The Arkansas Air National Guard has C-130s and A-10s. I saw an A-10 flying around my piece of woods, and I was surprised at how comparatively quiet it was. I was also surprised at how low it was. I imagine they were looking for marijuana patches. 
Attack helicopters are also far more susceptible to tanks than a fast mover. Any remotely modern (think 80s on) fire control system is designed to deal with moving targets and doesn’t care if they are in contact with the ground or not. The difference in speed for fixed wing is enough to offer them significant protection from the main gun threat.
… wait what? Unless you are talking about dedicated anti-air missiles, a tank’s main gun can’t possibly hope to hit a moving aircraft.
Helicopters are regularly featured in US simulators for both gunnery and tactics. They aren’t hard to hit with the main gun.
They are if they utilize the terrain properly. One preferred tactic is to launch guided missiles from behind the terrain, kind of like lobbing grenades. This does require some method of acquiring the target on the other side (spotter on the ground, another helo exposing itself from a safer distance, targeting equipment on a periscope mount that can peak over the top, use of high-flying drones or aircraft, etc.) There was an exercise in Korea a few years back where USAF F-15s would paint targets while pushing 600 knots at 20,000ASL so Army Apaches could spam Hellfires from concealed positions.
Also, addressing the bit about bigger planes needing bigger runways: Not necessarily the case. Many smaller jet planes require considerable takeoff rolls because they need to be moving at a higher speed to generate enough lift with their tiny wings. IIRC, an F-16 requires a much longer runway than a C-130.
For the AC-130 vs the A-10, it would be a question of weight, acceleration, and stalling characteristics for the two aircraft. Generally speaking, the heavier you load an aircraft, the more runway it needs. A big plane that might require X distance to take off with a full load of fuel and cargo might only need X/2 distance if carrying lighter loads over shorter distances (which could be the difference of a ferrying flight to deploy the plane to its operating theater vs launching on a specific mission in the region).
Also, the AC-130 requiring pristine runways must be a thing specific to the AC-130, because the stock C-130 certainly isn’t so picky from anything I’ve heard.
Did they land C-130s in the desert during the Iranian hostage attempt?
Right. Terrain masking is a helo’s best friend, and that’s the reason for mast-mounted sensor-targeting hardware on Kiowas and the like: peek over the hill with a “periscope” and pitch Hellfires over the crest from cover. Better yet, I guess, if someone else is spotting the shot and painting your target, like the F-15 “Fast FAC” you’re talking about.
But not all terrain is amenable to hide-and-pop tactics like that, in which case an attack helicopter is terribly vulnerable. And it’s not an option to say “Sorry, no CAS, can’t attack from cover”, and it’s a poor option to say “Ok, we’re going in to provide air support, please rescue us when we get shot down.”
That’s that little space where the A-10 is perfect. Slow enough and armed for danger-close support, but sturdy enough to make that mission something more than a suicide attack.
Yeah, they did. But let’s not hold that fiasco up as an example of how anything is supposed to work.
The basic C-130 is hella rugged and pretty capable of ops from garbage ground conditions. If I were to speculate, I’d say that the sensitivity of the AC-130 is the sensor hardware, not the airframe.
Tactical methods to deal with the weakness doesn’t mean the weakness isn’t there. Some ground based vehicle mounted ATGM systems are basically the same. They can fire with almost the entire system unexposed. If exposed within effective main gun range, helicopters aren’t much different than on ground targets for a relatively decent tank fire control system. It’s still a limit than an attack helicopter has to work around that fixed wing can largely* ignore because of their increased speed. The f-15s painting the targets is a key example of the difference. The fast movers were free to expose themselves while the helicopters hid from effective fires.
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- I do know someone that managed to take down an SU-25 with a HEAT round in a tactical simulator. It involved a perfect situation (the plane started a gun run basically down the azimuth the gun was already facing), a skilled crew, and a hefty dose of luck.
Are there any talks to retire the F-16? Its cost of flight per hour is close to the A-10’s and it’s a lot more flexible. It can also carry a somewhat larger payload and go faster.
