I’m no expert, but maybe he meant sustained ground attack in a small area?
The A-10 and AC-130 are basically flying heavy weapon turrets that can stay in an area and pound armored targets / buildings without using up all their ammunition quickly.
Fighter jets are usually limited to their ordinance of missiles/bombs/rockets; their guns (if they have 'em) are useful against other aircraft, but not necessarily tanks and buildings. They also fly fast, potentially requiring repeated back-and-forth flights over an area. They’re also, for the most part, not shielded against ground fire.
Helicopters are more maneuverable and can hover in an area, but they too are limited to their missiles/rockets against armored targets. They’re also a lot slower and more vulnerable than an A-10.
The A-10 has a huge gatling gun that can very well obliterate tanks on its own in ADDITION to its loadout of missiles/rockets/bombs. It can strafe columns/convoys of ground targets like nothing else (at least not for the same price of ammunition). It’s also a rather solidly-built plane and the pilot is shielded by a titanium bathtub under the cockpit.
A-10s and most 130 variants with the exception of the very oldest airframes in the inventory which are scheduled for retirement, are all in various stages of received/receiving/or scheduled to receive various combinations of newer more efficient/powerful engines, the latest glass cockpit, GPS and laser-guided nav-targeting and AESA radar upgrades, giving them service life extensions and/or incredibly effective modern attack capabilities never seen before.
The C-130J is a totally new version of the C-130. Lockheed is building brand new ones and selling them all over the world.
It’s not that the A-10 or AC-130 aircraft have any technological advantages over the multirole fighter-bombers such as the British Tornadoes and Typhoons or US F/A-18E/Fs and F-16s.
It’s that they’re completely and only optimized for ground attack roles. In other words, the A-10 and AC-130 do what they do better than the other planes. The other planes can do it, and do a lot of other things, but the dedicated attack planes do it a little bit better.
And like Alessan said, only the most affluent air forces can afford dedicated ground-attack planes, so it’s pretty much only the US who has them in the west, although many former Soviet and former Soviet satellite states still operate Su-25 Frogfoot attack planes.
That would be false. They are technologically equipped to do it far better - more effectively, more efficiently, and more of it for longer periods of time on station.
See above. They do it much, much better.
Have you seen Saudi Arabia’s milair budget? Quatar bought some C-17s a few years ago. They are not cheap. Japan has the latest F-15s with greater capabilities than our most current models of that particular fighter. It’s not about money, it’s about requirements. They don’t view dedicated close air support as a priority or high level requirement because they simply don’t engage in those type military activities.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that there is nothing so sensitive about the A-10 and the AC-130 that they couldn’t be sold to foreign countries (in contrast to the F-22, which law specifically prohibits foreign sales due to the incredible sensitivity of the technology involved).
Just look at the AC-130: the airframes are like forty years old, the weapons were designed more than half a century ago, the sensors are from the late 1980s, and it takes quite a large crew by current standards to operate the thing. There just isn’t anything terribly secret or magical about the aircraft, other than we are willing to operate an old aircraft to do a very specific mission, which it does very well.
In fact, the current fleet of AC-130s are planned to be replaced over the next several years because they are so damned old. They will be replaced by AC-130Js which have modern cockpits, airframes, weapons, and sensors; but even still, it isn’t like there is some reason why some other country can’t get their hands on similar technology – it’s just there probably is no interest in paying for such a niche aircraft.
But the F-35, which is a multinational joint venture building off the F-22, will carry an even greater order of technological sophistication in terms of the advanced electronics, stealth, sensor integration, software, materials, etc.
The F-22 export restriction was a political deal, and has in fact been questioned for this very reason. It likely will be exported in some reduced functional version at some point.
The issue is that NATO is very sensitive about civilian causalities and the A-10 and AC-130 are the only two aircraft that can safely do the really close-in air support role within cities where the fighting is actually going on. The European multi-role aircraft can pound the supply lines and such, but are simply not designed for such a close-in role.
