>Gun can't penetrate any main battle tank built after 1990
>Gun can't even penetrate the new generation of IFVs
BRRTTBROS THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING
>Gun can't penetrate any main battle tank built after 1990
>Gun can't penetrate any main battle tank built after 1990
>Gun can't even penetrate the new generation of IFVs
BRRTTBROS THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING
Reddit: the plane
also every plane with a rotary cannon has BRRRRRRRRRT you retard
even reddit has mostly moved on from this piece of shit
not congress though, apparently
>even reddit has mostly moved on from this piece of shit
>not congress though, apparently
I say give them to Ukraine and let the chips fall where they may
Ukraine has said multiple times they don't want them, which really just shows how obsolete they are.
So their pilots would rather fly nothing? Are they even flying air-to-ground sorties in their old MiG-29s or Su-25s anymore?
They're doing the similar thing as Russian pilots, lobbing standoff munitions from friendly airspace then hitting the deck to avoid catching a SAM on the backswing. As to why they don't want them, it's because pilots are not a quickly renewable resource and the casualty rate wouldn't be worth it if they do anything that they can't do with their existent planes except be easier to use existing NATO weapons off the rails, which isn't worth the time and effort that would have to be invested to train and maintain a completely new maintenance pipeline.
You still find brrrrrtfags everywhere. Particularly Americans who aren't up to speed and are still stuck in gulf war realities.
But 30mm will still rape most russoid vehicles through top armour and all soft armoured targets like the Kyiv convoys so I could theoretically see it being useful on targets that are logistically strained with abysmal aircover.
You wouldn't do that to Buhanka, you monster.
Rus-Ukr war has shown that if manpads are everywhere, CAS and slow-moving airborne vehicles are dead
>SU-25s still flying in Ukraine for both sides
>not congress though, apparently
No, congress is on board now too. Davis Monthan in Arizona is getting a new "AFSOC Power Projection Wing," thus shutting up the Arizona reps/senators and paving the way for the Warthog's retirement.
Combing PrepHole threads about air warfare is always good for a laugh. The A-10 was great while it lasted, it's hilarious when some dipshit who doesn't know what they are talking about calls it a piece of shit. What's that? You're telling me a combat aircraft designed in the 70s to provide CAS in a very specific scenario isn't survivable in 21st century near-peer conflicts? No shit, neither is any other 4th gen aircraft. Read some of the DFC citations from hawg drivers in the early invasion years, gun runs in weather below instrument landing minimums, shit an F-16 or F-35 could never do. Yes, it's time for it to go (has been for awhile), but the hateboner comes from wannabe airplane nerds using contrarianism as a replacement for actual knowledge.
>You're telling me a combat aircraft designed in the 70s to provide CAS in a very specific scenario isn't survivable in 21st century near-peer conflicts? No shit, neither is any other 4th gen aircraft.
Go look at the sortie loss rate for the A-10 and F-15, both produced within a year of each other, during the Gulf War and then remember that the A-10 was getting milk runs because the losses were unacceptably high to be used against anyone with a functional ADN. The A-10 was outdated the moment PGMs became even slightly commonplace and arguably even before that. The slightly lower cost of the A-10 to the F-15 wasn't worth the decisions made that so heavily impacted it's survivability, and the only argument that can be made for the A-10 was that them being cheaper meant that the USAF could deliver more bombs during the first few hours of a Fulda rush style conflict before attrition caught up to them and the F-15 not getting blasted out of the sky meant they could actually deliver more poundage.
>The A-10 was great while it lasted
kek no it wasnt
it was fucking outdated by the time it came into service and Vietnam Era CAS planes unironically outperformed it
>reddit: the plane.
Wrong. They are Facebook: the plane.
Reddit is ok, at least not everyone is rude there
Categorically false. Not only are they indeed rude, they are fucking idiots that with extreme frequency unintentionally disseminate misinformation and fuddlore because they are too stupid and confident in their stupidity to do basic research and they opine on subjects that they are not knowledgeable of. That is infinitely worse than a rude gay who is right, or a rude gay who can be called out for being wrong.
gay.
good thing it only needs to destroy chinese and soviet shit boxes
>Gun can't penetrate any main battle tank built after 1990
good thing the second largest military in the world only has shit built in the 40s
T-72 was made before 1990 wasn't it?
>T-72
Produced 1968–present
This, hilarious how after years of anti-BRRRRT seething we get the Ukraine war which demonstrates it's still actually relevant.
how exactly
there are no warthogs in ukraine, plus the heavy saturation of AA in the area would rape the low-altitude slow-cruising a10
If fucking overrated Turkish UAVs could bomb Russians sitting around in their immobile convoys instead of setting up those air defenses I'm sure the A-10s could have done a good amount of damage if flown smartly.
Do you know why they are -U-AVs? Because flying any non-U-AV would get the pilot killed and the expensive plane destroyed.
They shouldn't have managed to do any damage with them at all if the Russians were competent in this war but they haven't been. The A-10 is more survivable than that so the Ukrainians could make some use of them. It wouldn't be a war-winning weapon for them or anything but it's something.
This, the truth is Russia is in serious population decline and likely continued the Soviet tradition of census forgery like China does to not show how weak they truly are. Ukraine like all non Russian alligned post sov blocs has been honest of their demography and shown their massive drop of population, but Russia is claiming no one is having kids but there pop is still growing from their “immigration” despite all stats from central asia showing other wise. Russia in reality is much older than it claims and has far less young people than they’d care to admit
Russia loves the A-10 so much they started fielding the T-54 ver. 2023 just to keep it relevent.
