The sky-high aircraft and aviation thread

What's the cost comparison of an A-10 Warthog vs a Combat Caravan? I'm reminded of a napkin equation someone did about just replacing each B-2 with a swarm of C-172s each armed with a single 500lb bomb to deliver the same payload at a fraction of the cost.

Of course, the Cessna 172 has prohibitively short range and no stealth, so that's a problem there.

That and the angry lawnmower hum would tip them off.

The AC-208 Weedwhacker!

Maybe they could release an upgraded version with a boosted engine for larger payloads called the "Super Whacker", in the tradition of the Super Tweet.

The Air Force’s $10,000 toilet cover

Misleading headline. If you read the article, the toilet seat cover now only costs $300 because the Air Force has started 3D printing their own. Basically, old equipment costs money to maintain due to old parts both wearing out and being hard to find replacements for (the C-5 Galaxy was built in the 1960s). For bonus points, some of these seemingly mundane-sounding parts have some pretty specific performance requirements, like being able to keep the toilet contained during sharp banking turns.

But yeah, keeping vintage gear costs money due to wear and tear. That's why the Air Force has started having their CE folks spend a lot more time cataloging and tracking the age/condition of equipment and facilities. Sometimes it's better to just let a building fall apart than waste time and money fixing it. It might actually be cheaper to just spend a few million dollars on a new building and tear the old one down, but if you don't properly track the wear-and-tear, and don't program the replacement early enough, you end up stuff like 50+ year old airframes performing wartime missions.

x4 Payload is the obvious difference, I believe Combat Caravans only carry 8 Hellfire missiles as opposed to the much larger load a Warthog can carry. However, the Cessna much much much cheaper in basically every way.

For the light attack role the A-10 is actually a little overdesigned, something like the Super Tucano or Air Tractor’s Longsword could do the same thing for a fraction of the cost. If we really need a jet aircraft there are even ones like Textron’s Scorpion that are still much cheaper.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jul 16th 2018 at 10:25:19 AM

The cost is 12000 dollars vs 16000 dollars per air strike if you use the guns as well as the bombs.

Yes it is "A fraction of the cost" but it is also in the range that "is the performance comparable" a valid concern... The problem is this thread seems to think the aircraft is the largest cost in the airstrike, when the reality is that the munitions are the largest cost.

Even a gun only pass, where the aircraft does become the bigest cost, is only a 5000 dollar diffrence

So while yes the A-10 is over rated for actual conflict, I don't know if the extra 4k in savings is all that worth it, the gun is more destructive then a .50 cal even if it cant kill tanks, and while the A-10 will die just as fast as any thing to a SAM I am pretty sure it is a bit more armored to return fire from the guns of the people it is trying to shoot firing back.... which I have heard from a naval mechanic have gotten kills when the pilot gets cocky.

So no, I really think COIN is perfect for it, it is not an ultra expensive money guzzler for the role.

And to be quite honest, I feel the military must have come to the same conclusion given that they keep scraping the idea for light attack aircraft before they get any where.

Edited by Imca on Jul 16th 2018 at 1:39:55 AM

The A-10 was made to be resistant to 23mm fire from ZSUs and so on and the Tunguska has a pair of 30mm cannons that fire heavier and deadlier rounds at a faster rate.

So it's not really protected against modern gun based SHORAD either.

Can't imagine it'd survive against the new 57mm systems at all.

Yea, but thats not what it is facing when it does COIN.

That comment was more "I imagine that an A-10 can survive a .50 cal in the back of a pickup truck better then a Super Tucano" which isn't a ranging endorsement, but still a valid concern for COIN.

Those guns aren't insanely likely to hit, but nothing prevents them from being deadly when they do.... and they have.

Edited by Imca on Jul 16th 2018 at 1:45:21 AM

The A-10 costs more to fly per hour than any of the other prop craft by a notable margin. Munition cost is fixed regardless of craft. They also don't suffer the same odd ball limitations the A-10 suffers and can loiter just fine. The A-10 is not the ideal COIN craft.

Kinda moot to use guns to strafe trucks when there are efforts to develop guided Hydra missiles and cheaper PG Ms that are more accurate, less prone of hitting something that shouldn't have been hit and don't leave a mist of depleted uranium around the area.

x5 Those numbers (12000 vs. 16000) are for cost per simulated target destroyed. Weapons cost is obviously fixed, but look at cost per flight hour and you'll notice that an A-10 costs 17 times as much to fly as a light attack craft. In the COIN role that's going to be one of the most important metrics, as a COIN aircraft spends a lot of time loitering or conducting basic ISR. Turboprop planes also require much less maintenance and have a much quicker turn around time, an area the A-10 is increasingly suffering in as it ages.

We haven't lost any fixed-wing aircraft to small arms fire in the Middle East, only helicopters.

