OH-58 pilots and their chains of command them would disagree.

This should have ended the argument, but predictably it didn't.

What is the chain of command having OH-58 pilots doing these days?

Both started after it came to light that the Navy was getting special funding for the Ohio replacement. I will bet good money that the MMIII program will be canceled time save the B3

No, they don't.  Telling influential Senators that the plane made in their state is already 25 years past it's retirement date and to hell with the associated jobs is not the way to get a 4th star pinned on one's shoulders.

We need a follow-on to Pershing more than any of those.  Fuck INF.  

Well that's a name drop.

In Russia airplane have gun.

In capitalist America gun have airplane.

I'll believe in a new MM when I see it in the ground.

Another bomber? No surprise there.

The below article discusses the aforementioned ENGINE issues:

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/article-view/release/155297/updated-overview-of-f_35-engine-problems.html

Although that article is dated 2014 and doesn't include such events as these:
http://www.businessinsider.com/marine-f-35-fighter-fire-2016-11
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/f-35a-damaged-in-fire-at-air-force-base


The gun issues it has are rather simple really: it doesn't have a working gun.

Hopefully they'll use the delay with the gun as an excuse to leave the stupid thing off altogether.

Yep. And the Rooskies dance around it anyway.

You don't say?

The issue that non-combat arms types fail to understand is that to be able to provide really good CAS is that you have to be kind of slow, able to get really low, have a long loiter time, and be able to carry a hell of a lot of ordinance.

Is the A-10 outdated? Yep it is but Air Force refuses to spend the money to develop a new dedicated platform to fill the role or to let the Army have any fixed wing combat aircraft.

Instead of actually coming up with a real replacement for the A-10 the Air Force just keeps shoe horning the mission scope onto aircraft that were designed to be fighter/intercepters.

The Air Force has made it very clear CAS isn't a role they want to fill but they don't want anyone else to fill it either.

I'm not really sure what people expect the Army to do when they can't have their own fixed wing assets and the Air Force won't develop a new dedicated plane. The only option left is to scream that the AF keep their outdated CAS platform.  

It all comes down to the threat environment.  I doubt the A-10 can cope with today's advanced threats.

So, let's say Congress gets this Fly Off, and based on whatever standards are set, they decide that the F-35 can't perform the role that the A-10 can perform. Now what?

They stopped building A-10s in 1984, so the newest of them are 32 years old and have been through three wars already. So what do we do, send our guys into combat with 40-50 year jets that have been through the ringer?

Do we start building more A-10s? Do we acquire a new subsonic stealth fighter to perform a CAS mission? What do we do?

Also, people are saying that we should have learned from Vietnam that supersonic fighters can't perform a CAS role. 

We didn't have precision munitions during the Vietnam war, and we do have them today. So, with the advent of precision munitions, doesn't that make a supersonic fighter capable of performing a CAS role? 

This is like the old argument of "who would win in a fight....Bruce Lee or Mike Tyson".  Two totally different fighters in totally different roles.

The problem is 99% how we do planning and C2. Not with an airframe or type of ordinance.

Basically, the Army and Airforce use the same planning and coordination mechanisms to fight goatherders in Afghanistan, that they planned to use against the soviets.

Instead of assigning aircraft to the ground units they are supporting, they aimlessly fly circles above Afghanistan, to react to any emergencies. If they get called, the fight is over 99.9% of the time before they can get there and coordinate a drop. There's a minimum of 5 echelons of command, and as many as 8 to coordinate a CAS drop for a platoon.

The Airforce preaches centralized planning, which in COIN means no planning. The Army Generals are mostly too stupid to even know how it works, or are just too big of pussies to say anything about it.

I'd say that ends the argument.

That's not CAS. CAS is 'we've got troops in contact and we need a bomb dropped 600 meters from them. I've personally seen 4 times where a fast mover was providing CAS and could only do low level show of force because they're going too fast to ID friendlies and enemies.

I'd also like to note, for the record, that not a single A-10 has a confirmed kill on a Blackhawk, school, or Chinese embassy.

There's no way for one platform to perform all missions as adequately as needed. And everytime a new system comes out that claims to, it's proven (at the expense of lives more often than not) to be inadequate.   There's a niche that needs F-35s (when they work) and a niche for A-10s. Not just planes, either, ships (cough cough LCS) and ground vehicles  (cough Bradley cough stryker).

You've got a GPS don't you?  Why not use your GPS to figure out where you are, then an LRF to figure out where the bad guys are, then tell that to the airplane guy so he can deliver violence to that spot?  How cool would it be if all that stuff was integrated?  Like some sort of link for exchanging targeting data.  Not sure if you could retrofit it to an older plane, but a newer plane could have it designed into it.  Sounds like some future shit, but I bet they're working on it somewhere.