Not really related but man I miss Interdictor aircraft.
The American swing wings were pure kino and I am going to cry when the last BOne flies off to a museums or the BOneyard.
Why does PrepHole hate proven affordable workhorses? I don’t get it. Safe to assume just some seething thirdy, Serb, brown, etc?
It's because a heap of youtubers have made videos about how shit the A-10 is. Honestly it's dead in any peer war but the reality is the US doesn't fight peers so it's still a viable bomb truck but you need to make sure it always has a TGP to keep the bongs safe.
It's not YouTubers, it's the USAF that wants to get rid of them. There are better planes that fill its role and are cheaper to maintain.
I love the Super Tucano and think they should replace the A-10 but that isn't the case I have seen the USAF make. They keep talking about the F-35 filling the role which it can't due to low by-pass engines having fuck all loiter compaired to high by-pass and turbo-props.
The question is what is the value of fielding a plane that even Russians would shoot down. F-35 has its downsides, but having more of them in the air would improve recon capabilities and if push comes to shove with China it would actually be something that we need.
>the question is what is the value of fielding a plane that even Russians would shoot down
I think the question is when do we expect to fight Russia, or China, or any other nuclear power?
Major US wars since the nook are Korea, Vietnam, Gulf and GWOT, only the Gulf posed any threat to the A-10.
Also if you main concern is vunerability then the Tucano and any other turbo-prop stops being an option and "cheaper than the A-10" also stops being an option.
You can't say "other planes are cheaper" and then point out an A-10 weakness that is even worse on the cheaper options.
The question is, if we are expected to maintain a force composition that is a credible deterrent against Russia or China, what is the value of continuing to fund an obsolete platform well beyond it's useful maintainable lifetime as opposed to bringing online new aircraft with similar or superior capability and cost efficiency while filling the gap with higher end aircraft we already need for Russia or China?
Why are you so obsessed with Russia and China?
The most realistic future conflicts for the US will be low-medium intensity stuff against Africans, Sandpeople and Iranians. A-10s have become expensive but they have a specialist job they do better than spamming F-35s at every problem and the US is going to need a whole lot of cheap solutions to play world police while facing off against China in the Pacific.
Arguably the US needs the top-shelf gear for one-two theatres and then to give the coast and national guard enough old kit to slap around the third world. And then when the top-tier stuff goes Skynet on us we'll have the low-tech solutions to throw rocks at the problem.
>The most realistic future conflicts for the US will be low-medium intensity stuff against Africans, Sandpeople and Iranians.
Because these conflicts don't pose any meaningful threat to the United States and its allies. We could fly nothing but Raptors with ejection seats manufactured by Lous Vuitton against them and it would have no real impact on the conflict outside of cost. Russia is weak, but it is still a somewhat modern force. China is a fucking juggernaut in terms of size alone and are developing economically. If they decide to invade Taiwan, it will be a fucking catastrophe for everyone on a scale so far beyond that any African nation can do that we may as well not even bother with the latter.
Besides, if we are talking about just loitering around, it's very questionable whether A-10 is not surpassed by just having a bunch of drones circle around the area and fire tomahawks. No pilot, less mass, slower.
>and fire tomahawks.
Sorry, that's obviously hellfire.
Who gives a fuck about loiter when you’ve got USAF tier strategic refueling?
And in a hot shooting war, loiter time becomes irrelevant because there will always be targets to shoot at, and on top of that you’re probably sending strikes at specific targets.
Super Taco got cucked by some gay senators.
AT-802 won the new contract. Not as sexy but it's still cool.
Really we should have just upgraded some OV-10's so they could self deploy with 2 pilots and a mechanic.
the a10 is cheaper than ever other combat jet the airforce has though
the upgrade package for the a10 to bring it up to scratch is more expensive than a brand new f35
got a source for that?
My dad works at the army trust me
the largest i can find is 1b for new wings and no cost info on a planned computer and flight control upgrade
also the jet they plan on replacing the a10 with cost at least twice as much to fly
They already did the A-10C upgrade what more computers does it need? Why a flight control update?
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37233/the-a-10-warthog-is-preparing-for-its-biggest-upgrade-in-over-a-decade
>doesn't fight peers
Just fucks them and tosses them towels (sorry bout your pipeline friend)
Fuck those retarded E-celebs like LazerPig. That guy has already list all credability after he went full sperg over that T-14 drama
yeah his videos were neat and had some insight at first but after the fifth drama video it became clear who he really was and I finally unsubscribed like I should have a long time ago
What can it do that a drone couldn't do better?
If you mean a full-service UCAV, that's all billions and billions of dollars away. Even if NGAD is optionally manned, it's not seeing action in CAS.
Everything it can do, a bayraktar can do cheaper
>Affordable workhorse
Pic related can take off from unpaved runways and the Army bought a pack of 75 for 170M. A single A-10 comes in at 40M and requires maintenance and paved runways like any jet.
>B-but the wiki says the Army paid 3 BILLION
That’s the IDIQ ceiling, retard. Army can buy any number of these little cropdusters as long as they don’t spend more than 3 billion.
I love these things, I want to see them everywhere. Bring back Warbirds.
Inshallah brother.
Why would you bring a cropduster back, unless you're preparing for a Kessler syndrome cascade where all electronics are knocked out by the resulting EMP?
Because it can do anything the A-10 can at a fraction of the cost and maintenance?
>B-but muh 30mm BRRRRRT
Most kills by A-10s are scored with guided munitions, gay.
