I think we can take it higher than that: the US government generally is at fault for this for maintaining a system (largely due to an accident of history) that encourages inter-service competition, and therefore this sort of dispute.
The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines all do (in broad terms) the same job. So why do we have four branches? Why do we have three service academies? Why do we have (largely) separate bases? Why do we have three (four?*) completely different rank structures and hierarchies?
I’m aware that every country (with the possible exception of Japan?) does it this way, but I don’t see any good reasons why.
*I vaguely recall that the Marines operate more as a subdivision of the Navy than as a wholly separate branch, with Navy ranks and so on, and that Marine officers attend the USN Academy.
Because nobody else seems to have mentioned it, I would like to point out that the A-10 is not a fighter. It’s an attack jet, and has negligible air-to-air capabilities (I recall a single bit of anecdata that said an A-10 once shot down an Iraqi helicopter with the Avenger cannon. Then again, I recall a similar bit of anecdata than an Eagle driver once managed to bomb an Iraqi helicopter in flight, so maybe Iraqi pilots were just uniquely luckless).
For what the A-10 does, I’d be willing to bet money that a turboprop could do the same job just as well for a lower price tag. Against a first-rate enemy with Anti-air and air-to-air capabilities, the A-10 would rapidly suffer serious losses. To counter such a foe, you basically need the expensive sexy fast-movers which can move into range, identify, target, and lob munitions off at the anti-air sites, and haul ass to get out of Dodge with some chance of not being swatted for their trouble.
The A-10 is famously rugged, but it is not invincible, nor would it be the first plane with a reputation for ruggedness that would suffer severe losses (for example, the B-17 Flying Fortress, out of just over 12,000 built, over a third were lost in combat)
An F-35 can go slow and low enough for cannon fire, and then loop around in a tight enough turning radius for a second run?
I know tactically the idea isn’t "whatever you [A10] do I will do, so I’ve got it covered] isn’t the entire argument, but, tell me again (bits of this are discussed up this long thread): at what point/scenario as far as actually bringing pain to the enemy/saving our guys does the F-35 truly suck at that either the A10 or a hypothetical turboprop is the perfect can-opener? I.e., even if F-35s were free and given out like candy.
Except for the Academy your recall misses some aspects. The Marines and Navy were and still are administratively attached to the one Navy Department which in turn has been under DoD since 1948, but the USMC Commandant sits in the JCS as an equal peer of the Chief of Naval Operations. More like two subsets of one seaborne forces set. Even before then they already were more autonomous from the Navy than the Army Air Corps/Forces were from the Army, though they do continue to share with the Navy many administrative functions and support and training services (e.g. their medics are from the Navy). Like the UK Royal Marines, the USMC have historically used land force ranks (corporals, sergeants, majors, colonels, generals) instead of naval (petty officers, chiefs, ensigns, admirals).
I see that I may have fallen into what was discussed a year ago, by focusing on low slow cannon blazing. The following is an argument in the other direction from upscale-to-fighter, but addresses this.
So F16s and other fighters go after tanks and tank-sized objects all the time? (And we lose “good” close air support, but that’s the trade off.)
If the fast mover can detect the target on the ground (in the case of a tank, IR is the most likely way, or radar or a spotter on the ground), they can hit it from a ways off. In the Gulf War the Coalition air forces engaged in what they called “tank plinking”, basically hitting Iraqi armored vehicles with precision munitions from outside the Iraqis’ ability to shoot back.
If you needed open heart surgery would you go to a general practitioner? A podiatrist? If you were accused of a crime would you call an IP lawyer or an experienced criminal defense attorney? Doctors and lawyers in broad terms do things do the same thing as all other doctors and lawyers. Specialization can help create mastery. As you progress further up the chain joint assignments and commands over joint forces are more common.
There’s been moves away from that. The 2005 BRAC squished 26 separate bases together in to 12 joint bases
And on many military bases that belong to one branch, you may often find units from other branches and various other organizations based out of there for various reasons.
For CAS, how about general purpose helicopters armed with rockets & machineguns/miniguns or attack helicopters like the Cobra or Apache? Or even the AC-130?
By “sexy” do you mean “with 100 million dollars of EW-related systems”?
Also, it may be that aircraft like the F-22 and F-35 may not even need to lob munitions themselves; they may end up acting like special forces in Gulf War 1 or USAF combat controllers; Doing recce and calling in air strikes from launchers stationed beyond the horizon while only engaging in combat directly if things get bad.
You’re right, the F-35 can’t do that. In situations where you want CAS, you might be better served by a gunship/attack helicopter or an AC-130. They would have a much easier time keeping their aim on the enemy and wouldn’t need to loop around at all.
The expression “truly suck” is a bit much so may I replace that with “woefully inefficient”? That point/scenario is interdiction attacks launched from improvised runways against masses of armor in Europe while mainly facing 23mm from Shilkas and small arms fire at low altitude.
The A-10 is great at that because it’s what it was designed to do. I’m sure you know about the titanium bathtub. It’s designed to withstand what, mainly? 23mm (Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II - Wikipedia).
The US is much less likely to face masses of Russian armor and Shilkas now so maintaining a specialist aircraft makes less sense.
In a way, the A-10 is like the pikeman of the Middle-Ages. Great against heavy cavalry. Our modern heavy cavalry takes the form of iron gee-gees that are tanks. When cavalry became less of a concern and muskets increased in quantity and quality, specialist pikemen were phased out just like the A-10 has been being phased out.
