On what basis do you say that? The purpose of this plane is close in air support with the ability to hang around in the middle of a battle. All of the replacement jets can fly over drop some munitions and they fly off. If you are lucky they did the job, but if they missed or the target survived you have to call them back. The A10 comes in, chews everything you pointed out to rubble, asked you if they got it and if not they are still there and adjust and do it again. In a long running firefight in mountains and canyons the ability to point the finger of god at any random outcropping as needed over and over as you move down the path is priceless.

I think parent commenter was citing how A-10s are only useful against enemies that can't fight back. I doubt anyone is thinking of fielding A-10s against the Chinese or putting them up against Russian S-400s

I believe the proper distinction is "can't shoot with heat-seeking missiles". It's true that A-10 would be easy kill for the missiles, but it has legendary durability against small arms fire.

The A-10 is not such an easy kill.

1. Take a good look at the tail in relation to the engines. From most angles, the engine exhaust is hidden from the ground. The A-10 is flown with an undulating motion that will break a heat-seeking lock.

2. The typical little missile just isn't going to do much damage. The A-10 is a twin-engine aircraft with some armor around the engines. There is even a bit of extra fuel kept there, in case the fuel line is cut.

The reason they are retiring the A-10 is that the airframe cannot be upgraded with the power systems needed to support modern defensive and offensive systems. Modern combat aircraft are giant electrical power systems with an aircraft wrapped around them. When the A-10 was designed half a century ago, this was not a requirement and there is no way to retrofit it.

Modern air defense systems are explicitly engineered to very effectively kill things like the A-10, and it can't support modern counter-measures because of these limitations. It still works in environments for which it was designed i.e. absent modern air defense systems.

The A-10 can't fly at low level in the middle of a battle or it will be shot down by a SAM. They have been modified to be able to drop smart munitions from higher altitudes but are too slow to get to where they might be needed.

Quoting ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunde...

"From the beginning of 2006 to October 2013, A-10s conducted 19 percent of CAS missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than the F-15E Strike Eagle and B-1B Lancer, but less than the 33 percent flown by F-16s."

...and...

"The U.S. Army had expressed interest in obtaining some A-10s should the Air Force retire them"

I am not sure why SAMs aren't the threat to the A-10s that they were to Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan. Maybe the Taliban can't afford them? Also SAMs require training and degrade quickly if not maintained.

The SAMs used against the HIND in Afghanistan were Stingers that have smaller warheads. The Hind, while well armored compared to other helicopters, is much more vulnerable than the A-10. For example, an A-10 can lose an engine and still make it home. If a Hind loses a rotor, it's probably dead.

And the real issue is whether the A-10 can survive against a near peer like Russia or China. Considering that in the late 70's the life expectancy of an A-10 over the Fulda Gap was measured in single digit sorties, expecting them to survive today against modern SAMs (both radar guided and infrared) is unrealistic.

CAS in bush country like Iraq/Afghan is much better performed by fast jets that can respond quickly with a JDAM or SDB.

There's a couple of pages that are pretty comprehensive lists of aircraft lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both have tables near the bottom. If it's accurate, one A-10 was shot down by a SAM in Iraq, and that was the only A-10 combat loss across both conflicts.

Iraq: https://military.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_shootdowns_...

Afghanistan: https://military.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_Coalition_aircraft_l...

It's a little misleading, though it compliments the A-10.

The A-10 was designed knowing it was going to get shot at and take hits. It doesn't have the speed other craft do, though it was somewhat underestimated just how many hits it'd take. All of those redundancies and protections are designed to protect the pilot and save the aircraft. However, an A-10 doesn't have to be shot down in order to be considered a "mission loss", which is what would happen. A damaged aircraft is no longer mission effective, as the pilot is now focusing everything on keeping it airworthy and getting it back to base. So as one of the other posters indicated, while many wern't a total lost, many were damaged, and either had to abort or cut short their mission as a result. From a sortie effectiveness perspective, that's the same result as a downed plane. https://baloogancampaign.com/2015/02/02/10-future-us-close-a...

So many A-10s were damaged in Iraq that they were withdrawn from combat.

Can you cite your source?

https://military.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_shootdowns_... ... says only one A-10 was lost during the conflict.

I believe he's talking about damaged aircraft that made it home. The list I posted is aircraft that were literally shot down.

Ah, no. The idea that everyone has a MANPADS is just not true. A-10 spend tons of time on target in Afghanistan and Iraq. All of this is clearly documented.

From your comment it seems like the issue is around good customer service.

You want to see something, tell someone you don't like seeing that thing, have someone make it no longer there. Repeatedly over a period of time.

Whether that's an A-10 or a magician on a flying carpet doing that work, the work just needs to get done.

I wonder if a fleet of drones will do that work. You could have them peel off, refuel and come back as required automatically while maintaining a minimum strike force in the area.

Regardless, it has to Just Work TM.

Yes, to be honest you are on point. If it is a swarm of drones that can have the same effect sure. The point is today the only thing that can hang around are A-10s.

