Is the A-10 survivable on the modern battlefield? Yes, it was originally designed for a very high that environment in Germany during the 1980s. By flying low, it would avoid most of the effective SAMS that the soviets used back then, and although they have gotten faster, with better radars, etc, they still cannot go through the ground.

Anything is 'unsurvivable' or 'survivable' given the circumstances. The problem is when a particular enemy learns and adapts to whatever you're doing- and there's no reason to think that people are stupid and don't do that.

For the same reason that the US could watch Iraqi forces in 1991, the Iraqis had time to study and prepare for the way the US would fight in 2003, particularly with regard to a particular helicopter attack on a Republican Guard unit in Karbala was repulsed. An attack helicopter in theory has the ability to standoff with its missiles and hover concealed behind a treeline several kilometers from the battlefield, but in Karbala, they were flying right on top of the enemy and got shot up. That's obviously not optimal.

Whether you took an A-10, F-35 or Apache and have them fly within range of a large ground formation, especially if the route in is expected, that could be a setup for a shellacking. I'm not on top of modern anti aircraft systems, but I'll take people's opinions that they have progressed since the 1970s and early 1980s as reasonable.

I don't know if survivability is actually at the forefront of the reasons for wanting to scrap it.
After all, if the B-52 is getting upgrades to keep it in service. I can't think of many planes less survivable in the face of proper defences. Big, slow, unstealthy. Sure you can load it up with fancy electronics, but it's still a flying target.

How would they stand the slightest chance against any AAA cannon emplacement especially a Shilka?


Keeping distance is one idea..........maybe providing missile support at range

Political infighting? I.e. the army wants its own organic air support. Of course, someone in the thread suggested turning the A-10s over to the army...

I think the Army suggested that in the 70s didn't they?

The A-10 is resistant to 23mm fire, and I believe the idea was to save Mavericks for targets like that. However in the Pansir you have a system with 30mm cannon, plus SAMs, that's capable of shooting down Mavericks, or even HARMs, let alone the aircraft carrying them.

It can also fire on the move and generally sounds like a pain in the rear, as you would expect from a system that's almost 40 years more advanced than the Shilka and at least 30 years vs the vintage mobile SAMs.

One stays at range and uses the TGP to look at the Pantsir from a safe distance, while the other one uses the datalinked info from his wingman, rises from behind a hill at the last moment, and pops Mr. fancy expensive radar, missiles, and 30mm gun on the back of an unarmored truck with his own 30mm, all well within the time that the operator needs to even recognize the blip on his scope as hostile. Then, you have possibly a company or more of bumbling tanks left, and the A-10s can throw a nice party for them, providing CBU-97/87s as the main course, with a dessert of 30mm Combat Mix goodness to finish it off.

Maybe, but the Pantsir and other newer systems are Star Trek compared to the SA-3s and other old systems that gave even dedicated SEAD aircraft a lot of problems during Allied force and Iraqi Freedom. It might not be that simple.

Grumman didn't build the A-10. You're thinking of the F-14. Grumman destroyed the tooling for it under the orders of then SECDEF Cheney under the auspices of keeping parts from making their way to Iran.

Also, they aren't removing the A-10 from inventory yet. They are just retiring about 100 of them. They plan on keeping them flying untilmtheirmretire,net date in 2028 from what I read the other day.

Oh, hi! I just got off of a C-130 a couple hours ago. Just returned from Red Flag Alaska (where I've been for the past three weeks) where our A-10Cs tore some stuff up pretty good.

My take is there is no substitution for the A-10C period. The USAF has for some reason been trying to get rid of it since the early 90s. The A-10 was originally designed for the Army for CAS but the USAF said we'd take it instead...and has had a love/hate relationship with it ever since.

