aircraft involved are propeller-driven, although both are turbo-prop, which is pretty much a jet engine that uses the exhaust to drive a turbine that turns a propeller. A higher-power jet engine would use the jet exhaust to propel the aircraft. Nonetheless, a turboprop aircraft, while slower than a jet, is faster than a traditional propeller-driven aircraft. So they have that going for them.

The goal of the OA-X program is to put an effective ground-support aircraft in the air against relatively low-tech opponents. The F-35 is expected to handle ground-support missions against opponents with sophisticated air defense systems. For other opponents, such as ISIS or other terrorist organizations, the air defense threat is very low and a turbo-prop attack aircraft such as the ones being tested should be more than sufficient.

Both of the aircraft mentioned are dumptrucks -- both can carry a butt-load of things that go bang to drop on bad guys. I think the Textron plane should win simply because it is an American company. Embraer is Brazilian, and we cannot count on a continuous supply of Embraer aircraft, should they win the contract, simply because they easily could decide they don't like us. It happens.

I hope both planes do well. I want a good replacement for the A-10. The guys on the ground deserve it.

The A-10 lives?

Donald Trump, blasted by the media and the left -- but I repeat myself -- as a moron, apparently has recognized something that the Air Force has been trying to ignore for about a decade at this point -- the A-10 is the finest ground-support aircraft in existence and needs to stay in the air until it can be replaced by something comparable:

Retirement rumors have swirled around the US military's venerable close-air support aircraft for years, but the battle-tested, 1970's-era airplane will live to fight for at least the foreseeable future, according to the Air Force.
President Donald Trump's first full budget, which was released on Tuesday, outlines plans for the Air Force to maintain its fleet of A-10 Thunderbolts -- commonly known by their nickname the "Warthog" -- along with "Dragon Lady" U-2 spy aircraft despite previous plans to replace both aging platforms in coming years.
"There is not a retirement date for the U-2 in this budget," Maj. Gen. James Martin, the Air Force's deputy assistant secretary for budget, said during a budget briefing at the Pentagon on Tuesday. "We plan to keep that platform well into the future."
The Air Force also confirmed Tuesday that it plans to maintain the majority of its A-10 Warthogs in coming years despite past considerations of divesting the entire fleet.
An Air Force official said the A-10 fleet was being kept indefinitely, but in the future, some A-10 aircraft could be retired as other aircraft become operational.

The F-35 has been touted as the replacement for the A-10, but that flies in the face of logic. The F-35 is a fast mover, and cannot carry the payload of an A-10. The A-10 can go in low and slow, drop its load and come back for more. Further, the A-10 is designed to taking a licking and keep on ticking. Search this blog for "A-10," and you will see examples. You can blow large important parts off of an A-10 and it will stay in the air.

Further, the aircraft is a fucking dump truck. The amount of weapons an A-10 can carry is frightening -- at least it is to the people upon whom the A-10 plans to drop said weapons. For the troops on the ground being supported by A-10s, that payload is salvation. Nothing on the drawing boards -- at least that anyone knows about -- can carry anything close to the destructive payload an A-10 brings to the battlefield. There are proposals that sound pretty good, but nothing anywhere close to ready to even take to the air, much less be deployed.

Thank God we have a president stupid enough to tell the Air Force brass to shut up and keep the A-10. Let's hope that Congress and the Air Force listen.







http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/24/politics/a-10-warthog-retirement-air-force-budget/index.html

Finally, the Air Force admits it has no plan to replace the A-10

As I've said previously, the Air Force has no real plan to replace the A-10. They've said so often enough.  And so, wisely, they quietly decided to keep it. At least for a while:

On paper, the Air Force plans to start mothballing the A-10 in 2018, with the last Warthogs sent to the boneyard by 2021. But last month Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James said that the retirement of the A-10 would likely have to be delayed further as the military continues to rely on the low-and-slow attack plane for close-air support (CAS) missions flown against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. Even more telling, the Air Force Material Command (AFMC) is bringing the depot line for A-10 maintenance and repair back up to full capacity, according to Aviation Week.