We have few aircraft of any description (and even fewer now) because we’re not prepared to spend very much on defence. They have to be made to do many things moderately well, not one big thing very well. The Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) concept back in the '70s (which eventually emerged as the Tornado) was an international project which was highly political and which had to placate the various using factions in England, West Germany and Italy. Various other nations were supposed to participate, but all dropped out citing various reasons and the number of a/c manufactured ended up being cut sharply from the original order.
What you phrase “political deal” is what others might call an act of Congress.
The chances of an F-22 ever being exported are slim and none, and slim is on its way out of town. The production line will be completely closed down within a year, it will be prohibitively expensive to reopen it, and even the one real potential customer – the Japanese government – seems to have completely dropped their interest in the F-22 due to the extremely high cost of restarting the line – and the prospects of changing US law on the matter.
Japan is now looking at the F-35, among other aircraft.
If you’re up on Osceola or Carrigain or even Sandwich Dome they sometimes swoop below you. I’ve stared out from rock cliffs straight across into the pilot’s eyes as they go by. Gotta love that.
It’s dense, it’s very hard yet doesn’t shatter like some other hard but brittle metals. It’s pyrophoric. Shards and scrapings as the projectile penetrates the target burst into flame igniting ammunition, fuels, hydraulics, and batteries.
The Air Force also has HEI (high explosive incendiary) 30mm rounds. These may be a solid load (all HEI) or mixed with TP (target practice) rounds. The TP rounds are high quality steel and will do similiar damage to vehicles as the DU round would. Useful for training and also to avoid the “stigma” of DU.
Note that while US DU rounds are for all intents and purposes inert (you can’t get a reading above backgound radiation levels from them); some foreign “DU” rounds are a fair amount more active.
Depleted uranium is still radioactive - about 60% as much as natural occurring uranium. You right though that it’s mass is why it’s used as ammo. As an added bonus, uranium also catches fire pretty easily when exposed to air, if the round happens to hit the targets ammo supply, it’ll set it off.
According to Wikipedia, somewhere between 17 to 20 countries use depleted uranium in their arsenals and 18 countries manufacture it, so I don’t think that has any bearing on whether or not the A-10 and AC-130 are sold.
Since when was an act of congress not a political deal? :rolleyes:
And what makes you think Lockheed wouldn’t jump at the chance to gen up that line? Do you think they just scrap the tooling? Do you know how much it cost that congress in it’s infinite wisdom to repeatedly cut the F22 buys and ultimately shut it down?
So basically the A-10 does the job of an helicopter (they’re VTOL?)? Is why they are being used? The parameters of the UN missions say no copters, only planes?
No, the A-10 is not V/STOL. It does, however, fly low and slow and can turn on a dime. Well, maybe a quarter. It’s better armed and armoured than helicopters. Helicopters fly low and slow, and are also very maneuverable. However they are limited in the arms and ordnance they can carry. They can also be more vulnerable to ground fire. There are some fine tank-busting helicopters out there.
No, that’s not quite it. An A-10 (and AC-130) can do a sort of sustained close air support – fly in, drop bombs on primary targets, and then fly around the battlefield strafing any reasonable target. Or just loiter, waiting for ground forces to identify targets. Other strike fighters can fly in and drop bombs in a similar manner, but then they’re done. The A-10, after dropping it’s tons of ordinance, can still do a lot of damage with its cannon. And the cannon is more suited for attacking smaller individual targets – a truck, an artillery tube, an armored personnel carrier. For these, you don’t want to waste expensive smart bombs and missiles.
Helicopters are also very good at close air support, but they don’t have the range to reach Libya from bases in Italy.
(Also the A-10 isn’t VTOL. But it can fly very slowly, which is very helpful when shooting at the ground.)
I should have added that it was not Congress, but the Air Force and the Defense Department that proposed the end the F-22 buys. Congress rejected the proposal several times before acquiescing, so I think your facts are a little off.
