LAS is a program to build a light turboprop attack aircraft for the Afghan military. It has nothing to do with any US Air Force plans to operate the aircraft; there are none. In fact, the buy of aircraft for Afghanistan seems to be trimmed back because of an inspector general report highlighting the lack of capable pilots. http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/awx_07_30_2013_p0-602380.xml
Ah. Oh, and—utterly late for the party—I have to bring up a small note about the AH-64’s bombload.
That is, it doesn’t have one.
It’s not unarmed—it can carry Hellfire missiles, 70mm rockets, or air-to-air Stingers (I’ve seen references to TESTING with AIM-9s, but not operational use).
However, it can’t carry iron bombs. It can’t carry PGMs. It can’t carry cluster bombs. It can’t carry napalm. It can’t carry Small Diameter Bombs. It can’t carry guided inert “concrete” bombs. It can’t carry mines. It can’t carry the AGM-65. It can’t carry tear gas—well, not that that’s exactly in fashion these days, and you’d have to break out museum pieces or convert some napalm canister.
The AH-64 is a perfectly capable combat vehicle, and it does things the A-10 can’t. And the Warthog does things an Apache can’t—several thousand pounds worth.
That’s all true. I wonder which method is preferable to the men on the ground and those commanding them in terms of CAS for mobile infantry? I suspect it’s a little of both, and “it depends”.
The A-10’s bomb load dates back from that period in history where the person who dropped the bomb also had to be the person who aimed the bomb. Thankfully, those days are long gone.
A freefall bomb is never a particularly desirable weapon for anyone except accountants. Employing them with any degree of accuracy means overflying the target, meaning exposing the platform to everything in the world that can fire back.
Anyway, bombs don’t have the market cornered on versatility. Hydras come in HE, HEAT, cluster, flechette, smoke, flare and white phosphorous flavors.
Also, how in the world does the Hellfire not count as a Precision Guided Munition? It’s supposed to be more accurate than the Maverick, especially on moving targets, and the platform can sight targets a lot better than fixed-wing can. For low-intensity work, it’s also going to inflict a lot less collateral damage due to a smaller / more focused warhead, and more of them can be carried, besides.
Now I once read years ago that the A10 actually held its own in air to air combat.
Compared with faster jets like the F16 it could turn in a smaller circle and could use its main gun to take out other aircraft. It was also hard for the other jets to get a good missile lock on.
So while they wont win air superiority, its not like they are sitting ducks either.
I also heard they were one of the most feared aircraft by the Iraqis in the gulf war.
Are you kidding me? “held its own???” That’s just nuts.
If the Army want’s this capability so bad, they should buy it. Money talks and Bull S walks. I’m certain that’s what the Air Force told the Army, and since they haven’t coughed up the money, I don’t think they want it bad enough.
A modern fighter would take it out before it reached dogfighting range - probably long before the A-10 even spotted it. Missiles have come a long way in the past couple of decades.
Comparing a B-1 to an A-10 is a a little insane though. The B-1 is a strategic bomber and the product of a clusterfuck procurement, and tremendously unsuited for close air support. Of course, comparing an F-35 to an A-10 is also insane, given the cost and trouble of the current procurement clusterfuck.
<armchair general>
IMO with a continually shrinking budget the Air Force shouldn’t try to replace their entire fleet with the most high-tech and expensive planes in the world. A more sane long term strategy for the Air Force would be to develop a dedicated stealth strike fighter now, in smaller numbers. Then, several years down the road, they would replace the F-16 with a stealthy-ish, cheap multi-role fighter (Which was the original idea for the JSF before the project metastasized). Around this time the A-10 would be getting pretty long in the tooth and they could make a much more rational comparison between maintaining half-century-old tank busters versus buying a few more Super F-16s.
And the Navy and Marines would be getting their own damn planes, rather than making the taxpayer pay for a development process full of contradictory design requirements.
</armchair general>
(Also, I take the opportunity to ask how the 105 cannon – see vid --is aimed. The pilot orients the aircraft? The rack/chute loader guys don’t seem to have say.)
Of course, the key problem with the whole A10-B1 fiasco above is that ground control a hundred or more miles from the taget should not be the one with the hard-on for dropping weapons no matter what they see.
Any such air support should be specifically identifiable from arial photos and “intelligence” well ahead of time, or directed by observers on the ground if it is close support. The B1 was capable of dropping precisely on a target from high altitude given guidance from ground electronics. (Just don’t reset the target electronics before the bomb drop).
That suggestion just isn’t realistic at all. Any stealth fighter takes a very long time to develop: the F-22 competition began in 1986, a fly-off in 1991, procurement began in the late 1990s and was complete just a few years ago.
The Chinese J-20 program probably began in the late 1990s, had a first flight a couple years ago, and will be fielded beginning in 3-5 years or so (if there are no problems).
The Russian PAK-FA probably began in the late '80s, had a first flight in 2010, and might be fielded in the next few years.
The idea of designing a new stealth aircraft for either small numbers, or simply making it affordable, is at odds with the expense related to the necessary time of development.
The Marines are actually the strongest proponents of the F-35. Without it, they have no jets that can operate off of big-deck amphibious ships. Without jets, those ships aren’t useless, but their utility as helicopter carriers would be extremely limited, and probably make the ships a waste of money.
AC-130s are currently being upgraded from mostly 30+ year old AC-130H models to brand new AC-130J models. They will be in service for probably decades to come. The cannon is aimed by a sensor operator, not the loaders.
Two A-10 vids just showed up in a row on Air Boyd. I wonder if that’s a coincidence or part of public relations/politics. Stars and Stripes just covered it also.
As others have said, the B-1B can be effective at CAS, but only if they have a good spotter, whether it’s a guy on the ground, or a plane better suited to going in for a close look (such as an A-10) who could tell them where to place the shot, or where not to (as the A-10 pilot tried to do).
Of course, this only works if the guy making the decision actually listens to the guy on the ground (as none of them did in this scenario). An A-10 pilot who didn’t put his foot down about it being a bad target would have killed just as many people as the B-1B aircrew did.