It has a glass cockpit, Link 16, sniper pod integration, and SDB integration is coming soon. That's more advanced that most countries air forces.

The only thing really obsolete unfortunately is the engines.

The engines are perfect for its mission. High efficiency which translates into long loiter times.

Agree. Spare parts are the issue.

Without googling I believe there is another aircraft in the Navy that uses the same engine but it's been retired? If I recall correctly as well it's used in some business jets.

S-3 Viking I believe.

You're actually correct. Against modern air defenses the A-10 would have a very difficult if not impossible mission.

Luckily we don't fight wars against superpowers and if we do the A-10 won't be the first one in.

And as cool as that gun is- it's overrated. Pilots shouldn't have to free-gun. Most of the footage of these guns show them missing a lot.

Well the original plan would have put it as the first one in against a peer adversary [0]. The rate of attrition against '70s/'80s vintage air defence would have been horrific, can you imagine what it would be like now?

[0] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/an-a-10-pilot-could-hope-to...

I suspect it will be drones that eventually replace it, rather than another manned aircraft.

The F-16 was better at doing the kind of missions in Iraq that lead to the damage in your linked article.

I don't feel like the F-16 is particularly great for close air support. Fighters are better for the A-10's original role as a tank killer, but that hasn't really been its role for some time now.

Modern close air support means dropping smart bombs from high altitude, to do this you need to be able to quickly get to the right place, the A-10 is too slow to be able to do this. One of the most effective bomb trucks is the B-1B.

I don't believe that's accurate. From everything I've ever read about the A-10 and close air support, the 'close' aspect means that you're close enough to get positive visual identification of friend and foe. Additionally, it means slower speed because the fast movers are too fast for this task. The third important factor that's commonly mentioned is length of time that the plane can loiter on station to assist the ground troops.

A B-1B (while being highly impressive in its own capabilities) is poorly suited for these things.

Actually the B1-B has done a huge amount of the sorties for CAS. It can respond quickly, has a huge weapons load, and combined with targeting pods, can just sit above a fight plinking targets. It's loiter time is much better than 90% of the fighters over Afghanistan.

The idea of getting down in the weeds (below 1K AGL) is not how CAS is done anymore. It's extremely rare to get that close. It's not how the A-10 is typically used.

Have we outlawed inclement weather? Or just leave the gomers to their own devices until the cloud cover clears?

Inclement weather would obstruct the vision of the A-10 pilots too. Today's CAS is largely a forward observer calling in a grid/GPS coordinate or lasing a target.

how are pentagon planners dealing w/ emerging tech hacking/jamming/spoofing GPS signals? I recall something along this sort being posted to HN a few days back, as well as this being perhaps the means of how Iran captured a US drone several years ago...

GPS is problematic in a contested environment due to low signal strength. Even with GPSIII satellites being deployed, it's susceptible to both jamming and spoofing, at a trivial cost. Normally when an opponent starts emitting (say with a search radar), you can target it with HARM etc. But the GPS jammers are pretty cheap, and don't require much power to cause issues.

This has led to dual/tri mode seekers on missiles. They use GPS until they reach an area where the mission planners feel GPS would be unreliable, then they fail over to IR, radar, or EO sensors for the final segment of the mission. If weather permits (and the threat is manageable), you can lase the target. Potential workarounds in the future are vision matching systems (kind of like the ALCMs tercom) that appear promising.

Against a peer opponent, jamming will be pervasive across all frequencies. Your comms might be secure in terms of compromise, but the sheer amount of multi-band noise will be something that (at least the US) many militaries will be unprepared for.

I hope the B-1B is cheaper in terms of total cost to operate than in the Reagan era...I seem to recall chatter that it was something of a hangar queen

I feel ya. The A-10 has so many fans (and for good reason), that it's nigh impossible for anyone to believe it's obsolete. But you're right, and you're perhaps being unfairly downvoted.

There's a great article here breaking this down: https://baloogancampaign.com/2015/02/02/10-future-us-close-a...

To summarize: - The A-10 was designed for an era when SAMs weren't as sophisticated as they are today. The GAU-8 cannon was to be an affordable weapon for eliminating tanks, but even as it was entering service it was soon clear that modern systems were outranging the cannon, and the Maverick soon became the primary anti-armor weapon of the A-10 due to it's standoff range. (source: colleague who was an A-10 test pilot (in the only two-seater made no less!) and links I can't find now)

- This proved true in Iraq (see link above) where the A-10 was getting shot up quite a bit against frontline units, and F-16s with their higher speed were sent in instead. It's a good reminder here that again, the cannon is no longer the primary weapon against armor in a high-threat environment. When that's taken into account, the A-10 and F-16 have similar weapons capabilities.

- The A-10s primary advantage in a low-threat environment is it's high endurance time. Here, it's being squeeze from two sides: Low-cost COIN aircraft like the A-29 Super Tucano, and high altitude bombers with targeting pods like the B-52. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw2qPzl1gtM). The A-29 is very effective in the counterinsurgency role for a fraction of the cost where it's not running against sophisticated AA systems. On the other end, you have the B-52, loitering at 35,000+ with an enormous load of munitions that can be called down on command and well above the range of man-portable systems.