Are our current aircraft better? Yes
Are they better at killing shitloads if commie tanks? Maybe
Are newer aircraft faster? Yes
Are newer aircraft able to defend themselves easier? Yes
Are newer aircraft a lot more stealthy? Yes


Are our newer aircraft cheaper? not by a long shot
Can our newer aircraft take as many hits and keep going? No
Can newer aircraft stay in the area for the same amount of time? No, slower plane = lots of time in the air.
We can buy a bunch of A10s for the price of one modern fighter.

We should keep them

Declare each platform can do CAS, but the F35 can do more. Continue as if the test never happened.

But only if you do it from a plane that's closer and slower. That shouldn't result in that many more losses.

Forget the War Games, send a squadron of A-10s into ISIS or Taliban Territory and fuck some shit up, then send in an F-35 to do the same thing.


Then take a Poll of ISIS or Taliban Fighters that survived the attack and ask which aircraft they fear the most

And no one ever mentions this but I believe it to be true as well.

Or we could see which killed more enemy and destroyed more equipment.

We should send a message to trump about keeping the A-10

Tell me again why we have to go low and slow when no one, including a10s, are dropping visual bombs? Why exactly does an electro-optical/NV target pod which can be used wide angle all the way to a zoom level such that I can see helmets or discern a rifle from a shovel need to be utilized the same way as a ccip delivered mk82 high drag?

Loiter time? Any fixed wing we have can loiter all day because anywhere they will allow an a10 to do CAS there will be tankers. Until we have enough CAS assets to have an airframe over every unit (dont hold your breath) the time you should be concerned with is response time...callout to oncall CAS assets in a cap somewhere to weapons impact. Thats the time

No offense, but you dont know how CAS is done or what the capabilities are, which is causing you to draw the wrong conclusions. There are many things wrong with CAS today and few of them have anything to do with aircraft and very little to do with weapons either, now that selectable fusing is available.

Ive done many low level shows of force....and they arent done because of ID issues. They are done because that is what they were told to do, because ground wouldn't let them drop live ordnance.

We drop on ground commander authority, period. Going to fast to ID enemies? Wrong. speed has nothing to do with the ability to ID targets, all aircraft are using targeting pods. We can stare at a target area, zoom, use night vision etc. we dont have to fly in straight lines you know...i have wheeled over a spot for literally hours. I can even fly as slow as an a10 if I wanted...why didn't I? Because it wouldnt help. If somebody told you lack of target ID is because the aircraft was too fast they were wrong. If someone told you pilots use their unaided vision to ID friend from foe they were wrong...and the pilot would be an idiot to drop a weapon in todays age without using the target pod.

I realized awhile ago that all the times the ground commander denied me permission to drop that they were telling their men it was because "he was going to fast" or some other utter BS instead of the truth, which is he was afraid of the collateral damage risk to his career. Pisses me off.

You plan for the war you can't afford to lose, not the war you you don't have to win.

I'm glad someone with some actual experience in the matter is weighing in.
Face it boys... I LOVE the A-10 but I'm no pilot or CAS expert but people who are do say that the A-10 is losing its teeth in contested airspace. Why is that so hard to accept?

Just transfer them to the Marine Corps and call it a day.

They've all bought into a lie sold to them by the same mass media that pushes gun control.

Then I must have imagined listening to an F-16 pilot south of Baghdad tell a CPT with a bullet in him that he couldn't drop because he couldn't ID targets but he'd do a show of force. Good thing the Apaches showed up before they were overrun.

FTR, I'm not saying the A-10 is perfect. It does need to be replaced. Part of the problem is the culture of Air Force leadership. They took on the responsibility to provide transport and CAS to the Army because they wanted the money and control of everything flying. And for the past 50 years, the Air Force has to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to provide that support and they actively try to keep the Army from doing it themselves. Look at the history of the helicopter, specifically armed choppers. The Air Force had zero interest in choppers, but pitched a fit when the Army got them. Then the Air Force did everything they could to keep the Army from arming them. There's no love lost and no trust that the Air Force will support us without being forced to.

Don't take that as an insult towards most zoomies. That problem is all on the guys wearing stars. And they aren't alone. Plenty of brass in the rest of the services do their own fucked up shit. Fucking Shinseki and the fucking Strykers for example. There's an inherent dishonesty when it comes to fielding new platforms. Each time the Pentagon goes to Congress to ask for money, they spin it like this is going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and be able to do the job of 2 or 3 existing systems. And it never happens. We get a piece of crap that only ends up being fielded because any 'tests' or wargames that are run get rigged to that there's no way it will fail. The Army rigged the testing of Stryker units at JRTC/NTC when they first fielded. The Navy just finished changing the parameters of something called a shock test on the LCS because they didn't think it could handle the damage, yet they fire the captain of the ship when it broke down and say everything is going smoothly. We end up with a platform that, ten years or so after it's fielded, does maybe one thing well and is mediocre (at best) at it's other assigned tasks. And during that ten year time frame, we end up pumping money to change an existing platform to do that particular job until the new geewhiz toy gets fixed. It happens with simple software. It happened with the Bradley and Strykers. It's happening with the LCS. And it's happening with the F-35. Tank, plane or ship, there's never going to be any super platform that can excel at the jobs of 2 or 3 different platforms. We need an air superiority fighter. We need AD suppression, and we need CAS. There's certain desired qualities for those three 3 tasks that are mutually exclusive.

