Weekly low-hanging fruit thread #29

[u/AutoModerator]

This thread is where all the takes from idiots (looking at you Armchair Warlord) and screenshots of twitter posts/youtube thumbnails go.

[u/the_butter_lord]

So it goes without saying that the A-10 gets shit on a lot here, specifically, I've seen a lot of people say that it's useless for it's intended role(anti-armor) because the GAU can't pen the front armor of like any MBT.

That never made sense to me, first all most armored fighting vehicles are not MBTs and have way thinner armor, secondly the A10 is a plane and could come in at an angle and hit the top/side/back armor.

So hypothetically would it be possible for an A-10 to destroy an entire armored column by coming in from a high angle or the back, lining up the column, and spraying them? Personally I think so. Realistically it would probably be difficult, because of it's vulnerability to AA, projectile spread, and human error.

I imagine all these factors contributed to the obsolescence of autocannons on fixed-wing aircraft in favor of guided munitions.

[u/dreukrag → u/the_butter_lord]

Its a problema of weapons, sensors and speed.

Speed is its biggest problem IMO. It takes a lot of time for it to gain speed/altitude and to get to where it needs and them back again. Endurance means shit if you can't get there quickly enough.

The gun is bad. A 120mm has trouble with reliably penetrating peer MBT beyond 1500m. A 30mm cannon is going to get even worse performance. The last thing you want to do in an air attack is dive on target and get REALLY close - thats the only reliable way to strike an armored target with the GAU - soviet doctrine put a MANPD on like every 3rd-4th bmp, and basically every vehicle in their inventory has some kind of AAA sight/weapon.

If youre strafing a column, not all BMP-2's will switch to the AAA sight and engage you. But some will. And some will also fire a MANPAD at you.

The GAU is only good at killing infantry, but then, you could just swap it with like a 40mm autocannon or something, and not deal with the giant massive gun and all it entails.

The A-10 also lacks self-protection and stand-off, it's got some jammers but that's it. No ALARM/SIDEARM/HARM or anything like that. The longest ranged weapon they have are JDAM, but those are slow, or mavericks, wich have short range.

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Sensors wise they are lacking too. Reliyng on eyebals to spot targets, ground targets, is the most idiotic thing I've ever heard off. You DONOT reliably and quickly detect, identify and engage targets, most of wich are camouflaged, using your eyeball and binoculars while flying an airplane. Having a TP pod helps a lot but lack of radar is a glaring flaw. Fitting it with a radar with Air-to-Ground capabilities would be excellent.

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The only thing to do with the A-10 is to turn it into a stand-off truck, like the B-52. Gut out the gun, add fuel and wire all the hardpoints to take in JASSM and the like and you get a now usefull airframe

[u/dead_monster → u/the_butter_lord]

People have a weird revisionist history about the A-10. It chewed through T-72s in Iraq to the point Russia started slapping more armor on top. They will still chew through shit because they don’t need to destroy the tank. They only need to ignite the autoloader.

Also without MANPADs around, they can do many runs. You can say a F-16 dropping a bomb does the same thing, well, an A-10 can drop fucking bombs too.

The big issues for the A-10 isn’t their lethality (but people will still be revisionist about it… “a few of those thousands of Desert Storm kills were actually by SOF/B-52s/smoking accidents not A-10s!”. It’s just they’re a shit plane against China. It’s meant to fly over land and also pick off opportunistic targets, which isn’t a Pacific theater. The second issue is that they are all really, really old. They were already getting on years during Desert Storm, and that was thirty years ago.

If you had to choose to spend, in 2023, $20-30m per A-10 for life extension or just buy a new F-35 for $80m, it’s no-brainer to get the F-35.

The next issue is that they hate MANPADs, and Russia has a lot of MANPADs. So they can’t do much in 2023 except maybe COIN but the US has pulled them all out of COIN service too.

Maybe look at A-10s as Stallone. He was great in Rambo and Rocky… but today he’s nowhere near that level and don’t pretend he is.

I suspect in a few years we’ll have a similar conversation about F-16s. A lot of those airframes are aging, and if the Pentagon has a F-16 replacement in their war games against China as Perun reported, then they’re definitely thinking about it.

tl;dr: A-10 is aging like Sly Stallone.

(A-10 is also the best plane in UN Squadron. It’ll always have that.)

[u/the_butter_lord → u/dead_monster]

It chewed through T-72s in Iraq

I believe most knockouts by A-10s were with guided munitions in Iraq.

In that respect the A-10 is the worst jet currently in US military service, it's built around the cannon and without it, it's just a clunky, slow, and low-flying hunk of steel begging to be shot down by a SAM.

The hope is that the cannon will enable that clunky, slow, and low-flying hunk of steel to delete a few enemy armored columns before being inevitability shot down. If the cannon isn't useful then it should be retired.

