American Mercenary is a fellow blogger that I've been following religiously for a couple of months now. Like few others, he's able to boil important facts into a paragraph or two and end debate with his sound logic. His thoughts on the USAF decision to scrap the A-10 follows...
Right now the USAF has more personnel assigned to it than the US Army. Right now the USAF is talking about downsizing their fleet of tactical aircraft. Proven tactical aircraft. We let the USAF hog the budget, buy nifty toys, then declare them "strategic" and never deploy those toys. The F-35 has been sold as a "silver bullet solution" to people, and they are convinced that this one system will solve all problems. This is ignoring a basic tennet of warfare, you don't need one system, you need the right mix of systems and capabilities.Extremely well said (told ya so).
Cavalry sucks on its own. Armored Brigade Combat Teams don't have the dismounts for effective urban operations. Stryker Brigades lack the heavy punch needed for effective spearhead operations. Infantry Brigade Combat Teams don't travel fast or hit hard in open terrain. Take the strengths of each, and use it to cover the weaknesses of the others, and now you have an effective fighting force.
The USAF is literally ignoring this rule with their "high, fast, and stealthy" mentality of aircraft. We need low and slow to support the ground. The "lets cut the C-27 and A-10 to keep the F-35" is just one more reason to let the Army have fixed wing assets again, because we really do care about low and slow.
The irony is this. If by some miracle the US Army is able to get A-10s and C-27s you can bet Marine units will be asking for support. We're betting the farm on the F-35 to the exclusion of everything else too. Hell, if my thoughts on boat spaces are correct we might even need to have a few Stryker platoons on float with us.
Presently scrapping the A10 would be a major mistake, it is still a highly effective platform and vastly supperior(completely ignoring airfield reqs) than attack helicopters. The types of systems required to deny the A10 access are either yet to be deployed(in part or whole) or currently non-existent by most powers. The systems to defeat the munitions such as active defence systems, countermeasures like lasers, radar jammers etc..etc.. face the same conditions. Premature retirement would leave a major capabilities gap(with no plan of replacing), doing so to fund a program designed to create an even bigger capabilities gap is even less intelligent.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be surprised if we mothball them that one day we would have to recommission them in a hurry, then again USAF might just decide to have them destroyed quicky and quietly after they are mothballed so US Army of Marine corps couldn't use them...wouldn't surprise me one bit.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a political move by the AF to energize the Army against sequestration while keeping the JSF.
ReplyDeleteThe chief of US Air Combat Command:
With the F-35 coming online to take over the close-air support role, the venerable Thunderbolt II will be a likely target, Gen. Mike Hostage told reporters at the Air Force Association's Air and Space Conference.
“This is not something I want to do,” Hostage said, explaining that no decisions had been made.
Hostage said he had already talked to Army officials about losing the A-10 and using other jets to take over the close-air support role. The Army was “not happy” about the possibility, Hostage said.
Hostage said the service can do the close-air support role with the F-35, but it would be more expensive and “not as impressive” without the famous GAU-8 Avenger 30 millimeter gun.
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130917/DEFREG02/309170032/USAF-General-10-Fleet-Likely-Done-Sequestration-Continues
This has come up before. Mother Jones, Jan 2012:
"Is the F-35 going to be as good a close-air support platform as an A-10? I don't think anybody believes that," Adm. James Winnefeld, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Military Times. "But is the A-10 going to be the air-to-air platform that the F-35 is going to be? So again, the Air Force is trying to get as much multimission capability into the limited number of platforms it's going to have."
The real driver in this decision is political: A relatively cheap and low-tech aircraft doesn't help the Air Force justify huge future budgets; the luxury price tag of the F-35 does.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/a-10-f-35-air-force-budget
Well would you fly your 162M+ (and growing) plane within range of enemy cannon/rocket fire to fire of rockets/missiles (even though I think it has less hardpoints for them, requiring probably like 2 for every A10 324M)... Not to mention that the F35 wont be available until maybe 2019. Obviously the F35 will NOT BE PERFORMING CAS(Leaving a large capacity gap for the USMC). As a substitute F15s flying mid-high altitude dropping sensor fuzed munitions might be acceptable, but that would redirect them from other duties and that is assuming US SEAD is good enough to operate in the new AD environment. Claiming that they are going to perform CAS is a blatent lie.
DeleteAviation Week editorial: "Since its formation in 1947, the U.S. Air Force has tended toward the high end of the combat-aircraft spectrum. . ."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_09_16_2013_p58-615654.xml
Sol, perhaps a post in the future might deal with the purpose of the USAF because the Air Farce has lost it's way.
ReplyDeleteI think Army should offer to give Air Farce the National Missile Defense in return for the A-10 and C27.