Anti-air means have much improved to the point that ECM (including stealth) is the main forms of protection, not armor. Modern missiles using continuous rod warheads won’t just make holes like 23mm rounds, they will cut the plane in half.
Anti-air missiles have improved in terms of availability, range, speed, lethality, EW.
Against major enemies, being a highly observable, slow, anti-armor specialist that can withstand small arms fire, 23mm and some 57mm isn’t good enough. It’s preferable to have low observable multirole fighters. Multirole fighters are becoming the mainstay just like assault rifles became the mainstay of infantry weapons after WWII by replacing the more specialized SMGs and full power rifles; GPMGs became the mainstay by replacing weapons like the BAR or the M1919. Main battle tanks became a mainstay by replacing tank destroyers, assault guns and light tanks (e.g.:M3 Stuart). Are you seeing a pattern?
Against minor enemies like Iraqi or Syrian guerillas, being highly effective is not that important. Whether you’re shooting at Islamic rednecks in mud huts with 60 25mm rounds/s with an F-35 or 70 30mm rounds/s from an A-10 doesn’t make much difference. Relatively cheap guided missiles like the APKWS or the Spike* can do CAS well enough if they need to. As I said earlier, helicopters and the AC-130 are available as well. The AC-130 has a 40mm cannon and a 105mm howitzer.
I really should separately post this as a new thread in the long-running series “So, ISIS now has…” but since tactics/weapons/and real-world, this is where it’s at now.
Great weapon, it seems. Israel got bashed by them first and now upgrades them for sale.
Yes and no. From a procurement standpoint it’s probably a wash, yay (million here, million there, it’s chump change).
But from a very practical standpoint there’s always going to be fewer whizbang bombs and missiles lying around on Air Force bases and in ammo dumps than cannon shells. They’re larger, bulkier, more complicated to ship around and they’re more dangerous for the wrench jockeys to handle - drop a whole pallet of 30mm shells, nobody gives a shit ; drop a single 2000 pound cluster bomb in the middle of the hangar and suddenly you’re the asshole
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For CAS, how about general purpose helicopters armed with rockets & machineguns/miniguns or attack helicopters like the Cobra or Apache? Or even the AC-130?
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It’s kinda weird to be bashing the A-10 as fulfilling a narrow niche and pitching the AC-130 instead. That gun truck is more vulnerable, frequently overkill, cannot pitch stand-off munitions or smart bombs, can’t get close enough to visually ID its targets, can’t make use of subpar runways and certainly can’t do Wild Weasel or survive AA any better than the A-10.
Perhaps I should have made my argument more explicit. I am saying that for high threat environment against sophisticated enemies, you wouldn’t want to use the A-10 for CAS. Neither would you want to use the AC-130 and the helicopters would have to be carefully employed.
In a low threat environment against ISIS guerillas & such, there are sufficient alternatives to the A-10 which are superior in some ways like hovering (helos) or the pylon turn (AC-130).
The “C” in “AC-130” stands for cargo so it ought to be able to do that too. It has a payload of about 20 tons.*
Variants of the AC-130 can use AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, AGM-176 Griffin missiles, GBU-44/B Viper Strike glide bombs**, GBU-39 SDB and the GBU-53/B SDB II***
It can carry a synthetic aperture radar for high-resolution target detection and identification.
I don’t know whether or not it can take off from a subpar runway but I will note that turboprop engines tend to be better at short runway takeoffs than turbofans.
**With a glide ratio of 10:1 and the AC-130 ceiling of 9km, this suggests a range of about 90km. I don’t know what kind of range a SDB would get from that altitude.
Possibly, but the salient point is that it’s a much larger and heavier plane. So it needs more runway to takeoff, more runway to come to a halt and the design of its aft landing gear means it *really *needs a pristine runway.
The fact that it’s a much larger plane also means you’re not going to send one on short notice to deal with a surprise roadblock, or a lone ZSU interdicting a crossroads, or twenty guys with AKs crossing a border - that would be a massive waste.
You could send an Apache or two instead I suppose, but those have their drawbacks too - notably in terms of time-to-target ; possibly also the range & time the onboard fuel allows them to stick around on scene (though I’m more hazy on that one, and I think the A-10 can’t attach drop tanks - at least I’ve never seen a picture of that).
They’re also quite a bit less sturdy than the A-10 ; and like all helicopters they’re actively trying to kill their pilots at all times :p. From wikipedia :
(emphasis mine). You’re not going to get an Apache driver to hover that low, that close to an AK-47 (or an RPG-7 for that matter).
The A-10 can carry external fuel tanks but only for ferry flights according to this reference. It can also air to air refuel to extend its loiter time.
For your consideration if you compare an attack heli to the A-10:
One of the primary ways to avoid being shot down (and a perfectly valid EP technique) is by using terrain to your advantage and tracking a target cooking along at 325 kts will present you with a pretty short target window optically,IR or by radar, if the pilot knows their stuff.
One A-10 has 10 hardpoints which can be outfitted with a staggering array of different ordinance which an attack helicopter wouldn’t even get off the ground…
The A-10 is quiet for a jet. Sufficiently quiet that you aren’t going to hear it until it’s too late. While it’s not quite as sonically stealthy as an Apache, it’s not a shrieking banshee either.
“pylon turn”?#/media/File:Circlestrafing_animation.gif){kind=link}