>B-but even a shitty MiG-21 will kill that cropduster!
A ghetto ass fishbed will kill any A-10, anon. A-10 is a niche meme plane that is only fielded by the people who can afford to have niche, meme planes.
>Verification not required
I know it's hours later but anon, have you considered that A-10s cannot operate when the enemy has SHORAD worth a damn? These cropdusters can do the same missions as the A-10s would in the sandbox and are cheaper to operate. In peer warfare you'd be calling on F-15Es and F-35s for air support since they actually have a chance to survive against a peer's AD.
>Why does PrepHole hate proven affordable workhorses?
Fact 1: an A-10 gun run costs more than a JDAM drop.
Fact 2: During Desert Storm, A-10s were pulled off the line because they had too high of a casualty rate. They were replaced by F-15s.
The A-10 is NOT a "proven affordable workhorse". It's an expensive vanity aircraft.
you can only use a jdam on one target the a10 can also carry them
desert storm was 30+ years ago
>you can only use a jdam on one target the a10 can also carry them
The A-10 can carry a shit-ton of JDAMs. So can the F-15. Which begs the question: why would you use a slow, vulnerable aircraft to do the same job which a fast, impervious aircraft can perform?
>desert storm was 30+ years ago
you are stupid if you think that helps your argument
>ignores all of the upgrades the a10 has received
>why would you use a slow, vulnerable aircraft to do the same job which a fast, impervious aircraft can perform
i suppose we should replace all attack helicopters with f15s too then
The F-15 can do everything the A-10 does better, cheaper, and safer. It can't do most of the things helicopters do.
No, it fucking can't you retard.
ok, like what?
but attack helicopters are terrible in contested airspace and cant carry as many missiles or ammunition as the f15 or a10
>ignores all of the upgrades the a10 has received
yes, unless those upgrades include mach+ speeds during attack and stealth characteristics (superseded by F-15 during Desert Storm; F-35 today)
>i suppose we should replace all attack helicopters with f15s too then
No, we should replace sluggish loitering attack aircraft with Apaches, since they can at least defend by using terrain masking.
The A-10 is a completely obsolete aircraft. There is literally nothing it can do which another airframe can't do much, much better.
>The A-10 is a completely obsolete aircraft.
Which is precisely why USAF wants to get rid of it and is being stopped by a bunch of congress people who need to protect the jobs associated with the A-10. It's literally some kind of domestic protectionism.
No they were replaced by the arrdvarks.
And they had a stupid amount of kills.
>F-111s participated in the Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) in 1991. During Desert Storm, F-111Fs completed 3.2 successful strike missions for every unsuccessful one, better than any other U.S. strike aircraft used in the operation.[98] The group of 66 F-111Fs dropped almost 80% of the war's laser-guided bombs, including the penetrating bunker-buster GBU-28.[99] Eighteen F-111Es were also deployed during the operation.[98][100] The F-111s were credited with destroying more than 1,500 Iraqi tanks and armored vehicles.[100] Their use in the anti-armor role was dubbed "tank plinking".[101]
Le gay pig made a video where he outlines all of the issues the A-10 faces on a modern battlefield, and on the tail end of these facts and well reasoned arguments calls into question whether or not the A-10 was ever actually effective because the coalition over reported its kills in Iraq, because that's apparently some grand conspiracy to wank the plane and not at all because EVERY military over reports kills for almost every weapon. Retards see these edutainment videos and then parrot the melodramatic, abrasive tone within because people can't be wrong, they have to be destroyed for it, and things can't have flaws, you have to utterly shit on them right or wrong because nuance is too difficult.
He also started a drama about the Armata's engine with an ACTUAL tank Youtuber who was probably right because he's a moron.
the A-10 was pulled off the line during Desert Storm because it was too vulnerable to enemy fire. It was replaced by F-15s. This is a fact.
Yes, and?
and it's therefore shit regardless of youtuber drama
You're retarded, congratulations
No Its not you moron, Its the best CAS craft of the entire USAF. You can sperg all you want, but Its going to stay.
>best CAS craft of the entire USAF
Which is why USAF has been begging Congress to allow them to replace it with just about anything else for DECADES now.
yeah theres no other reasons the usaf doesnt want them anymore
https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2022/04/air-force-leaders-defy-congresss-a-10-mandates
Reads like absolute bullshit. Yeah, it's the USAF that are retards who like fast planes--which is why they discontinued production much faster F-22 in favor of more versatile F-35--who don't give a shit about other branches of the military, but Congress are really there to look out for you and aren't just voting to keep the A-10 in their air because their constituents jobs depend on it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-10-warthog-why-is-america-still-flying-cold-war-relic-f34f607f
>muh jobs
this applies to literally everything ever
>this applies to literally everything ever
It does, and it will keep applying as long as people keep voting for keeping obsolete industries where they live. Contrary to popular belief, Trump is popular in West Virginia not because everyone there hates gay Mexicans, but because he promised to keep the local coal industry alive.
USAF does not give a shit about jobs. They just want to buy planes that aren't 40-fucking-years old.
>a jet with years of service and doctrine built up for it
vs
>a brand new aircraft with no combat experience and a vague idea about usage
hmm i wonder which will be more successful in the short term
>A-10 introduction date: October 1977
>F-15 introduction date: January 1976
one year's difference 15 years down the line doesn't make one a brand new unproven design and the other an old workhorse
the gulf war was the a10s first combat deployment
Gulf war was also the first American combat deployment of the F-15 and the first combat deployment of the F-15E. In fact, the F-15E was a much newer airplane with even less doctrine built around it than the A-10, being in service for only 3 years at the time.