The A-10 is massively overdesigned for COIN, but the problem is it's sort of the only thing "safe" enough for it to do.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jul 16th 2018 at 2:22:18 AM

Angelus: They have non-DU rounds for generic missions. The US 30mm line has HEI as well as the DU AP rounds.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jul 16th 2018 at 6:43:31 AM

Thing is, I haven't heard of anything that the 30mm can kill that can't also be taken down by smaller and more common weapons.

And yeah, even if the A-10 is the best suited plane for the job, it needs to be replaced because of its age. Even if that just means a new A-10. The Hercules dates back to the 1950s,but we have brand new airframes entering service in 2018. They even use them for most of the same missions the A-10 does :D

The A-10's massive gun exists solely because of Pierre Sprey's bad information choices. You have to remember that Pierre Sprey was obsessed with trying to create aircraft which followed WWII tactics when they weren't really the most reliable option available. He was so obessed with WII tactics he had the members of the A-X program read the biography of Nazi attack plane pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

That is a two fold problem. We knew at the time of the program the claimed successes of air power against ground targets such as tanks in WWII with gun and cannon runs was significantly exaggerated. Second Nazi personnal accounts are often tainted by exaggeration and misinformation to paint themselves in a better light.

Instead of say turning to the gathered BDA assessments of effective weapons against ground vehicles he had them reading Nazi self hero fiction.

Sub-sequent tests of the A-10 demonstrated that even 30mm Gau-8 wasn't exactly an armor eater against the T-55 or it's US equivalent. While it performed better overall than its WWII counter parts it wasn't by a significant margin. You would have gotten significantly better results from close bomb hits landing next to the target.

For example someone a while back shared an examination of just how nasty a near hit from 155mm guns are against a tank never mind a more powerful per lb aviation bomb.

If we have to have a gun we have better options than the A-10 with lighter weapon systems and better flexibility in the guns mounting and aim point options. Especially once you consider the types of targets it is usually engaging which is everything short of tanks and mostly enemy infantry and soft vehicle targets with some structure targets.

There was a lot of combat experience from gun runs on A-1 Skyraiders and various other craft in Vietnam that suggested yeah gun runs do have a place in modern war as they can bust up anything that's not a tank or hardened target like a bridge or bunker. For those, you use bombs and missiles.

And the A-1 wasn't operating in an Afghanistan-level of permissive airspace. Triple-A and SAM's were routine threats as well as enemy air patrols from time to time.

Gun CAS was barely practical in Vietnam, and that was decades ago. It's only really useful in very low-threat environments.

Tom: The problem was Sprey was not considering soft targets. If he was he would have looked at other gun weapons or developed a different one. Napalm works just fine on the majority of soft targets and we used it extensively alongside a whole host of other aerial bombs. Also if we were going to go off the data gathered from the Sky Raider why wasn't he looking for a 20mm gun which gave a lot more ammo for strafing runs? We can also strike those same targets with smaller caliber weapons and get kills just as easily.

If we really wanted to we could replace the Gau-8 with any number of weapons that are gun based and achieve the desired results with more rounds for strafing including a smaller lighter gun system based on the designs of the Gau-8 to produce a weapon roughly the size of the Vulcan 20mm only firing 25mm.

Sprey was very insistent the gun was an ideal cheap AT weapon. The problem is he was basing that on bad information. This is the same yahoo who thought the F-16 shouldn't have all that fancy tech. You know common things like on board radar or missile systems or the host of other improvements that gave the F-16 general staying power and overall popularity with other nations.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jul 16th 2018 at 8:25:03 AM

Weapons cost may be fixed unlike flight cost, but if you look at the numbers you have to spend HOURS loitering before the flight costs even bother to catch up to the weapons costs.... They are a much higher factor in the cost of an airstrike then the weapons cost.

Even if you bump the loiter time on station up to 2 hours, the weapons still cost more.

They also cost as much for a single of those hydra missiles as 1 and a half hours of flying the plane, so they would make the discrepancy between the propeller aircraft and the jets even less noticeable... not more.

Edited by Imca on Jul 16th 2018 at 6:36:34 AM

Weapons being a fixed cost isn't really an argument in favor of the A-10. And anyways, cost per hour is probably the single most important metric here considering how many hours an aircraft with the COIN mission profile will be expected to fly.

Immy: The key point you are missing is that aircraft can easily spend a lot of time in flight compared to lobbing their munitions. Aircraft easily spend many hours in the air for even a simple set of sorties including transit times. A craft that costs about 1,500 to fly per hour is appreciably cheaper in the long and the short run to operate than one that costs about 7,000 or more. Piston craft are also easier to maintain, easier to train techs for, and a lot easier to get parts for. The prop planes are also cheaper to purchase outright. Even better the support network for future parts and replacements of turbo props is propped up by a much larger and commonly used industry. You can count on your hands the number of companies capable of supporting an A-10 but someone supporting a turbo-prop or adjusting for it is a lot easier.

We have an excellent example in that we pulled some OV-10 Broncos from storage, refurbed them, and then extensively modified them fairly cheaply for all the work that went into them. We then sent them into a COIN/CAS series of missions where they were reportedly performed very well in their given role.

