PPGMD: are you a grunt or a zoomie?
PPGMD: are you a grunt or a zoomie?
Recovering Gun Store Commando. My Blog: The Clue Meter
“It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat.”
Glenn Reynolds
There is one thing to consider that none of us want to consider...cost - Not in lives, but in dollars.
The A10 platform is an effective close-air-support platform, it exists, it is robust, and it is inexpensive to operate overall. The C130s are much the same. Even retrofitting the A10 with advanced targeting systems and avionics is cheaper than building a single F35. Is the F35 a superior aircraft in many respects? Absolutely. F35Bs are $104 million - each. The A10s are about $20 million a piece (originally, adjust for inflation and they are still ~35 million each).
A world where F35s supplant less expensive close-air-support platforms is a way off - regardless of what is going on. And in-fact, being a statistics guy - I wouldn't support the monetary expenditure to replace a working platform with something that is only a few percentage points superior in the vast majority of instances. It's simply not cost-effective. And given the trillions in debt we have now, continued expenditures in the billions of dollars range to DoD is unsustainable in the long-term. Which means something has to go.
-Rob
My main issue with the F-35 is that it's basically repeating many of the same mistakes as the F-111 program by trying to fit too many roles into one basic airframe from the start. As a strike bomber, the F-111 was very good... but when they tried to make it into a fighter/interceptor for the Navy it wasn't up to snuff (and then the Navy used the F-111B's engines in the first runs of the F-14 which left it underpowered and plagued with compressor stalls which often threw the Tomcat into vicious spins much like the one that killed Goose in Top Gun). Meanwhile planes like the F-4, F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 wound up starting as dedicated air-to-air fighters, but their performance was such that they could take on additional roles like CAS, interdiction, etc. You'd figure Lockheed Martin (who bought out General Dynamics, the group that created the F-111) would have learned not to try to do too much with one airframe.
Originally Posted by 1911guy
That's part of the problem. None of the corporations that do combat aircraft support and maintenance like the Warthog because the things are so robust, and it has like the lowest maintenance cycle seen since the days of fabric fuselages. The contractors can't make enough money on the things.
On those days when my tinfoil hat is slipping, I suspect that aviation contractors have more to do than Air Force territoriality with the fact that the Army is still prohibited from deploying fixed wing combat aircraft: The maintenance cycle (and therefore government contract$) on rotary wing aircraft is insane.
Recovering Gun Store Commando. My Blog: The Clue Meter
“It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat.”
Glenn Reynolds
There was one multi-role aircraft that did get used by all the branches.
It was the F-4 Phantom II. Because it was that boss of an aircraft, period.
Fast enough to work air to air. Tough enough to withstand close range AA fire. Long enough range to be a strike aircraft.
If the goal is to make a truly multi service aircraft you can't do it by committee.
The Minority Marksman.
"When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet."
-a Ch'an Buddhist axiom.
The point went well over your head. The F-35 wouldn't put itself in a situation where it would take ground fire.
CAS has evolved, it isn't all low level runs with guns, rockets, cluster bombs, and retarded bombs anymore. A vast majority of CAS being delivered is by AGMs. They are more accurate and have a lower danger zone for the troops on the ground. And using modern optics, and the communications network they can very easily figure out where to put the missile instead of being walked in by a JTAC.
First one thing that is often forgotten is that the F-16s, F-18s, and AV-8Bs are worn out the F-117s are retired and were nearing the end of their service lives also. The F-35 isn't just meant to replace the A-10 it is meant to replace the F-16, the F-117, The AV-8B, and the early model F-18s. This will also relieve missions from the B-2 as currently it is our only stealth strike platform. In fact of all the aircraft that the F-35 is meant to replace the A-10 that isn't completely worn out, due to the recently wing replacement program.
If we want to talk about cost then lets talk about sortie rates. The F-35 doesn't require a dedicated CAP flight, it has the ability to self escort. That is four less aircraft required, which means a lower amount of tanker sorties, and less fuel. If the F-35 has to do air to air combat it doesn't have to drop it's internal ordnance. Which means it doesn't necessary have to abandon it's primary mission if it gets into ACM. Which means they don't have to dispatch additional sorties to take over the mission.