>first american
thats quite the qualifier you have there
I must have missed the IAF F-15s flying over Baghdad, much like how you entirely missed the part how I talked about the mudhen.
man that was a poorly structured sentence, oh well fuggit
>hmm i wonder which will be more successful in the short term
the one that can actually defend Soviet SAMs. The F-15.
>can't penetrate current IFV's
No.
>nooooo we need high flying expensive CAS
Then you get Veitnam 2: Electric Boogaloo.
>>Gun can't penetrate any main battle tank built after 1990
>>Gun can't even penetrate the new generation of IFVs
You wot m8? It's by definition a top- and rear-attack weapon.
What new generation IFV does the plane need to fight?
Seriously.
American hegemony has made peace sustainable, Patel. It’s our world, you just live in it.
>subsonic
>lower payload than an F-16
>most confirmed friendly kills of any modern US aircraft
>subsonic
So is every attack aircraft, no aircraft does CAS going super.
>F16 carries a 30mm
Nani?
>most Blue on Blue
Also the aircraft with the most sorties and confirmed kills. And has the cheapest per hour time. The A10 is so effective that it's mere presence often breaks enemy morale, which is the pinnacle of effectiveness.
> Also the aircraft with the most sorties and confirmed kills
But the F-111 isn’t known for friendly fire…?
This is a pretty much irrelevant statement. Danger-close gun runs have been the A10's bread and butter for the past 20+ years supporting ground forces in the middle east. Obviously when you do this multiple times a day for literal decades there is going to be a higher number of friendly fire incidents, but that has nothing to do with aircraft capabilities.
>every attack aircraft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attack_aircraft
>17,000 > 16,000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon#Specifications_(F-16C_Block_50_and_52)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II#Specifications_(A-10C)
Payload doesn't mean gun, genius.
It flies fast, has the menauverability to fly low, carries a ton of armament and fuel, has good survivability against small arms fire and has a ton of ammo on board. In the right situation it still has uses, like deep strikes on soft targets and supply chain disruption. If you look at what Russia is fielding too it would do fine, especially considering they've replaced most of their IFVs with trucks.
People think about these being flown individually, but they'd realistically be part of an element with anti air and SEAD aircraft providing cover while they did the dirty work. They're faster and carry weapons than a helicopter while fulfilling the same role. Faster means you can deploy weapons at the edge of contact and scoot quicker too, instead of the pop-up/pop-down game helos have to play. The Russians are using their SU-25s to slow Ukrainians, so saying these planes have no place on the battlefield is sort of moot on that point alone.
Pretending that this plane is or is supposed to be some sort of invincible super tank killer plane instead of a mass-fielded weapon with expected casualties is fantastical thinking on both sides.
The main problem is that the A-10 has been out of production for decades and it's getting more and more expensive to keep the remaining fleet airworthy as the USAF has to keep cannibalizing parts from older A-10s to keep the others operational.
This is the only real response in this thread. The flight hour costs of the A10 are slated to keep climbing. Still cheap to fly, but it's close to an F16 in costs while being not nearly as useful as an F16
that problem is worse than its abysmal friendly fire record? I thought that was the worst aspect of the craft
>Killed Brits
>This is bad
Unironically a good thing. They got to die rather than live to see what a shithole Britain has become
Hell it spared them going home to their wives and having dinner. Murdering brits should be seen as a merciful act when you look at how they live
English cuisine and women made the men of Britain into the best sailors in the world.
This is what happens when your aircraft is required to conduct danger-close gun runs every day for 20+years. Maybe if $1b worth of "highly trained" zogbot infantry didn't routinely get pinned down by the goat herders with clapped out AKs across the street, they wouldn't have to worry about eating 30mmAPI spall from the airstrike they called on themselves.
Maybe don't have braindead pilots use binoculars in the fucking cockpit problem solved.
The problem has nothing to do with target identification. Is the A10 using 40+ year old technology? Yes, and that is an arguemnt, but It's a bullet designed to blow up a car landing less than 90 feet away from you, and you're surprised there's fratricide.
> The problem has nothing to do with target identification
Yes, it does. Pretty much every A-10 blue-on-blue incident was due to mistaken identity because the pilot had to use the Mk.1 Eyeball to ID targets because “We don’t need no fancy electronics. Muh low and slow muh BRRRTTTTT”
good point
Most useful posts so far.
Much as I think it's a neat plane,it's a tired airframe, and really needs to be retired.
That nothing has been properly designated to replace it is typical Air Force and DOD fuckery.
The 30mm and maverick have been replaced with SDB2, JAGM, and APKWS. What platform those come from is not particularly important, as long as it's available and timely.
>flies fast
Lol, lmao even.
>deep strikes on soft targets and supply chain disruption
Against goat farmers, sure. And that's about it.
The fact of the matter is that aside from the boomer memes, the A-10 was a mistake. The gun was ineffective against contemporary MBT's when it was first introduced and hasn't gotten more effective over time. ATGMs are the only reliable way for aircraft to knock out armor, which is something that any number of more capable aircraft can carry at higher speeds, for longer distances, and with the ability to defend themselves from enemy aircraft at the same time - which was exactly what we saw in GW1. After figuring out that the A-10 just wasn't a great plane, the USAF tried to find another job for it and it wound up as CAS, which is the dumping ground for attack aircraft that are no longer effective as attack aircraft. Even for this role, there were better options, but they were there so they got used. And just to be clear, the A-10 is not great at CAS. Fucking picrel did the job better. It does CAS not because it's good for the job, but because it literally can't be used for anything else.
