The sky-high aircraft and aviation thread

The US Air Force Is Hiding Its Controversial Flyoff Between The A-10 And F-35.

And they're trying to rig it in favor of the F-35. There is no amount of Face Palm epic enough to describe the Air Force's incompetence.

The whole A-10 vs. F-35 drama is nonsensical at best. It's an apples to oranges comparison, and the A-10 is on the way out anyways.

Tom: You already lost a massive chunk of credibly for an article already citing a source known to swim in deepest depths of military BS sources. Strauss Reform which is directly affiliated with the blatantly wonkish and crank laden POGO group. If that is their source the article isn't worth screen space it is displayed on. The only way it would be worse is if they cited Postol or Sprey. Here is another hint. IF they were keeping it so hidden how did anyone even find out about it never mind make any details available? Yeah sorry but obvious click bait garbage is obvious.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jul 11th 2018 at 5:52:22 AM

There is so much bait in that link, I could hear the editor yell I got another one when I clicked.

Jet Blue demonstrated the right way to treat dogs on aircraft. A French bull dog was suffering hypoxia shortly after take off to the point its tongue started turning blue. So they gave it some oxygen from one of the tanks until it recovered and the pet survived the flight. Compared to United which has been responsible for the 18 of the 24 Canine deaths in a year.

The thing about F-35 vs. A-10 is that they do CAS in totally different environments. Flying an A-10 in FEBA during a modern peer-state war would be as good as a death sentence. It just can’t happen. All CAS in a peer-state war would be done by fast jets to begin with, regardless of whether slow aircraft might do it better. The only role the A-10 is even functional in anymore is swatting trucks and infantry in totally permissive airspace, and that’s a role that would be filled better by a modern light attack aircraft as the A-10 has not aged well.

I would argue that building for premise airspace is still a valid design, your right that it would be suicide, but I would argue it is also suicide for the fast jet and so you might as well carry more munitions and make the most out of your one run... but beyond that?

Most combat just isn't done with peer states any more, there is way more use to be gotten out of something designed to squash insurgents then there is something designed to squash Russians... And these jobs are very very different.

Well, not really. Stealthy fast jets with escorting SEAD are going to be able to enter contested airspace. Not untouched, obviously, but that’s war, and they’re going to fare much much better than non-stealthy aircraft. We already know that F-35/F-22 combinations are going to be used as “day one” strike groups, with the intent being to create holes that allow everyone else in.

An A-10 is simply not going to be involved in a peer-state or even near peer-state war. F-117s took over missions from them during the Gulf War because even then they worried about how vulnerable they were. An A-10 would never even get a chance to drop its munitions in a peer or near-peer war, they’re just too easy a target. They’re also not able to carry a lot of our modern PGM, which puts them at a distinct disadvantage in that setting as well.

For completely permissive airspace you ideally end up with something more like one of the various light turboprop planes we’ve been experimenting with, which are even cheaper and more robust. The A-10 is overdesigned for that role, and has fallen into it only because it’s the only thing left for it. The A-10 was designed to bust Warsaw Pact armored columns in the 80s, and that shows.

Six A-10s were lost during the Gulf War, mostly to infrared SAMs - and that was against the relatively underperforming Iraqi Army. In a mid-'80s Fulda Gap scenario, they would've been flying into the teeth of things like the Tunguska, which was specifically designed to munch on them for breakfast.

^ In a mid-80s Fulda Gap scenario, there's not a single aircraft in US inventory that wouldn't have suffered horrific loss rates to Soviet Anti-Air or air patrols.

Stealth was designed to mitigate that loss rate, but even they are not invulnerable (and nothing is invisible to IR missiles anyways).

The problem with the stealth focus became too few aircraft with often too low of payloads. An F-117 carried less than an F-16 in terms of air-to-ground munitions. That stealthiness came at a high price of low capacity (and it was slow) and low turnaround rates. F-16 squadrons would have per day in a symmetric environment been able to engage more targets, more sorties and faster than the F-117 ever would. A similar problem emerged in the B-2, there were few targets they could engage that a more numerous B-52 could not. Even if both were acting as standoff missile trucks.

If in the event of a symmetrical war, the F-35 simply has too few munitions to reliably engage targets that matter to the front line. Tanks, artillery positions, Anti-Air defenses, vehicles, enemy defensive positions and what not without resorting to "swarm" tactics, that is just throw tons of aircraft at it WW 2 style. If it came down to that, throw the F-35 and F-22 in the trash and break out the drones, at least you won't have human losses for your side with those.

As mentioned above, stealth aircraft provide a potent "day one" capability that conventional aircraft can't offer. There's a reason why we keep both in our inventory. And don't forget that the F-35 has external stores to allow it to hang with conventional aircraft as the airspace opens up.

I'll also point out that standoff munitions are at play in every scenario here, they'll be launched alongside any strike from manned aircraft. No need to send WW 2 style aircraft waves when you can add a couple dozen JASS Ms to a strike package.