Maybe Tac Air should be split up and give all the ground attack/CAS mission to Army and the air superiority to the Air Farce. Each service could develop its own single-purpose aircraft. Army should just tell the fly boys, "you fly air superiority, we'll drop the bombs".
Yeah, it should be divided up based upon mission, not aircraft characteristics, and CAS should be an Army mission.
DeleteCaptain America is a comic book figure. So is the USAF F-35 plan.
ReplyDeleteWord on the supposed unaffordibility of the F-35.
ReplyDeleteI just skimmed through the financials of the DoD to see what the real money budget on aircraft procurement was.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2013USbn_14bs2n_3031_051#usgs302
Seems to me we have 40+ billion a year to spend on procuring new planes between navy, AF, and the army. (I didn't see a marine procurement item on the list but maybe i missed it or it could be rolled into the navy aircraft budget?
Now obviously we would spend all of that on the F-35 I imagine, but I also imagine the F-35 is gonna be much cheaper a few years down the road. (like below 80 million flwa cost)
Even if the F-35 was a whooping 165 million we could still buy 242 F-35s a year on the current 2013 aircraft procurement budget without making dips into anything else. In reality the price will be MUCH less than that per plane later on (i believe right now they have it down to 112 million per plane and it keeps dropping every year) but I took the extreme price as an example since I was using the entire 40 billion aircraft procurement budget to size things up.
In 10 years of that even at the most expensive price point we would have well over our target of 2,000 planes without what seems to be destroying the budget for anything else.
Then yea there is life time maintenance and upgrades, but from what I've thats 1 trillion of 50 years, how is that a big deal seeing we have dug ourselves in 15 trillion in debt in a decade or so?
"Now obviously we would NOT spend all of that on the F-35 I imagine"
Delete"But even if the F-35 was a whooping 165 million we could still buy 242 F-35s a year on the current 2013 aircraft procurement budget without making dips into anything>"
Sorry typos.
I know the sequester is coming, but the math of 242 planes is also at the extreme 165 mil price tag. I think sequester is less of a big deal affecting the numbers that a 50% drop in price of each plane. (DoD thinks the price will average out to about 78 million a plane, but they do seem to be constantly revising this down and lockheed insist it will be lower. Of course they are biased as hell, but as the developers it might count for something.
Why would you want to buy 242 units a year of a plane that we already know can't perform adequately and is unreliable, with less than half of the development testing completed and the operational testing not even scheduled to start for three years, and even that schedule is in doubt?
ReplyDeleteperformance:
F35A thrust/weight 80% of F16
F35A wing loading 117% of F16
Already the F-35 program office had changed performance specs for all three JSF variants.
reliability:
Overall suitability performance demonstrates the lack of maturity in the F-35 as a system in developmental testing and as a fielded system at the training center. Demonstrated Mean Flight Hours Between Critical Failure for the F-35A was 5.95 hours, lower than predictions.
Whilst cancelling the A10 presently, is not a good idea people have to keep in mind that we are not in the 70s/80s anymore, nations left right and center are procuring large cannoned APCs and uparmouring. SAM missile procurement (like javalin, will continue). And example of a platform that may be start being typical in 10-20 years is the PL01, and examples of systems that could be retrofitted to existing systems are the LFK_NG and the SAB_150.
ReplyDelete>http://www.armyrecognition.com/poland_polish_tanks_heavy_armoured_vehicles_uk/pl-01_concept_direct_fire_support_vehicle_technical_data_sheet_specifications_pictures_video.html
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LFK_NG
where is this idea that the Javelin is an effective anti-air missile coming from????
DeleteWoops it isn't even a MANPAD... I don't think MANPADS would kill CAS as they arent really useful for maneuver forces, but the trend is one that continues. I would be more concerned about the large cannons which could be turned against the CAS, the Vertically Launched SAMS and the systems designed to defeat CAS munitions.
DeleteI would far prefer to be in an A10 than a F35B doing CAS. You have 2 engines widely separated in the A10. F35 program had to remove parts of the fire suppression system to lose weight. A10 is a simple design, built to fly with bits and pieces missing. A10 will bring you back home as it has proven combat record, F35 still has to show it can take some punishment and come back home.
DeleteI would too, the F35 is even less survivable in a low-level cas environment than the A10, not to mention costs a fortune and doesnt have the hardpoint configuration for low-level CAS. It cant excel in mid-high level bombing because it lacks the manouverability (speed, accelartion, range, turn rates) and payload of systems like the F15 (to drop say sensor fused munitions).
DeleteExcept out of share desperation (by the USMC) I doubt that the F35 will be used in low-level CAS.