I get a chuckle whenever someone suggests that we send these to Ukraine. I'm not against the idea. They're not doing us any good and the USAF (rightly) doesn't want them in inventory any more. The problem with this is that it wouldn't be doing Ukraine any favors. 20 A-10's in Ukrainian service would lively have the net effect of depriving the Russians of the 20 SAMs it would take to knock them down, and that would be that.
>ATGMs are the only reliable way to knock out armor
A NUCLEAR ERA
BUT I HAVE NO FEAR
Caring about that stupid cannon is stupid. Most kills were by missile even in Desert Storm but dumbfucks who should be beaten to a weeping pulp for existing worship brrt.
A-10 doesn't matter any more outside gaymer kid gays fagging faggishly.
>tank kills
>less than 1% of CAS missions
DERP
>>Gun can't penetrate any main battle tank built after 1990
So if we gave them to the ukies most of the current Russian armor would be BTFO...
>nooo you can't just like a big gun with wings, stop having fun!
brrrttt
redditor detected
>no you can't like things that's not what I saw on the screencaps! PrepHole doesn't like guns!
Get raped by a pack of wild morons you subhuman.
HEHEHEHEH XDDDDD QUALITY POST MY FRIEND BRRRRRRT XDDDDDD
kys
It can carry anti-tank missiles though... It doesn't even need to use the gun to dunk
Are you suggesting we need a plane with a bigger gun?
>>Gun can't penetrate any main battle tank built after 1990
>>Gun can't even penetrate the new generation of IFVs
>BRRTTBROS THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING
The only people who have these IFVs are also the allies of the people who have the plane though
>The only people who have these IFVs are also the allies of the people who have the plane though
You see the Russian army? That's what happens when you get complacent and pretend good enough is good enough.
Problem is that a-10s tend to not give a fuck if a target is friendly or not
If that's the case we then wouldn't it be a good thing that they can't pen ally IFVs?
Nice self-defeating argument.
well*
Nobody actually knows what can and can't penetrate a 'modern' Russian MBT these days.
There was a video from earlier in the war where a Karl Gustav round went straight through the upper glacis of a T-90, which should be impossible if the tank actually was armored like it should be with steel of the proper spec and working ERA.
>Nobody actually knows what can and can't penetrate a 'modern' Russian MBT these days.
that’s because there aren’t any left
The gun was never mainly designed for tanks. It was supposed to plink softer targets of opportunity after the A-10 handler dumped its Mavericks or Hellfires or whatever at armor.
Cheap, can truck dumb bombs, cannon used in Iraq for fire support against targets in hard cover (buildings). You need complete air superiority but that's true of any ground attack aircraft. But drones can do these missions better now.
it can penetrate T-90 just like every other T-72 copy, what most important it can penetrate ziggers ass, good enough for me.
You don't need to penetrate a tank to render it combat ineffective. A burst of 30mm will strip ERA, destroy optics, tracks, and roadwheels, and it probably doesn't sound pleasant to get fucking strafed inside a tank.
What benefit do CAS plans bring that guided missiles don’t fill?
You can just amass a HIMARS battery for all your infantry needs, heck you could have an NCO on the frontline pointing at a tablet computer for a GPS strike without a vulnerable flying platform.
>be grunt platoon
>get forced to take some shithole
>advancing over open ground towards a 2km long wall of buildings
Do you want CAS overhead that can spot and engage or be talked on form the ground or do you want to be fully dependant on calling in arty and hoping the ROE says you can HIMARS the city instead of SDBing a single house?
Just use small low signature drones for real time air surveillance
you can even swarm them
i dont know if youve ever been in a plane but you wont be spotting shit sherlock
Itt you're dealing with chronic mastrubators who think the latest battlefield vibeo games are real life. They don't understand anything you just said.
Go find the minimum safe distance for HIMARS, or a 105 shell, or even a 500lb JDAM. Not the danger-close range, but the actual MSD for the warhead detonation. Now consider that you can call a for a gun run within 30m of your location. Is it risky? you bet, but if you call for a artillery 30m from you, you will absolutely die.
Considering the CEP for the gun is wider than the lethal radius of a jdam mk 82, im dead either way.
You should the rear of the tank from above somewhat and that penetrates. If you think the rear turret armor is going to keep out 30mm DU core AP ammo then enjoy dying horribly. If your target is a BMP you can shred it at any angle.
Bigger problem is short range air defenses but the Russians have been so incompetent with theirs in this war I imagine Ukrainian pilots in A-10s would manage to do some good work though they'd definitely take losses.
Russia isn’t even operating any tank made after the 90s so what does it matter?
so if A-10 is no longer fit for purpose, what is the gold standard for CAS now?
Missiles and drones
>no expensive pilot
>easy to use
>non expensive
Just need initial development and a stable GPS connection
also unironically attack helicopters
CAS seems to only be good for extended and long duration attacks in the enemy rear but for support strikes there’s better solutions nowadays
Super Tucano.
AC-130 or Skywarden now.
BRRRTT's always been overrated, picrel is the only reason these were worth a damn.
By trying to sidestep the gun you’ve admitted you’ve just lost the argument. Literally anything with wings can carry missiles. A commercial airliner could carry more missiles than an A-10.
Since we're seeing the return of trench lines, I can imagine that a brrrrrt run along a trench would have an affect.
