In terms of Anti-Air guns, not so much anymore. The US Navy doesn't field much of anything larger than 25mm in terms of autocannon and even those are mostly for anti-boat purposes. Most warships at best still use 20mm Phalanx.
Though to be fair to the A-10, if it did land a gun run on an Arleigh Burke destroyer, that ship is going to turned Swiss cheese and a blasted wreck everywhere that was hit. Unlike a T-55.
Sure the A-10 is slow and extremely vulnerable, but I'm not proposing that A-10 pilots make strafing runs at warships like it's the Battle of Midway. That's nearly impossible to do nowadays with the advanced air defense systems most modern warships have.
I'm wondering if it would be viable mount Harpoons
, or if the A-10 gets sold to Taiwan when it becomes phased out in the USAF, Hsiung Fengs
anti-ship missiles. Both of which already have plane-launched variants in service.
I mean I suppose if you really wanted to you probably could.
But why would go through all the effort of doing that, moving the A-10s out near the ocean, and then end up with something far worse than almost literally every other option?
Edited by LeGarcon on Jan 18th 2021 at 1:36:26 PM
Oh really when?
rollin' on dubs
The A-10 was considered for a maritime role but the US Navy never bit.
The 30MM is overkill for ships and missiles are both faster and longer ranged. Being very sub-sonicnote - it's not a target it's a live fire exercise for Naval SAMS.
Taiwan could use the A-10 for both anti-shipping and anti-armor but that would need the USAF to divest the A-10 and Congress approving a sale.
I tried to walk like an Egyptian and now I need to see a Cairo practor....Flying an A-10 at a modern frigate bristling with radars and ECM sounds like a very complicated suicide plan. Like, I guess you could vector it to the target with an E-2 or a P-3, but, like, why? Modern naval air search radars can cover the entire width of the Taiwan Strait easily and paint an A-10 while it only has a vague idea of which direction the threat is coming from. Besides, Taiwan already carries Harpoons on its F-16s.
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.Tom... you realise the 5 inch main gun on a destroyer is its primary anti-aircraft gun, not the 20mm right? Like I agree with you that people underestimate its usefulness any more but uhhh.
It's not surviving being blaped by the DP gun, nothing that's still light enough to fly is.
Edited by Imca on Jan 18th 2021 at 1:58:33 AM
Neither is the primary anti-air weapon on a modern warship, anyhow. It's the missiles. Which the A-10 has no answer to. Though admittedly the thought of an A-10 pilot desperately trying to aim a Harpoon by looking at which direction the RWR is flashing in is darkly amusing.
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.That would be why I specified gun.
The reality is the CWIS is the last line of defence not the first... there is a half dozen much scarier weapons on a warship before your even in its range.
TBH any air attack on an aware naval target is probably going to hemorrhage planes... regardless of what plane you use.
Edited by Imca on Jan 18th 2021 at 3:15:53 AM
Give me a bit folks. I swear I recall some white paper or presentation on the possible use of an A-10 in some sort of Naval role. Think more along the lines similar to the YOV-10D Night Observation Gunship System (NOGS). That is brown water and near the coast type interdictions.
I will see if I can dig something up.
Ok, my quick digital walkabout turned up a few things. First is that A-10's have done coastal Naval interdiction at least once. During the intervention in Libya in 2011 an A-10 did a couple of gun passes on some Libyan craft sinking one and forcing the other to be abandoned. These were small craft.
A couple of years back the US Navy ran an exercise testing out various ideas to fight boat swarms including having A-10's do gun runs. There have apparently been a few considerations to that effect in the past.
The GAU-8 is also used on a CIWS mount called Goal Keeper and is touted for hits big knockdown power.
It wouldn't be too far fetched for someone to find a way to mount a GAU-8 as armament for a SHORAD system.
There really isn't much on it in terms of details so best I got off the cuff.
Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jan 18th 2021 at 5:42:03 AM
Who watches the watchmen?That's not far off from the kind of work that a B-25 or a Beaufighter would've done in WWII, though, is it? You don't exactly need any specialist capabilities to plink riverine/littoral patrol craft with little in the way of air defences.
On the open ocean, against modern warships, the big issue would be how to use over-the-horizon targeting to actually engage targets out to the missile's maximum range. An F/A-18E/F with a Harpoon/LRASM can actually (depending on altitude) spot a target ship out to 150km with its radar, launch the missile and keep on updating it with midcourse guidance as it skims the surface, up till it's close enough for the active radar to kick in. An A-10 doesn't even have a radar to tell it where to point the thing, though I guess taking out the gun and replacing it with something like the AN/APS-124 radar on the Seahawk isn't out of the question.
You could probably get external targeting data from a P-3 or an E-2, but then the question becomes one of integrating the A-10 into the same datalink structure as all those maritime assets. Not many navies have that kind of cooperative engagement capability right now. And you'd be doing all that in a contested airspace.
The A-10 gained its pop culture cred in an air campaign where all enemy fast air and radar-based AA had already been swept clean, and even then several were lost to ancient, short-ranged IR missiles. In a maritime peer engagement, with no ground clutter to mask it, it'd be hard to find such luck.
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.There were some sink ex's where the various ordinance was tested against larger naval ships including some AT weapons. A hellfire missile can take a surprisingly big bite out of a modern war ship. The A-10 can still fire the Mavericks which have some decently beefy warheads with a few warhead options including a penetrating type warhead for bunker busting. Not exactly a cruise missile but more than enough for the more lightly defended littoral and brown water type craft. Even a Burke would take notice of a Maverick hit in terms of damage. Of course, getting close enough to use it is another thing.
Who watches the watchmen?
rollin' on dubs
As a book on the A-10 put it "Nations that could have bought the A-10 instead focused on fast jet fighters."