If we encounter another enemy with a sophisticated air defense network, the F-35 is much more suited to penetrate the network early on. While the A-10 would be blotted out of the sky (the larger SAMs shoot down the A-10 almost as easily as any other aircraft), the F-35 stealth allows it to go much closer to SAM without being detected, and even if detected the engagement ranges on stealth aircraft are much lower. And even during the later stages after the network is dismantled there will still be stand alone SAMs which means the A-10 would be much more likely to need Wild Weasel or ECM, which are additional sorties and more fuel.
On top of that the F-35 when carrying internal stores has almost its entire performance range available to it, including super cruise. The only other aircraft that can claim that is the F-22. All those super high end stats published for other aircraft are based on limited stores and they rarely achieve that when carrying a real combat load.
So if you want to get into costs, there are a whole lot of things to figure into the costs. And that is just comparing the F-35A to the A-10. You get into the F-35B vs AV-8B and it gets even more expensive.
The F-35 isn't the F-111. All there variants are heavily oriented toward the strike mission, being a fighter is a secondary mission. In fact if I were the DOD I would've named it the A-35 to make that more clear. The F-35 was conceived and selected after the F-22, with the idea that the F-22 would handle a vast majority of the fighter missions, and the F-35 would handle the strike missions with only a limited amount of overlap between the two.
And the fifth generation fighter isn't the same as the fourth generation fighter, due to the necessity of keeping weapons internally during stealth missions the aircraft really needs to be built to the mission.
As far as the variants, yes the F-35B did create some delays but it had no performance impact on the F-35A and F-35C.
"The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet." - Wernher Von Braun
http://www.teampegleg.com
Now I should mention I don't have anything against the A-10. In a perfect world where the USAF was given all the money it needed, it should be retained. There is a certain subset of missions that favors it, but those missions aren't common enough that in an era of shrinking budgets that it is super important. The same reason that the USAF doesn't have any ECM aircraft.
My biggest problem is the belief that the A-10 is the only aircraft that can do CAS. Modern times say over wise, because currently a vast majority of the CAS delivered in Afghanistan is with other platforms. Technology and ROEs have moved on, and perhaps it is time that the aircraft do too.
"The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet." - Wernher Von Braun
http://www.teampegleg.com
PPGMD:
I am no aircraft expert, but I have some knowledge from a ground pounder's perspective. The reason that the Army/Marines love the A-10 comes from its ability to fly low and slow over hostile terrain. That 30mm gun might be outmoded for some CAS uses--for example it might no longer be the best for tanks. But infantry in the open? Or a convoy of technicals? While the F 35 is dropping one bomb at a time on them, the A-10 will be in there carving them up.
My experience is a bit dated, but I've talked to a lot of grunts from Afghanistan and while they liked all air power, they uniformly love the A-10 and the Apache because they can hang around, hit the target and put a huge amount of firepower on it. (Unfortunately most don't have much experience with the AC-130 because they weren't allowed to go out at night and play--which is a very strange way of fighting an insurgency but that's another topic). In other words, not only is it effective, but it is morale boosting (and morale busting for the bad guys). That is a very important consideration.
Last edited by Jeep; 02-23-2016 at 03:52 PM.
One assumption too many people make is the staying power. The F-35 carries a LOT of fuel. Internally it has almost twice the combat range as a F-16 with drop tanks, add in drop tanks it will have almost the same range as an A-10.
The F-35 doesn't just drop one bomb at a time. Only with laser guided weapons do they really have to spend wait for the weapon to hit before they drop another bomb.
"The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet." - Wernher Von Braun
http://www.teampegleg.com
FIFY
Last edited by Hambo; 02-23-2016 at 05:20 PM.
"Gunfighting is a thinking man's game. So we might want to bring thinking back into it."-MDFA
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