Based on what we've seen over the last 18 months, the gun would still be useful against infantry trenches and exposed supply columns. For everything else the A-10 can carry SDBs, Mavericks, Hellfires, and most other bombs and missiles.
The A-10's main problem is survival at low altitude, which it has in common with every other combat aircraft. And it's a problem that a well-resourced air force mitigates via SEAD and superiority anyway.
A slow moving aircraft like the A10 would be immediately shot down if it got anywhere close to the frontlines. This is bad as the anons to insist that WW2 flamethrowers have any merit in modern trench combat and not that their mindset of what is like is stuck in the past.
A10 only works against literal goat farmers or if you have complete air superiority. Which is not the case in Ukraine.
>complete air superiority
Yes, that is why I brought it up in my post.
it has bombs too, you can see them
in desert storm, the tank kills were basically all from mavericks. The gun was always a meme
I wouldn't worry about it, since it won't be used by anyone who has a tank built after 1990, just shitholes like Russia.
its getting upgraded lmao brrrt haters get fucked
additionally the only reason the air force wants to scrap them is because they want more f35s
>more f35s
Exactly, and it's not because it's some kind of actual requirement for the survival of the country; it's because the project massively overbudget and put out an airframe that has been met with lackluster enthusiasm
>A-10 program officials stated that supply support has been a challenge. In particular, the
A-10 has experienced issues associated with diminishing manufacturing sources, raw material availability,
reliability degradation of parts, and unforeseen, one-off issues related to a particular part. For example, the
Defense Logistics Agency has had difficulty when seeking qualified suppliers to meet A-10 parts needs.
Program officials indicated that the uncertainty regarding A-10 divestiture, fleet size and increasingly outdated
technology were drivers for the diminishing manufacturing sources.
If they got rid of that useless cannon they could add several more Hellfire missiles and pop the lids off of more modern MBTs too.
Its still slow as fuck.
Being slow and unstealthy means its extremely vulnverable and slow to respond.
Making gun runs in a near peer enviroment is as suicidal as it gets.
If te military insists upon keeping them there there is literally only one use for them and it could actually be a bbenefit in the shortterm. Rip the cannon out and replace with a MAD probe, unfuck the front landing gear and CAToBAR certify, make the wings foldable (easy mod due to initial design), slap some sonobuoy pods and torps on it and give the carriers back their long range ASW component. Huge gap they've been missing since they retired the S-3 as we focused on the GWoT. But, if things go hot in the Great Pacific with China and maybe even Russia, we are gonna want that back; being limited to only ground based MPA is gonna get a lot of people killed, mark me.
So your solution is to salvage it by building an entirely new aircraft that kinda looks like the A-10
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I still can't get over how they did the A-10's dirty in MW2
Why can't they just be given to Ukraine?
It will still fuck up infantry and Toyota pickup trucks
Let's think more creatively about the gun for second. What can be done with a flying GAU-8 beyond (ineffectively) firing various kinds of conventional 30mm ammunition?
How about a swarm of 30 mm-scale microdrones fired on a lobbed trajectory at a grid square? Brrrt up instead of down.
the only thing left for Brrt is to change the rounds to low velocity 30mm drones that can be fired from the gun as a swarm ship, but at that point you could delete the gun and carry m0ar drone.
Its a dead end that is over specialized into a particular mission that can be done either more cheaply by newer machines, or more destructively.
A-10s would make a fantastic bolster to the PI Airforce, or some African nation that has enough money to throw around. In Ukraine they will just get deleted from the sky.
Op samefagging hard as fuck
Is it true that Its weapon systems were designed by a furry? I know it sounds totally fucking insane, but I remember hearing about it a while back
Was Pierre Sprey (who takes credit for the fucking thing and the F-16 because he's a douche like that) a furry?
In truth he didn't design it. The competition resulting in the A-10 had a lot of input starting with Vietnam experience with many early concepts being powered by turboprops. It quickly turned into a machine more focused on killing Soviet AFVs near the front line on the European battlefield. If I recall some ex-Luftwaffe Ju-87G (the one with the tank busting 37mm cannons) pilots even weighed in with their experience a bit. Both Northrop and Fairchild Republic offered good designs.
I disliked the A-10 before the meme pig made a video. If you want to drop a JDAM any airframe in the USAF that has a B or F prefix can do the same thing. If you want a gun run all the fighters carry a Vulcan that still pulps shit. If you want cheap there's plenty of meme cropdusters that are way cheaper.
This argument in a nutshell:
>Remove A-10 side: the USAF, i.e., people who actually have to use the damn things, are saying please, please, please let us get rid of it
>Keep A-10 side: I like the brrrrrrrrr meme
You know that you can like the brrrrr memes and fly this plane in video games without the Air Force guys having to fly an obsolete vehicle? I like halberds and shit, but I'm not advocating adding it as a squad-level weapon for the USMC.
>usaf hates the a10
>they wont let anyone else have them
explain
This applies to a whole range of military hardware lmfao.
> I like halberds and shit, but I'm not advocating adding it as a squad-level weapon for the USMC.
Intelesting idea
T. Chinese border guard commander
Why does PrepHole loves the Super Tucano so much?
>PrepHole
It's likely just one dude who really likes late war prop planes in WT.
Nobody knows, it’s a piece of shit that has a lower sticker price but insane maintenance fees.
Cry about it holy shit
It can penetrate T-55s just fine.
If they went with the PA-48 Enforcer they would've had long term viability. Probably would've been better in Iraq. They could've stuck a bunch of .50 machine guns and it would be as effective as the gatling cannon. But now they get stuck with this. Because they retired the Canberra tactical bomber so this is all they have now.
