Gulf war 1: Destroyed more than 900 Iraqi tanks, 2,000 other military vehicles and 1,200 artillery pieces for the loss of four A-10s
Syria 2015: Single A-10 takes out 116 ISIS fuel trucks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ37y0yeSgc&feature=youtu.be...
It still has it's uses. Also consider the costs - if you're using a high flying F-35 and laser guided bombs they'll cost I don't know $20k each and it can only carry a few so the cost of taking out fuel trucks would quite likely be more than the value of the trucks. A big old cannon can probably do it quicker and much cheaper.
In Syria... well, we could have used just about anything, from the AC-130 to the gun on the F-16. Fuel trucks are a pretty soft target.
Nobody in Chair Force command ever liked the A10. And the A10 is performing CAS as a secondary role, not the one it was originally intended for; and it is worn out and obsolete, and does need replacement. The F35 just isn't the tool for the job and it won't ever be. The Super Tucano is much closer, but I'm still skeptical of it too.
Even if this is entirely true, moral goes a hell of a long way on in the army as does the fear this creates with the enemy.
That said I was of the understanding the A-10 was very effective for supporting troops in areas like Afghanistan and similar low tech ground wars. The real issue the Air Force are tasked with protecting the country in the case of a 'real war' with more modernized opponents like China or Russia. In this case and A-10 is old tech and wont deliver much in terms of defense capability hence their lack of interest in maintaining/upgrading it.
And there's no reason to keep it around for low tech wars - if we need a dedicated aircraft to destroy mud huts we'd be better off with something cheap and easy to maintain, like Embraer's Super Tucano II.
Afghanistan is a hard nut to crack due to being landlocked, surrounded by enemies, and with primitive facilities. B-1s do well in this situation since they can fly out of Diego Garcia, carry a shit ton of fuel, and munitions, and have a crew that is used to long duration flights. Once it was equipped with the AN/AAQ-28 Litening pod, it really came into its own for providing CAS.
People also misunderstand what CAS is. CAS stands for Close Air Support, but doesn't mean the aircraft providing it has to be close, but that the munitions are hitting close to the FEBA (where our troops are).
But keeping all that old hardware flying...
The A10 is still good at CAS that's what it was designed to do. 1 A10 caries a much, much larger bomb load than an F35. If you have air superiority you need a good bomb truck a lot more useful than a stealth fighter.
What were the other 80% of CAS missions carried out by? What % of aircraft deployed were A10s? That 20% figure needs more to back it up.
That's not really true. The A-10 was designed to destroy tanks in Europe. CAS was always a secondary role.
>If you have air superiority you need a good bomb truck a lot more useful than a stealth fighter.
If that's the argument then the right thing to do is retire the A-10 and reactivate some B-1s.
>What were the other 80% of CAS missions carried out by? What % of aircraft deployed were A10s? That 20% figure needs more to back it up.
>Eighty percent of CAS missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have been conducted not by the A-10, but by an array of other aircraft, including AC-130’s, F-15E’s, F-16’s, MQ-1’, B-52’s, and yes, the B-1.
http://blogs.cfr.org/davidson/2014/05/20/if-the-air-force-ha...
The thrust of the article is correct. The reason people don't want to see the A-10 retired is the Air Force doesn't have a lot of credibility when it comes to CAS.
I used to have a link to a chart with percentages, but I can't find it.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/a-10... https://web.archive.org/web/20110317113904/http://www.lockhe...
The most efficient way to destroy things on the ground is with guided missiles and bombs. An F-35 with a brace of SDBs is going to do a lot more damage than an A-10, both because smart bombs are much more effective on a pound-for-pound basis and because it can get on station much more quickly. A strike aircraft with modern optics it can fly above AAA and shoulder launched SAM range and still engage moving targets on the ground.
The troops like the A-10 because it's loud and impressive and makes them feel like they haven't been forgotten.
Politicians like the A-10, too, because by staving off the ax once again they can make it look like they're doing something to support the little guy on the ground.
The Army brass likes the A-10 because they suspect when the shit hits the fan the Air Force will decide the multi-role aircraft all belong in some other role and abandon the Army altogether.
But none of that has any bearing on the effectiveness of the air frame itself. Not many people realize the A-10 only carried out 20% of the CAS missions in Afghanistan. The A-10 was the bee's knees when it was new and we were worried about thousands of Soviet tanks pouring through the Fulda Gap. But it's not 1985 any more.