The Hawg isn't going anywhere.

Well, whatta ya know? The Air Force leadership wants to get rid of the nasty old Warthog so they can spend more money on far more glamorous planes, such as the F-35:

Much of the leadership within the Air Force is keen to retire the A-10 so that the resources used to maintain the fleet can be pumped into the fifth-generation F-35 program. However, the A-10 is the Air Force's only plane with the sole purpose of CAS to protect ground troops. In the current struggle against the Islamic State, a heavily armed and armored attack plane with a long loiter time—and the GAU-8 Avenger 30-millimeter gatling gun that holds 1,350 armor-piercing rounds—is significantly more useful than a stealthy, fast, software-laden fighter like the F-35.

And yet, nothing in the Air Force arsenal does what the A-10 does. Like it or not, ground support is part of the Air Force mission. They gave up on that issue in 1948 when the Air Force was able to significantly limit the Army's aviation capabilities, taking on most aviation roles for itself. Now they find themselves stuck with a role they don't really want, because it isn't glamorous, nor does it require expensive multi-role aircraft.

It seems to me that a perfectly acceptable solution would be to transfer A-10 squadrons to Marine Corps control. The Marines and their pilots have no problem with flying aircraft that come home with mud in the engine intakes -- that's the kind of missions the Marines fly. They pretty much invented close air support. I'm sure they wouldn't mind delivering CAS for their Army brethren, especially since it would demonstrate how much wiser the Marines were in 1948 when they declined to give up their air assets the way the Army did. Because this solution makes sense, don't expect to see it implemented anytime soon. Or ever.

Hard to believe he said it out loud

I've been meaning to get to this particular story for quite a while. It is getting old, but it highlights one of the major problems facing the U.S. military. Quite possibly the worst aspect of the military is its tendency to promote parochial turf-protectors and bureaucratic, ass-kissing politicians instead of warriors. Like this guy, for instance. He was only a two-star, but he is pretty much proof that you really do have to turn in your brains to even get that first star. To be fair, the Air Force is a little short on warriors, so it is a little harsh to blast this guy too much for that particular failing. Still, what a douche:

The Air Force commander who warned fellow airmen that speaking positively of the A-10s performance to members of Congress could be considered "treason" has been removed from office, the Air Force announced Friday.

Maj. Gen. James N. Post was speaking to a group of about 300 airmen at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada in January when he began to talk about the ongoing budget battle in Congress and how the Air Force would need to divest the A-10 in order to move forward on some of its other airframes.

"In the course of his remarks [Post] discussed the importance of loyalty to senior leader decisions [on the A-10] and used the word "treason" in describing his thoughts on communication by airmen counter to those decisions," the Air Force said in a statement released Friday.

"Treason" for supporting the A-10? And this guy was a high official at Air Combat Command? Really? The A-10 is one of the most useful aircraft the Air Force operates. The Air Force hates it because it is a mud-mover -- the plane's sole purpose is to blow shit up in support of ground troops. Not strategic targets, which the Air Force loves, but tactical, moving targets -- primarily, enemy tanks. This, of course, is beneath the Air Force. At least in the eyes of the Air Force. The guys on the ground who watch the A-10 chew enemy tanks, troops and vehicles to shit have a different opinion of the A-10. They love it. The rules that govern service roles, however, prevent the Army from simply buying A-10s itself -- they have to rely on attack helicopters, which have a survivability problem in a close air support role that the A-10 doesn't have.