The aircraft waves mention is because of low payload. JASSM, SLAM(-ER) and Harpoon are all very heavy munitions, most aircraft can't carry very many to begin with compared to SDB's or JDAM's or Zuni rockets or Maverick missiles.

And the F-35 only carries a rather small complement of SDB's, picking up a standoff weapon such as JASSM would be limited to basically one missile per plane. You're not engaging anything resembling a lot of targets with that set up unless you throw a lot of planes at it. (Or using nukes but that's a nonstarter.)

Edited by MajorTom on Jul 12th 2018 at 6:28:46 AM

Well, let’s think about a hypothetical strike package. 6-8 SD Bs or 2 JDA Ms per aircraft, spread over maybe two squadrons (let’s call that 30 aircraft) for about 150ish SD Bs and two dozenish JDA Ms total, plus standoff munitions fired from outside the battlefield, plus accompanying SEAD and counter air is a lot of firepower. Nobody is going to be hitting thousands of targets with a single strike package, they’re going to be knocking out key points to open up the air. We’re talking first day of war doorkicking here, which again is something conventional aircraft won’t be able to do well. As the defenses are degraded by comparatively more survivable stealth aircraft more heavily loaded ones can move in and begin striking other targets.

Cleverly using the advantages stealth aircraft offer you is the key here. Stealth aircraft are probably one of the most misunderstood pieces of equipment we have, at least misunderstood by the public and the PR machine.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jul 12th 2018 at 6:59:45 AM

For the type of mission folks always talk about the A-10 doing, an up-armed Cessna Caravan is equally capable except for slower speed and lighter payload. It doesn't take a lot to drop a Hellfire on a tank or a mortar pit when the enemy lacks any competent air defense.

And as I recall, the F-117's claim to fame was decapitating the Iraqi C2 in the opening hours of thr war by punching out a key node in their comm network. After that, their forces were unable to coordinate with each other, robbing them of any hope of applying effective resistance against the Coalition forces.

Edited by AFP on Jul 13th 2018 at 8:52:06 AM

Yah. They struck a transmission station on the roof of a hotel I believe it was. No one knew it was coming until it was blasted into chunks.

But can a Cessna Caravan destroy 12+ tanks in a single sortie alone? The A-10 can. The Apache can. The AH-1Z can. The F-35 cannot, not alone anyways.

Tom: And none of those options are going to be able to operate in seriously contested air space but the stealth craft can. Your missing the point by a large margin.

The way we use the A-10 now vs the nutter who thought the gun was the key to tank busting based on bogus claims of a Nazi WWII pilot, are two different animals. The CAS role can easily be covered by a large variety of craft and we don't need the A-10 for busting Toyota's with MG's or the average insurgent target we use the A-10 for now. We have real world examples in South America where Turbo Props lofting PGM's does the same job just as effectively against an insurgency hiding in a jungle no less.

Even a properly large burst from the 30mm won't kill a T-90. Hell it won't even cause significant harm. It'll kill a BMP sure but so will a Vulcan.

So the A-10's gun is out meaning it's only valid weapon option are it's missiles which can be carried by just about anything.

So now the question is what aircraft has a better chance of surviving the Pantsir and Tor coverage that some hypothetical armored column is going to have with them?

(Hint; It's not the A-10)

Well, with external stores an F-35 can. And an A-10 or helicopter won’t be destroying any tanks if it’s spotted and swatted before it can even get close to its targets, which is very likely on a modern battlefield considering how low and slow everything you listed flies.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jul 14th 2018 at 7:50:25 AM

If you guys want to see something kind of neat watch the vid in this MBDA article with the live fire missile tests.

The missile is really damn fast and is hard to see on some shots. But the coolest part is if you watch the vid between 2:35 and 2:37 for one of the live warhead tests you can catch the HEAT jet just before the big explosion.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jul 14th 2018 at 7:44:30 AM

Question: Where on the T-90 are we aiming on this gun run? Because you can rake an Abrams with 30mm from the rear and while it might not blow it wide open, it'll ruin your day.

If we're operating in such contested airspace that everything's a no go, even stealth aircraft are likely being detected and defeated. This ain't 1991 anymore, stealth aircraft aren't invisible to our nearest peers. Hard to track maybe, but able to do the things they did in Panama, Iraq and Bosnia, no longer.

Tom: Not even close and it only proves you have no clue how stealth works vs unstealthed aircraft by any real measure. It has be explained to you in varying degrees of detail repeatedly over the years. At this point your choosing to be willfully ignorant.

Your chances of doing much to an Abrams or T-90 with a gun run are close to nil. To even try and penetrate a clunky T-64 the craft had to engage at such excessively close ranges infantry with MANPADS could reach and swat the craft. We also know it only takes one of those to do the A-10 or even larger craft in. Have fun flying into the teeth of a Tunguska trying that.

But the internet says the A-10 is impossible to shoot down and can BRRRRRT through anything in the universe.

Are you saying the internet would lie about something like that?

Deadbeat: Lol.