Fairchild-Republic wanted to sell the A-10 overseas but those flashy new Teen Series fighters were just too smexy.
Similar thing helped kill the F-20: it just looked too much like the "meh" F-5.
As The '80s began, the F-16 and F-18 started to be the USAF and USN/USMC main fighters - this didn't help.
The bias in favor of flash fast jets is seen by the many, many attempts to shoehorn CAS/BAI roles for the F-35.
Granted, the Commie hordes pouring out of the Fulda Gap are long gone, but it's still silly.
I tried to walk like an Egyptian and now I need to see a Cairo practor....The F-20 was made to sell to people who already had F-5s but thought they were getting a little old.
It was a light, affordable, low maintenance, and versatile aircraft.
What killed it was Congress clearing the F-16 for export and surprising everybody because the F-16 does the same thing but better because it doesn't have to carry the F-5's baggage.
Oh really when?That likely had more to do with the fact that foreign buyers could choose any other ground-attack aircraft on the market.
Working on a budget? You had the Hawk, OV-10, A-37, L-29, L-39, BAC Strikemaster, Alpha Jet, Pucara, all the Soko and Aermacchi trainers and the time-honoured solution of sticking a pair of rocket pods under an unsuspecting helicopter or Cessna.
Got a little more cash to spend? You got to choose between the A-4, Jaguar, Su-17/19/22, MiG-27, Q-5, Super Etendard, Fiat G.91 and more.
Want something multi-role? Say hello to the F-4, F-5, MiG-23, Tornado and the various marks of the Mirage.
The A-10 was built for a specific purpose: stopping a Soviet armoured thrust through the Fulda Gap in the late '60s through the mid '70s. It was a time when radar SAMs weren't exactly mobile, IR ones still had trouble with all-aspect engagement and liked the sun a little too much, and the biggest ground threat a pilot could expect to encounter on the frontline was the 23mm guns of the ZSU-23-4. The Tor and the Tunguska had yet to haunt TAC's dreams. Even with the era's tech, it was projected to see a kamikaze-level loss rate in the scenario it was designed for.
Not all air forces were built for that specific purpose. Most conflicts are asymmetric. If you don't have a military budget bigger than the next ten biggest combined, then you're better off with something affordable. Things that don't give you the headache of feeding and servicing a huge overcompensation gun and all the things it does to the airframe. The ones that were built for a high-tempo peer conflict overwhelmingly decided that speed, altitude and ECM were the way for survival. And whatever advantages it still holds in the CAS role, in loiter time or whatever, are already passing to drones, anyhow.
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
In the 1980s everything that flew was expected to be all but annihilated in terms of loss rates. Even the fastest and fanciest stuff. The A-10 is not unique in that regard.
Hell, it still is considered that way if the balloon went up against Russia or China tomorrow. Very little inventory would still be flying six months later.
They’d have to get around to a lot of parked aircraft very quickly to put things in that neighborhood. Even considering things like attrition from air defenses, it’s fairly unlikely either of them could achieve a mutual knockout against US airpower.
Russia in particular is badly outmatched in terms of conventional forces by the US these days, though that does almost make them more dangerous in a way given that it may encourage them to go nuclear sooner than we’d expect or try a wider variety of unconventional strategies.
They should have sent a poet.Flat tires and slow escape times plague Marine ACV initial operational test.
While the amphibious combat vehicle
outperformed the Vietnam-era amphibious assault vehicle it is slated to replace, “across all mission profiles” uncomfortable seats, a significantly higher failure rate than required, and limited interior space that would slow down emergency escapes left a lot to be desired.
The reviews were published in a report
from the Defense Department’s operational testing and evaluation office, first reported by Task and Purpose.
The report is based off the initial operational test and evaluation the Marine Corps conducted between June 2020 and September 2020, which saw a platoon of ACVs
run through 13 missions while attached to a Marine infantry company, and alongside the joint lightweight tactical vehicle and the light armored vehicle, the report said.
The vehicle successfully completed 12 of the missions, with the improved camera system allowing for better visibility.
The remote weapon system, mounted with an M2 .50-caliber machine gun, managed an impressive hit rate of 91 percent while the vehicle was stationary and 97 percent while the vehicle was moving. However, that remote weapons system “was the source of the largest number of operational mission failures,” the report said.
Overall the “mean time between operational mission failures” was only 39 hours for the ACV, falling far short of the 69 hour reliability requirement, the report said.
In addition to the remote weapon system failures, the ACV also had a problem with tire failures while operating in the desert.
A flat tire could delay the mission by two hours, while the Marines waited for the logistics system vehicle replacement wrecker, known as a LVSR, to life the vehicle as the platoon was not issued a hydraulic jack or any other equipment capable of lifting the ACV.
“The weight, height, and size of the ACV made recovery of a disabled ACV challenging and time consuming, at times requiring additional LVSR support,” the report said.
In addition to the frequent breakdowns, Marines who performed the tests noted that the seats in the ACV were not designed to be sat in while wearing body armor, leading to long and uncomfortable rides while the vehicle slowly made its way to shore.
However, the biggest worry to come from the report was how cramped the troop carrier portion of the vehicle was, making it difficult for 16 Marines in a fully loaded ACV to quickly escape in an emergency.
“Due to the placement and number of blast mitigating seats, interior space within the ACV is limited, making rapid ingress and egress difficult,” the report said.
Marine Corps Times has reached out to the Marine Corps for comment and more details, and has not yet received a response.

The problem with the A-10 is that it's very slow and it's survivability is kind of a meme like the gun.
It's rated to be resistant to 23mm gunfire and even the basic AA on smaller vessels is a hell of a lot stronger than that. Not even getting into missiles.
Oh really when?