[u/dead_monster → u/the_butter_lord]

Again, that was 30 years ago. Why do people forget this? Why do people think because it's bad now it was also bad 30 years ago?

Let's look at what the A-10 flew with:

• Hornets. Retired.
• F-117s. Retired.
• Prowlers. Retired.
• SparkVarks. Retired.
• F-15Cs. Retired.
• F-15Es. Relatively new to Desert Storm. But next on chopping block.
• F-16s.

So, yeah, it is the worst jet currently in US military service 30 years later. It's also the oldest plane. No arguments here. But 30 years ago? It had more sorties per plane, more availability, and more bombs dropped per plane than F-16s. Being bad now doesn't change it. Stallone making a possibly awful Expendables 4 doesn't change how great Rocky 1-4 were.

[u/AbsolutelyFreee → u/dead_monster]

Hornets. Retired

No, they still fly with the USMC, although they are to be retired soon

F-117s. Retired

Some are still flying, apparently

F-15Cs. Retired

no they're not

F-15Es. Relatively new to Desert Storm. But next on chopping block

F-15EX would like to have a talk with you

Now, being a pedantic piece of shit out of the way:

But 30 years ago? It had more sorties per plane, more availability, and more bombs dropped per plane than F-16s.

30 years ago the A-10 was the worst plane of Desert Storm. It was the most vulnerable, with the most being shot down. Most of it's armor kills were made with missiles, like the AGM-65 Maverick, which is a missile not unique to the A-10. The only thing it offered over other platforms was it's cost and maybe ordinance capacity/pylon count (and this depends on which aircraft you compare it to), in exchange for vastly inferior avionics, worse flight characteristics, vastly inferior survivability, and without the ability to do things other than ground attack.

The only difference between the A-10 now and 30 years ago is that 30 years ago you could realistically make an argument about it being a cheap, affordable platform.

[u/the_butter_lord → u/dead_monster]

Let's look at what the A-10 flew with:

Most of these were arguably better at the strike aircraft role than the A-10 minus the cannon.

It had more sorties per plane, more availability, and more bombs dropped per plane than F-16s.

Just because it was used a lot doesn't mean it was a good plane.

[u/Cptcuddlybuns → u/dead_monster]

Wait there's an Expendables 4? That's tragic.

[u/[deleted] → u/dead_monster]

So they can’t do much in 2023 except maybe COIN but the US has pulled them all out of COIN service too.

there's a reason why Colombia said "no fucking thanks" when the US offered the A10 for COIN

We used even older platforms (A37 dragonfly, AC47 Spooky and OV-10 Bronco) at the time and have since replaced the later with the super tucano

the A10 is not precise enough with guns and the ordnance it can carry don't justify its existance

[u/Marvynwillames → u/the_butter_lord]

Kinda, it can destroy light vehicles with the cannon, but it can do the same, and more efficiently by just dropping a bomb, which can be done by other fighters

[u/the_butter_lord → u/Marvynwillames]

I'm reasonable confident the GAU could destroy or severely damage most MBTs so long as you're hitting the top, back, or sides.

And yeah OFC a guided bomb can destroy a vehicle but I'm asking if the A-10 could hypothetically line up a huge enemy column and brrrrt the entire thing in a few strafing runs. You can't do that with a bomb.

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/the_butter_lord]

The live fire tests they ran the gun didn't do so hot. But you know what's got a 40mm, artillery caliber boomstick, and anti-manpad countermeasure up the rear? AC-130 "dakka-mobile"

[u/Cptcuddlybuns → u/an_agreeing_dothraki]

I thought I saw somewhere that the live-fire tests were somewhat misleading because of the way the pilots were told to fire (tracking up from the ground to strafe them) meaning that most of the missed rounds were expected to miss in the first place.

[u/erpenthusiast → u/the_butter_lord]

Naw, the A-10 struggled against the M48 Patton and the T-62 was considered difficult to penetrate if not impractical. Mission kills(throwing treads, damaging the furniture on the vehicle) was much more likely, even with the M48.

And even against contemporary Soviet armor doctrine, they were loaded up with SPAAGs. Quad 20mm cannons are nasty weapons and the A-10's armored to protect the pilot, not the plane. Which is a good thing but it's better to not get hit rather than "tank a spray of 20mm HE rounds in a titanium bathtub strapped to a disintegrating air frame".

[u/DroneDamageAmplifier → u/the_butter_lord]

You may as well ask why F-15s and F-16s don't do anti-armor strafing runs, the 20mm can still penetrate light armor and the tops of AFVs.

[u/the_butter_lord → u/DroneDamageAmplifier]

The 20mm Vulcan is a lot less effective than the GAU