I’m pretty sure that the A-10 would still be severely limited in this function compared to the P-3C Orion or P-8 Poseidon. It doesn’t really have the sensors for the maritime role either. The only advantage it has is that it uses cheaper ordnance than those planes, since those planes lack a gun.
P-3C finds 'em, A-10 kills 'em.
The inability to land on a carrier, plus the 400mi there-and-back range, severely limits the naval situations where it can operate.
Plus I think these missions mostly don’t involve turning the target vessel into an oily paste.
I would think that if this type of mission required CAS firepower, then the Navy or Coast Guard would’ve already tried it with an F-18. That they have not (to my knowledge) tells you that an A-10 probably wouldn’t be a good fit either.
I don’t think the A-10 is ever going to be competitive again in any role other than an Afghanistan situation, just absolutely pulverizing unsophisticated insurgents (plus a few civilian wedding parties). Hopefully we won’t see the US inolved in that kind of disgrace in the future.
Wouldn’t a drone be better than any of these?
FWIW, there is a scene in The Hunt for Red October where Tom Clancy has a flight of A-10s make a menacing approach to some Russian warships, sending a clear message of “this plane isn’t even designed for this and still would have ruined your whole day before you could have done anything about it.” But HfRO is a fictional novel written by a former insurance agent so take it with a grain of (sea) salt.
It’s illegal to shoot smugglers or pirates. They need arresting, not sinking. The A-10 can’t arrest anybody.
Once we get that little obstacle out of the way it’d still be a crappy tool for the mission. Not enough range, no sensors to find targets, etc.
True. Ish. 5000 ft altitude and 3 miles slant range is no sanctuary unless your enemy only has small arms.
Ultimately CAS depends on their being no significant enemy air defense. Whether the ordnance delivered is guns up close, dumb bombs from intermediate altitude 3 miles away, smart bombs from high altitude 15 miles away, or air-launched smart missile/bombs from 100 miles away.
As Ukraine is teaching both sides, achieving the air defense-free zone to perform CAS is a tall order.
Given modern GPS & network-centric warfare, the CAS mission can better be performed by Army artillery shooting high accuracy guided shells.
Back when I was a Forward Air Controller, the only way to perform the CAS mission of figuring out which tree the friendlies were hiding behind and which tree the baddies were hiding behind was to go down there and look. Then try to describe to the fighters which tree is the one to hit and which is the one to miss. The A-10 was built for that bygone era. We may as well be talking about reviving F-4s or B-29s.
Yeah. I really don’t get people’s obsession with finding a new purpose for the A-10. Why keep trying to find a niche for a 50+ year-old platform at a time when abundant superior alternatives exist? It feels like people are making it into a solution in search of a problem just because it’s fun to think of a plane built around a giant gun.
Congress keeps it alive because they love to be seen as supporting the Army. Vets love that fanservice and by far the Army has the most vets.
BTW can’t help but notice the Navy/Marines seemed more able to cleanly give up on needing a purpose-dedicated CAS fixed-wing platform. I supposed it helped not having the A7 or Harrier become “iconized” as the A-10 was.
(For piracy/drug interdiction though, yeah, you can usually do good enough with just putting door gunners on a helicopter, like the Coast Guard started doing a little bit back. Keep it parked on the back of the ship, then launch as needed. To be used for purposes of “disabling” the suspect vessel, natch.)
I don’t think that’s actually true. As I understand it, the A10 is by far the best close air support aircraft we have, which was not its original purpose. It has also proven to be very versatile for different types of ground attacks. There are other aircraft that can do the role we’ve been using it for, but they don’t do it as well.
The main argument for years has been that the other aircraft can also perform other roles that the A10 can’t do, so you get more overall bang for your buck by using other aircraft. But for what the A10 has been used for, the A10 does it best. That’s the argument for keeping it.
If we get into a war with China or Russia, the A10 probably isn’t going to do us much good. The A10 needs air superiority. But if we’re fighting Iran or North Korea, the A10 would probably come in very handy.
Yes, the A10 is an old aircraft. So is the B52. Yes, there are “better” aircraft than the A10, just as there are better bombers than the B52. But these old aircraft do serve a purpose.
Personally, I have no idea if the A10 is obsolete on the modern battlefield or not. But while the A10 might be useless against a foe like China, I think we’re much more likely to end up in a shooting war with someplace like Iran.
Here are a couple of youtube videos that make a pretty good case against the A-10. I’m not a military expert, but I find the arguments for shelving the A-10 persuasive.
The guy is more than somewhat hyperbolic, but I think he makes a good case.
I was in the military back in the 80’s, and the arguments over the A-10 currently remind me of the arguments that they had then over re-commissioning the Iowa class battleships. In the end it did become apparent that they weren’t cost effective. I think the A-10s are obsolete for similar reasons.
In the same way that an aircraft carrier can do anything a battleship can do, and much more besides, an F-16 can do anything an A-10 can do, and more besides. The youtube videos I linked to above go into some detail about that.
I’m not sure that the idea that the platform is overly vulnerable is necessarily accurate.
Let’s say that I make a billion handguns for $2 each that the troops can strap to their chest, and they can run in all John Wick and - mostly - get shot to death like idiots but occasionally actually take out 1 or 2 other people. Say that I’ll get 1 enemy death for every 10 that I build (so $2b = 200m killed) Or, alternately, I can spend $2b building a self-propelled grenade that has a 80% chance of taking out a group of about 6 people ($2b = ~4 killed).
Somewhere in there, there’s some optimum for killing and that may lean more towards dumb, cheap, and simple. Though, likewise, there’s some optimum for keeping our own guys from getting killed, and that number probably leans towards fancy, precise, and not particularly deadly.
My sense would be that US tech and military strategy leans quite heavily towards the latter.
Against an opponent like China, though, assuming that they’re going to come with a similar strategy is relatively unlikely. Sure, they might throw in a few of the ultra-high-tech options but, for the large bulk of activity, they’ll be throwing guys on fishing boats with 1910s era rifles, to go swamp and invade Taiwan. Russia, for example, is holding their high-tech airplanes back over their own territory because it’s just not economical for killing and a protracted war.
If you’ve got the high-tech stuff that’s stationed inland being suppressed with our own fancy tech, that still leaves you with a sheer ant army of barbarian squads that are best dealt with through brute bullet per second counts.
No, the best way to deal with an ant army of barbarian squads is with good old-fashioned 155mm tube artillery.
Is there a plane with those?
There is one with 105mm artillery, but it’s even bigger and more vulnerable than the A-10.
We probably need cheap, expendable drone gunships.
No doubt about it. We should be building thousands of air frames right now while continuing to develop propulsion, control, and arms options for different circumstances. We need them as gunships, bombers, and fighter planes. The whole systems is too heavily vested in conventional aircraft, thousands and thousands or jobs, billions of dollars, plus supply, training, and management logistics built around the conventional war planes. We’ll figure it out right after it’s too late.
As I mentioned above, if you define the role as flying really low to the ground and carrying a giant cannon, in the complete absence of any AA, the A-10 is the only game in town. That’s the iconic concept of CAS, but it is absolutely not the only way, nor ideal way, nor a superior way to do it.
The A-10 has been ineffective against adversaries with modern AAA almost as soon as it rolled off the production line in the 1970’s. Having the coolest gun in the world doesn’t mean a thing if you have no radar to detect the modern anti-aircraft system you’re facing.
Also, allegedly, the gun isn’t very accurate.
They still have PT boats too, but they’re smart enough to launch the torpedos from 30 miles away.