Is there any way to make a BRRRRRRRT gun viable over missiles or shells
i dont believe armor ratings. what? you're telling me a tank is protected against 30mm EVERYWHERE? are you fucking stupid? you hit a tank with a few dozen rounds of 30mm sabot and i guarantee you its fucked. the bradley was supposedly upgraded to 30mm protection too and yet there's a video of one penetrated by by 30mm. i bet you could disable a tank with a 50bmg if you really cared enough.
you just have to know where to shoot - OR, if you have a gatling gun you don't have to know where to shoot because youre firing thousands of rounds per minute and youre bound to hit something that in reality does not conform to the magical video game armor rating, or an optical, or something else important. palestinians with rocks could destroy a tank if there were a million of them. think about it
This is your reminder that the Luftwaffe double moron from 1943 will easily kill the le ebin brrtplane
>A-10 top speed: 439mph
>Do-335 top speed: 474mph
>A-10 gross weight: 30k lbs
>Do-335 gross weight: 21k lbs
There is a reason why not a single nation has plans for new CAS planes ever since people realized how outragously CAS pilots tend to over report their kills.
All pilots overreport kills, as do AA guys, as do infantry in a firefight. It's just human nature at work.
CAS pilots do it way more than everyone else though. We're talking about several orders of magnitude here.
1. It can still penetrate the top armor of most armored vehicles on the modern battlefield
2. It can just use its massive array of ordinance, including up to 10 Mavericks, which will buttfuck literally any armored threat
3. It can still use its gun on other targets. Most bunkers, artillery guns, infantry formations, MG nests, trenches, ect will look a lot worse for wear after 1000 DU 30mm shells hit it. It's not like War Thunder, there are types of targets other than AFVs.
4. It's meant to be used in conjunction with SEAD and electronic warfare.
5. if it does get targeted, it has a higher chance of surviving a hit than any other aircraft in the sky
6. If it does get shot down, it's a 6th of the cost of an F35 and pilots for it are easier to train
7. It has three times the readiness rate, one third the maintenance costs, and four times the loiter time of an F35
A10 upgrade program released and its a doozy
Reminds me of the guy with two dicks who did a Reddit AMA.
Twice the recoil + more drag for only 150% thrust increase?
you meant 50% thrust increase. a 150% thrust increase would be 5 engines
Why not just scale the whole standard A-10 model up 200%? Now your bullets are twice as big - have twice the penetration. You can carry twice as many missiles. Your engines are twice as big - go twice as fast. Twice as many flares and stuff. Sure you use twice as much fuel, but the fuel tank is doubled! And the pilots cockpit will be twice as roomy, with double the armour!
It’s perfect.
actually switching to a huge large bypass turbofan might increase fuel economy
>he really was and I finally unsubscribed like I should have a long time ago
>teliports behind you
The 30mm DU round used by the A-10 is more than enough to set off the ERA blocks on the T-72B3M and kill its optics, thus rendering the tank useless. And, as shown by the Ukrainians with their BTR-4, if you cause this much damage to a tank, the Russian crew will simply abandon it and ran for their lives.
its a good trainer like the mig 15
still in service
not my problem
Just give it a bigger gun, retard.
There is NO niche that exists that the A-10 can occupy today.
>Need long loiter for COIN in bumfuckistan?
Predator or similar MALE drone, these are also expendable as a bonus
>Need extremely cheap CAS?
Cropdusters, as seen above in thread
>Need to carry lots of PGMs and be able to defend yourself?
F-15, F-16
>Need something that can penetrate and survive contested airspace?
F-35
The A-10 has no relevance today, especially now that McCain is dead.
>Cropdusters, as seen above in thread
Find me a cropduster that can carry a 30mm automatic cannon and almost 1,200 rounds of ammunition for it and can also shrug off 14.5mm MG fire or whatever else 3rd world shitholes might be firing up at it.
Stuff like the F-22 and F-35 needs to be doing the job in a real war but for COIN warfare and beating up 2nd-rate enemies the A-10 is still useful.
Just fire some diversity equity and inclusion hacks that do nothing and use the money to keep the A-10 going.
Course if I had my way the USAF would have kept the A-7 around too.
>can carry a 30mm automatic cannon and almost 1,200 rounds of ammunition
Nobody cares about your opinion, and nobody cares about guns on CAS aircraft anymore. Deal with it.
>Nobody cares about your opinion, and nobody cares about guns on CAS aircraft anymore. Deal with it.
Nobody cares about your opinion either you retard, but this is the internet and we give our opinions anyway. There were a few instances in the GWOT were F-16s or F/A-18s did strafing runs with their 20mm cannons despite their JDAMs and everything else. Shit happens sometimes. Avionics and sensors have gotten even better since then but there are lot of potential scenarios were the A-10 would be good to have around. They replaced most of the wings on them so they can keep flying so why not use them till they are too worn out? Then we can talk if a low-cost CAS plane of similar characteristics is still desirable.
The A-7 had greater speed and better avionics for putting dumb bombs close on target. On the other hand the A-10 had the 30mm cannon, could loiter longer and was more resistant to enemy fire. Both filled the CAS niche pretty nicely and would have killed a lot of Soviets if the Cold War went hot while suffering a lot of losses for it.