To those who talk up the ruggedness of the A-10; It’s quite true that it’s more likely to survive small arms and 23mm fire than the F-35. Do you think it would be likely to survive a continuous-rod warhead? If so, why?
Note that when I mentioned helicopter and the AC-130, I mentioned them as options which are part of a range. I should also have mentioned UAVs and the F-16. There are certainly situations where you wouldn’t want to use helicopters (flat terrain against an enemy with manpads) and in those cases, you would other some of the other options like the F-16 (for safety) or a UAV (for minimized risk in case of hit).
If ever we find ourselves against an enemy with masses of tanks and anti-air assets similar to that of the 70s and 80s, the A-10 will be an absolutely great weapon system to have. But for now and the forseable future, it’s gone the way of the tank destroyer and assault gun from WWII.
And with modern weapons being what they are, something like a B-1B might be even better, hauling ass over the battlefield and slinging off precision munitions at the massed vehicles. As I understand, the A-10 was always expected to be an expendable resources in a Fulda Gap scenario. I’m not sure it’d even prove very effective until the fast movers and heavies have sufficiently softened the battlefield for them, leaving them fragmented formations of enemies rather than a massed and well-defended force.
Depends where it hits I suppose. The A-10 is reportedly designed to be able to fly home with half of a wing, one reactor and half the vertical stabs sheared right off. Dunno if they ever put that spec to a field test though
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And with modern weapons being what they are, something like a B-1B might be even better, hauling ass over the battlefield and slinging off precision munitions at the massed vehicles.
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But that’s really really not the kind of CAS the modern US armed forces need these days. The Rooskies are not gonna pour through the Fulda gap in armored columns backed by three thousand artillery tubes any more. The modern army plans on fighting insurgents with technicals, mortars and the odd looted tank, not another modern army.
So they need something you can tell “behind that wall, there’s three guys shooting at us, we’d like you to blow them up, but only scatter them over a relatively small area please because we’re on the other side of the wall. OK, good, next, this rooftop across the street from us…”
“Reactor” ?
Now, let’s get back to reality here. There are plenty of pics of A-10s which were hit by SA-7 or SA-16 and made it home with significant damage. But those missiles have about a pound of explosives in them.
But modern threats like S-300 or S-400s have about 200 pounds of explosives, and are extremely serious threats to fourth generation fighters. This is exactly why Israel decided it needs a fifth generation aircraft with stealth. No airplane can take damage from missiles like that. The only way to survive is not be detected.
Not to get hit, rather. Even if detected, there are ways of not having those 200 pounds blow up in your face.
In French and Spanish a jet engine is a “reaction engine” a.k.a. “reactor”. Kobal2’s mother tongue is French.
Ah…
Well, then: Bon jour!
It is really unlikely you’ll even see an S-300 or S-400 anywhere near the battle front. Assets like that are reserved for deep behind the lines, and so far as I know, the Russians aren’t exporting them. Even something like a Kub (Sa-6) or Buk (Sa-11), which are two of the most deployed SAMs in the world, can be relatively easily defeated at low level, which is precisely the regime the A-10 excels at. No other plane has the combination of speed, durability, loiter and payload except maybe the Frogfoot (which was modelled after the A-10 and is supersonic to boot). That is why the A-10 is going to be around for a little longer, I suspect.
Stealth pretty much goes out the window once you’re in an optical regime, for that matter, and as we’ve discussed the theatres most CAS aircraft are going to be in for the foreseeable future are going to be filled with MANPADs, RPGs and some AAA, not S-400s.
I have no idea where you get your information, but the S-300 has been sold to something like 20 countries, and the first sale of the S-400 was just approved for China.
And let’s also clarify one thing again. Though it wasn’t directly stated in your post, many people believe that the A-10 was built for close air support. In actuality, its main purpose was interdiction - to strike in enemy territory against masses of armor long before the armor was in contract with friendly forces. As you say, the A-10 is no longer up to that job against a modern opponent with integrated air defense systems. It has adopted the CAS mission, which it is good at, but we’re glossing over the stuff that it can no longer do. Like interdiction against a near-peer competitor.