- Check this video here of the late John McCain and a hearing with the Air Force. I've FFed the time to the general's answer to him. McCain, experienced as he was, is looking at this from a prior era here, and I think the General proves it. https://youtu.be/_up7IHd3LDs?t=218

The Air Force, feeling the budget squeeze, is rightfully concluding that the A-10 can go. They can perform the COIN/light ground attack role with much cheaper aircraft or by leveraging the huge advances in targeting with pods attached to the B-52, B-1, and F-15/F-16. At the high-threat end, they have the F-35, who's stealth, ECM, and sensors make it much more survivable than the A-10. (No, really. It does.)

And lastly, if anyone wants to see what this actually plays out like, try the A-10 simulator in DCS. It's a fantastic module. And then better yet, fly a mission or two on the public servers with the A-10 in a mixed threat environment. It'll be eyeopening.

And regarding those? I flew as part of a group online where we'd design and then fight realistic scenarios for our online wing. Props to our A-10 crews, but I got to see (simulated of course) just how limited these craft sometimes were. They were incredibly slow, and so took forever to get to the operational area, meaning the rest of our fighters had to either take off late, leaving them uncovered, or take off early and hit the tanker several times so that they'd be in the strike area to cover when they arrived. With a full load they were sitting ducks most of the time; jinking away from modern SAMs was practically impossible unless you were really sticking close to a ridgeline, which limited where you could go. Often the A-10s would get to the area after a long cruise, only to find some threats still up. They'd then have to loiter somewhere while an F/A-18 with HARMs came to clean up. We had a lot of aircraft overhead and around the A-10 to give it a role in the mission, whereas a package of 2-4 F-16s/F/A-18s with Mavericks could accomplish the same.

(Me? I flew the Viggen. We don't need no escorts, Swedish Dorito go "zoom".)

Anyways, hope this helps illustrate the issue for some of your detractors.

Excellent points.

But why then do the soldiers on the ground demand the A-10? They are in the field fighting and sometimes dying so from better food to fast Med-Evac what the soldier wants he/she gets to sustain their morale.

What is missing from the stand-off platforms or fast movers that the A-10 has and gains it loyal supporters? Is it that the soldier sees the pilot get into the conflict with them?

What was it like to fly the Viggen? Any posts on that aircraft you can recommend?

>But why then do the soldiers on the ground demand the A-10?

I think that's a much more difficult question to answer and probably a lot more subjective. Define "Demand"? Do they demand it over other platforms? And why? I don't have the answer to any of those, and I suspect that the extent that they demand or prefer the A-10 might be in part due to the fact that it just looks impressive. I think you might be onto something as well with regards to "seeing them in the conflict"; the A-10 is often regarded as "being down in the mud" with the troops, where as a JDAM drop from an F/A-18 or B-52 is going to be a angry fist out of nowhere. You can't bond with it, except maybe the soldier talking to it over the radio. =P

The Viggen (in DCS) is hella fun. It's very fast at low-level, and brings a different feel than any other warplane in in the sim. It's very much a product of it's time; with cutting edge electronics but from the 60s and 70s. It's also a very purpose-built craft too: The ideal Viggen mission is to plan a route to strike against a pre-planned target, dump it's warload in an instant, and get out. The electronics are rather janky and will remind you of an Apollo-era computer, but again, they were cutting edge for the time, and it's remarkable how effective they are still. In DCS the Viggen will teach you good planning and tactics as your weapons and sensors are relatively primitive. But it's navigation is excellent, it's speed and handling at low-level are supurb, and it automates in all of the right places so that you can focus more on your surroundings.

In DCS I flew it in those same large scale missions along A-10s. We had rudimentary ECM and chaff/flares to keep us alive. But it was really our speed that did so. You pop up close to the target, using the ground to mask you all the way in, keeping your speed as high as possible (this is where good planning helps) and then egressing out, preferably back under cover (again, planning!) Done well, we'd be long gone before a SAM could respond, let alone close the distance. It didn't always work though, and against targets that were much more in the open, we didn't do so well. And that's pushing mach .9, or 600+ KIAS. So you can see how an A-10 bumbling along at 200-300 is having a rougher go of it.

I'd check out this great video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpFIHZJbTtY Also search the /r/hoggit discussions over on Reddit. Viggen has a small but loyal following. It's not a good all-rounder, but it does certain things very well, and with style. =D

Also, check out any of the "F-111 w/ Jeff Guinn videos" over on Aircrew Interview, and how they handled SAMs and how "high speed/low level" was a very difficult problem for air defense to solve back then. Different plane, but very similar mission set. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAyMklJSwi8

It would probably be the loiter. Sure you can order in something and it gets dropped. Then the fighter returns to base. The A-10 affords flexibility to those units that are doing counterinsurgency against people that will attack, retreat, attack, retreat, attack. So you can probably use the A-10 repeatedly as you track down where the "enemy" is.

Plus, maybe you didn't get the first sighting correct, or once the JDAM hits a bunch of others scurry and you want more.