The Air Force claims that the F-35 will perform the role of the A-10, but everyone knows they are full of shit. The F-35 can't fly low and slow over the battlefield the way the A-10 can and survive. They are different aircraft. Also, the A-10 is essentially an airframe built around a massive 30-mm cannon. That is it's primary tank-killing weapon, and the airplane's reason for existence. The sucker is huge:

Put that in the nose of an aircraft:

Fire it:

And this is what happens:

Also this:

The F-35 can't do that. No other aircraft can in the active battle space. Attack helicopters  hit tanks before they get to the battlefield. When they try to operate over the battlefield, they get shot down. The A-10 doesn't. It comes home looking like this:

That is what is designed to do. Take a licking and keep on ticking. The F-35? Not so much. The F-35 is a good plane (upcoming post on that) but it is not the A-10 and no one should pretend it is. The Air Force upper echelon's determination to get rid of the A-10 has nothing to do with battlefield needs and everything to do with service politics. The traditional Air Force rivalries are between the ballistic missile guys -- who are now largely irrelevant -- the bomber guys (pretty close to the same as the missile guys) and the fighter guys, who are in the ascendancy and are pushing, God knows why, a one-size-fits-all solution in the F-35. Again, that is not a bad plane, but one size does not fit all. And the A-10 isn't in any of those groups, so no one is really championing its continued existence except for A-10 pilots and the ground troops they support. The Air Force isn't listening to either one of them. They should. General Douche losing his job is a step in the right direction.

Is common sense finally coming to defense procurement?

It would appear that the Navy, at least, is realizing that not everything that glitters is gold. Having cut off production of the F-22, a magnificent air-superiority fighter that should still be in production, the military stubbornly continues production and deployment of the F-35. The F-35 is intended to serve all three airborne services -- the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps -- even though the services have very different needs. The F-35 is a stealth fighter,  like the F-22, and thus is the flavor of the month. It is ill-suited to ground attack operations because of payload restrictions, not as good at air superiority as the F-22, and a fuck-all disaster as a carrier fighter -- the Navy simply does not want, nor should they, a carrier fighter with one engine. If you operate over water most of the time, sorry, but you want a second engine. As for the Marines, they want a mud-mover -- an airplane that can dump-truck a lot of explosives on bad guys right next to Marine positions, then land on a short, crappy runway or, preferably, vertical landing with no runway, like the Harrier. The F-35 has a variant that can land that way, but apparently the vertical take-off exhaust burns holes in the decks of the Marines' amphibious landing ships that bring the F-35 to the combat theater. Bad news.

Now, the Navy is making noises that indicate it might be coming to its senses:

The U.S. Navy’s next generation air superiority fighter will not be “super-duper fast” or employ much in the way of stealth, a senior navy official announced on Wednesday.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Navy’s top officer, divulged some details about the Navy’s so-called Next Generation Air Dominance F/A-XX fighter jet during a speech at an industry conference.
“I don’t see that it’s going to be super-duper fast, because you can’t outrun missiles.” Greenert said, the Washington Examiner reported. “And you can’t become so stealthy that you become invisible — you are going to generate a signature of some sort,” he also noted, adding “You know that stealth may be overrated…. If something moves fast through the air and disrupts molecules in the air and puts out heat – I don’t care how cool the engine can be – it’s going to be detectable.”

I think it probably is too late to ditch the F-35, simply because of the money spent on it. We are on the verge of having squadrons deployed. It probably will work for the Air Force, but it won't work for the Navy or Marines. Further, it is more expensive than the F-22, which is a better plane for the Air Force. But at least the Navy is recognizing that the newest, brightest and shiniest might not be the best. Frankly, the best ground-attack aircraft around remains the A-10, a plane the Air Force calls the Thunderbolt but everyone else calls the Warthog. It is slow and ugly,  but it takes a licking and keeps flying, plus it can deliver a tremendous amount of ordinance on people who need killing. And the Air Force wants to kill it because the Air Force does not want to fly mud movers. Close air support is beneath them.

Well, if the Air Force doesn't want to do that shit, then the Navy and Marines need to get a grip on reality. This sounds like a good first step. Would it look something like this?