Two planes lobbing the same number of weapons of the exact same type are going to cost the same in munitions. That doesn't change the formula for cost to fly and the overall cost to operate, acquire, and maintain. We have better options than the A-10.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jul 16th 2018 at 8:53:34 AM

Except it does, because the munitions costs make up more of the operational cost then the flight hour cost, because they are expensive.

If those OV-10 Bronco's were really that great at saving costs, we would be seeing them used more.... but the fact that they havent spread indicates that there not.

Infact they were phased out, because the cost savings just wasnt worth it.

Edited by Imca on Jul 16th 2018 at 6:57:09 AM

The OV-10s we recalled because they only had funding for a short deployment. The whole thing was a test (limited objective experiment is the official term) to see if a light turboprop aircraft is cost effective and efficient in that role. By all accounts it was both.

Not every mission involves a weapons release. I believe it’s something like 1 in 3 these days. When you have aircraft flying hundreds of thousands of hours those operating costs add up quick, unlike the weapons costs. You’re repeatedly missing the point here.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jul 16th 2018 at 7:05:49 AM

Yes, but then the spokesperson said there is no intent to do further tests, because while it was effective and cheaper, it was not ENOUGH so to justify having them.

And no your the ones missing the point that when your only saving less money then a single bomb costs, that just flat out isn't worth it on a military scale.

Edited by Imca on Jul 16th 2018 at 7:17:55 AM

SOCOM said they were looking into purchasing the aircraft for themselves after the mission. There weren't any other statements made as far as the future.

On a "military scale" the flight cost increases much more rapidly than the weapons cost. You have to pay the flight cost every mission whether you release weapons or not, and with the number of hours flown per mission these days, especially for COIN and CAS, that number starts getting very large very quickly.

This is just purely a cost-based discussion about whether the A-10 is good for COIN, which it doesn't even win. It also doesn't take into account the A-10's poor design for the COIN mission, lack of modern electronics, and persistent maintenance issues.

The A-10 is a great plane, don't get me wrong, but it's aging poorly and for the mission profile it's used in we could do a lot better.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jul 16th 2018 at 7:49:44 AM

by Archon

Immy: No you are being stubborn and deliberately refusing to acknowledge a known fact. Munitions cost is moot because it is the same for all craft using that weapon. It doesn't matter. What matters to much greater degree is how much it costs to fly the plane. You will spend easily more than enough hours in flight to cover the cost of a single weapon. The cheaper it is to fly a craft the easier it is to use it over and over.

The difference comes in cost for time flown. If we have two hypothetical craft fly a total of 10 hours every day and expend on a daily average 30,000 dollars of munitions per day the difference is the same in munitions no matter how you slice it. However the cost in hours flown represents fuel costs, pilot pay, maintenance on the strip, and down time is gong to be notably different.

Take our hypothetical craft. One costs 3,000 dollars per hour to fly the other 9,000. They both loft the same value in munitions and fly the same sorties for 10 hours and expend exactly their averaged 30,000 dollars of munitions every day. The total cost to fly is going to notably cheaper for one than the other. Per day one costs 30,000 dollars to fly the other costs 90,000 dollars. That is an appreciable daily difference. Notice that is just the daily difference.

By the end of a 30 day period the cheaper craft costs 900,000 to fly while the more expensive costs 2,700,000 to fly. That per hour flight cost adds up pretty quickly. Since both craft are expending the exact same average value in munitions they both tack on an extra 900,000 per month. The cheaper craft is still appreciably cheaper to operate.

After 12 30 day periods the cheaper craft costs 10,800,000 to fly. The more expensive one costs 32,400,000 to fly. It is a lot easier to fund the craft that is about 3 times cheaper to fly per hour. The cost for both craft in their expended munitions daily average is 10,800,000per for that time frame. For the cost of the more expensive craft you could fly 2 of the cheaper craft with budget left over.

The cost of the munitions doesn't matter. It will cost what it costs no matter the platform. It doesn't matter if you throw the damn thing, kick it off the back of a cargo plane's ramp, or launch it with catapult that munitions will cost the same. The cost of the munitions is not the deciding factor.

Your making an unsupportable argument that has nothing to do with the facts on the ground. The Facts are cost per hour of flight is a significant driver of operating any aircraft. This is why we can't supplant the A-10 with the AC-130 craft despite the fact AC-130's having superior altitude operation, range, weapons loads for CAS, and loitering times. They cost more per hour to fly which makes it harder to fly them as often as other craft for the same missions.

The example given above for the hypothetical craft is seriously exaggerated because aircraft are quite unlikely to launch a strike with a munitions every single day. This makes flight cost per hour even more important as your going to be doing a lot more flying than you are shooting.

Where munitions costs comes into play is when you change up munitions. Firing off 16 APKWS II guided rockets is a lot cheaper than firing off the same number of Hellfire missiles at an almost 4 to 1 difference. The APKWS is intended to do the COIN/CAS role in place of the Hellfire.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jul 16th 2018 at 10:36:01 AM