>On the other hand the A-10 had the 30mm cannon, could loiter longer and was more resistant to enemy fire
you keep focusing on its Cannon when realistic it would be suicide to use it during a cold war scenario and would just waste a valuable pilot
the A-10s armor wasnt even enough to reliably protect it against soviet gun based AA systems at the time
long loiter times in a peer to peer conflict against the soviets simply wouldnt have been a think due to aa you retard so that point is irrelevant
>when realistic it would be suicide
when realistically it would be suicide*
>it would be suicide to use it during a cold war scenario and would just waste a valuable pilot
A-10 losses were going to be very high if the Cold War went hot anyway. Even just trying to stand-off firing Mavericks would involve plenty of risk. But if a Soviet tank unit is about to break through some Army position on the ground and keep charging forward you're going to have to risk aircraft and pilots. So you try to snipe their Shilkas and SA-13s with Mavericks go in for a few gun runs in the chaos, and pray that the next layer of Soviet air defense (probably SA-8s) aren't in a position to kill you.
Not really viable today with better air defenses (although the Russians are less competent these days) but it was worth the cost back then.
> There were a few instances in the GWOT were F-16s or F/A-18s did strafing runs with their 20mm cannons
Okay.
But how many of those instances were due to the guns being required, vs the pilot or FAC going “Man, it would be fun to give a squirt of gunfire”?
>Find me a cropduster that can carry a 30mm automatic cannon and almost 1,200 rounds of ammunition for it
I'd rather bring the 8x 500lb JDAMs that weigh the same amount as a combat load of ammo for the GAU-8 and actually do something useful with that weight.
>and can also shrug off 14.5mm MG fire or whatever else 3rd world shitholes might be firing up at it.
gun based aa is irrelevant in general
>can carry a 30mm automatic cannon
that it never uses if the enemy has old ass manpads or some 30mm aa gun
>but for COIN warfare and beating up 2nd-rate enemies the A-10 is still useful.
cropduster
>use the money to keep the A-10 going.
investing so much money into an aircraft fleet that cant be used in a peer to peer conflict is retarded
>gun based aa is irrelevant in general
Fly low enough and it isn't.
>that it never uses if the enemy has old ass manpads or some 30mm aa gun
If the situation is bad enough it will go in with it and take the risk.
>cropduster
Even less utility at the moment besides gifting to 3rd world allies or maybe flying along the border to help enforce it.
>investing so much money into an aircraft fleet that cant be used in a peer to peer conflict is retarded
There is a long list of things the government and military spend huge sums of money on that are far less useful. Hypothetically you could still give it a use in a peer-to-peer conflict standing off and lobbing something like Brimstone III. You're going to say other aircraft could do that cheaper which is true but it's still something to do in such a war.
We ended up in enough weird conflicts were old stuff like the A-10 has a use and will probably end up in such conflicts again.
>Fly low enough and it isn't.
yeah other aircrafts dont have to do that to perform CAS so this is only a A-10 issue
>If the situation is bad enough it will go in with it and take the risk.
no it wont nor does the US Airforce do it this way either
>Even less utility
its fucking designed for cheap COIN and shithole fighting
theres no need to give it more utility that would inflate its cost
>There is a long list of things the government and military spend huge sums of money on that are far less useful
this just boils down "yeah its a waste of money but the US military wastes money on other things too!!!!" which I dont understand since your just accepting this kind of behaviour instead of improving the situation
>You're going to say other aircraft could do that cheaper which is true but it's still something to do in such a war.
if your argument for letting the a-10 stay is "atleast it can do something" then your truly retarded
>yeah other aircrafts dont have to do that to perform CAS so this is only a A-10 issue
Your damn cropduster would.
>no it wont nor does the US Airforce do it this way either
Sorry we're not going to risk doing CAS because they might shoot back at us with some ancient SA-7 or DSHK? They weren't such pussies last I checked.
Why do you presume there is always going to be some F-35 around and on station to lob SDBs at whatever is causing a problem?
>its fucking designed for cheap COIN and shithole fighting theres no need to give it more utility that would inflate its cost
People still have heavy machine guns, light autocannons, and other things that can shoot upwards in shitholes were you are doing COIN work.
>this just boils down "yeah its a waste of money but the US military wastes money on other things too!!!!" which I dont understand since your just accepting this kind of behaviour instead of improving the situation
Some idiots would try to argue that one aircraft should do everything for the sake of saving money but specialization is great sometimes. One of those niches has been something subsonic that can loiter, withstand some ground fire, and go in with guns, rockets, and whatever else if you don't have some huge stockpile of precision weapons lying around to blow up every Toyota Hilux with a machine gun in the back. The United States of America of all places ought to be able to afford to fly some A-10s for a few more years especially since we've put a lot of work into upgrading them and keeping the airframes in good condition.
>if your argument for letting the a-10 stay is "atleast it can do something" then your truly retarded
Sorry if I don't like to throw out things that can still be useful in a lot of potential scenarios. 2028 or 2029 is only 5 years away so why all the fuss about retiring it right now?
> Fly low enough and it isn't.
Why are you flying low instead of plinking away from ten thousand feet with SDBs or guided HYDRAs or something?
>It can do anything with brrrt
>But it also wiped out Nato ground vehicles
>It will just get shot down
>Lets use a crop duster instead
>Its too expensive
>Lets use the most expensive stealth aircraft
By this logic we should scrap the entire fleet of the US airforce and use cardboard drones. Fact-Cheaper, more reliable, more accurate, more stealthy, can operate anywhere at anytime and has no maintenance costs and doesn't need training to operate. Trust me I use Youtube lmao
How realistic is this routing of a flight of A-10s?
itt: "Muh low tech reliable rugged low cost"fags SEETHING over a prop plane that is all of those things