This has being going on for 100 years. Hell, we lost hundreds of B-17s in Europe because a couple generals in charge did everything they could to stop production of a long range escort fighter and kept insisting that the B-17s could defend themselves. It took over a year to get the Army Air corps to design and build drop tanks. Units in England had some made up in a manner of months through local factories.

TL/DR: The whole process for new planes, tanks and ships is broken and corrupt.

What makes you think the Marines want them?

To what level of ground forces would you assign dedicated CAS forces to make them available for their local needs and to reduce the levels of coordination?

According to a guy who scored a slot in a C12 some got out some transitioned to fill vacancies in other air frames and the majority went to drones.

Exactly.  They aren't flying OH-58s any more.  So why do you think the army actually wants A-10s when they decided they couldn't afford to keep flying Jet Rangers?

But, but...gunfighter, slugfest, Gatling gun bbbrrrrrrrrrrt, toe-to-toe with the Russkies...
Jesus, just give the damn planes to the Army. After the eighth or ninth warrant CFITs, the whole fleet will be quietly retired.

The Army does want A-10s.  They want them to belong to the Army though, because even if it isn't the greatest thing in the skies having their own planes is still better than dealing with the BS it takes to coordinate with the Air Force.

The Army retired it's OH-58s because it can't afford to fly Jet Rangers.  What makes you think that it actually wants A-10s?

PS:  Even if they did get this "wish" that you think they have, they would still need to coordinate with the AF to get gas.

So yeah. The gun physically fires. Except that when it does the little stealth flap for it opens up and the differential drag pulls the nose off target right as it starts firing. Which is a problem with a fixed forward firing gun. Which is why the gun is not currently operational on the A version.

Don't hate on the LCACs! 

First of all, Thanks for taking my post the way it was intended. Many times people get upset when you counter preconceived notions.

I dont doubt that CAS has been unable to drop for target ID, Of course you have to ID the target to drop. I should have written it differently, because the point I was trying to make with the post was that it isnt the speed causing the problem of target ID. I can see how I didnt make that point effectively.

There are several reasons that talk-ons to target fail, and again they have almost nothing to do with platform. I have had talkons fail because they refused to turn off the warlocks and I literally could not communicate effectively with them...pure commo issue. I have had well meaning guys in trouble ask for ordnance on a position such that they had a 100% chance of death even if I hit the target exactly. I have had comm from two sources on the ground directly contradicting each other. I have been talked onto FRIENDLY positions before, thank god didnt drop because of a hair on the back of the neck feeling I call divine intervention. None of these have anything to do with platform but are fog of war stuff and would have happened if I was in a O-1 birddog. Thats where I disagree that the requirements for a CAS platform are mutually exclusive...we are literally using the same targeting equipment across all CAS platforms. The bomb truck becomes irrevelant during the targeting process, as long as the threat allows it operate without getting shot down of course ending CAS support.

My main point is that despite the above less common roadblocks to a successful engagement, far and away the most common thing to happen was an effective talk on to target, positive target ID, and no clearance to drop from the ground commander. More times than I can count. Quite literally it was often me and the guy on the radio trying to figure out an attack that his boss might approve. The majority of the time we landed with the bombs we took off with, and in a place were Americans were dying daily with lots of enemy that need killing, that is criminal. The ground commanders were in a no win situation.

This country had better get its mind right about what war is next time before we fight. War is killing, lots of it, and if our national will is not to that point yet, keep our men home until it is. The ground commanders had immense pressure on them to prosecute a war without killing anyone if they could help it. Thats always a noble goal but it simply isnt realistic. I have watched from my CAP, too many times, our Soldiers or Marines take casualties assaulting a building with an enemy firing position or sniper while I am sitting there, eyes on, ready to drop on command. Too much collateral risk for artillery. Too much collateral risk for CAS. Can we strafe? Nope. Ok how about a show of force then? Great, an airshow for CAS. We literally got a formal request to carry inerts (concrete training bombs to drop on enemy positions to reduce their casualty potential. This is where the senior leadership heads are at. Lets issue tasers to the infantry while we are at it. When are we going to be honest about the "collateral" risk to our own men? When will we care more about them more than what the commies on CNN say about how mean we are?

I dont give a shit what is dropping bombs in the end as long as they are accurate. I have zero loyalty to tools of war, I care about their effectiveness or lack thereof. Your observations about acquisitions strike me as accurate to the extent that I never met a general of any service that I felt placed victory above their career. Maybe General Mattis can change that, I dont know.

I hope your CPT made it.


Was this NAJAF april 04? Check pm please.

Ho Lee Fuk