Some have mentioned vulnerabilities when the Hawg is up high. Yeah, that's not where it wants to do it's fighting. The A-10 is meant to be down in the brush at a couple hundred feet. In the past they have survived SAMs and small arms fire because the machine is a flying tank. I talked with one of my pilots the other day at Red Flag and he simply loves the A-10. He said if somebody asks him to take out a target, he rarely misses anything. He said with the F-16 if he had to do a strafing run (gun) he was lucky to get 30-40 out of 100 rounds to score. With the A-10 he's scoring 95-100 out of 100 30mm rounds fired.

The F-35 just can't compare. It has a 25mm cannon (why 25mm...nothing else uses that ammo?!?) and only holds 125 rounds. The A-10C holds 1,150 rounds of 30mm which means it can loiter for quite some time and make sure the job is finished with multiple gun runs.

Talk with any soldier on the ground who has been in a fire fight where they needed air cover and ask him what his favorite aircraft is. Nearly every one will say the A-10 has saved his butt more than a few times.

Now the problem with the A-10 was mentioned before. The tooling is gone since they first decided to park the A-10s about 20 years ago. Parts are extremely hard to come by. Many parts we get come from the boneyard where a lot of Hogs are already parked. We have made a few companies start building hard to find parts again, but this takes a long time and costs a lot of money. After 35 years parts just wear out. Many of my unit's A-10s have 10,000+ hours (a couple are in the 12,000 hour range). Mine is sitting at 10,800. These jets were never designed to fly for this long. However, we're sending aircraft in for brand new wings which is huge. The A-10C is modded up currently to carry and fire nearly every weapon that any other military jet can deploy. About the only thing we're still missing is a radar. The gee whiz stuff included in the avionics, radios, weapons, and helmets is mind numbing for such an old aircraft.

I think until they can find a suitable replacement that can really do the job of CAS and CSAR and not get blown out of the sky very easily that the A-10 should hang around as long as it can.

3 weeks in Alaska huh? Sounds like you had a blast Weasel!

Agree 100% with your post too.

I know that the AC-130U has 1 25mm GAU-12 mounted but other than that I don't know.

The flying tank is a bit of a misnomer- different aircraft have been called that, but the comparison isn't necessarily the most suitable one, there are simply different principles involved. These aircraft aren't armored in the way a tank is armored; the aircraft for example could return to base having been shot up full of holes and sections of the airframe ripped off, which probably is due to the fact that much of the internal volume save for the fuel is inert. Oddly, hits that might just pass through an aircraft would have a different, more devastating effect which penetrate into a tank. Tanks don't usually return to base with several holes shot through them, once a penetration occurs, the experience is different.

Right, other than the pilot, controls, 1 engine, a certain amount of fuel, and a certain number or percentage of the airfoils and control surfaces, the rest of the plane is just there to keep the necessary parts in their proper orientation to each other and to allow the pilot to do something other than simply flying the plane.

To that extent, the A-10 appears to be a well thought out design- large wings for example have a lot of surface area so that when it is shot up, chances are there is still enough of the plane left to keep flying- but in no way is it armored like a tank is armored.

What about the software side of thee equation? With the A-10 gone it seems like the USAF would have no dedicated CAS/antiarmor/etc aircrew other than the small AC-130 community. That could be a significant cultural change.

We also have some great new mods for CSAR. Great for spotting where a rescue is needed, better radios to talk with the JTACs on the ground, SADL for situational awareness, and providing cover fire to protect the PJs. This is one reason you need something slow yet deadly. Just the sight of these "ugly" machines is enough a lot of the time to scare off the bad guys.

My mention of it being a flying tank was just something we say. No, it's not really a tank. The fact is it can take a lot more ground fire because of it's armored bathtub the pilot sits in and the way the aircraft was designed with separate redundant systems and the engines on top normally keeps them flying. Normally a hit anywhere isn't going to take out every system like it might on the fast movers. It might take out something but there's a back up for that. The way it's designed is so you have to hit it a lot if you want to bring it down.

Possibly.

I think the forward looking assumption is that something other than the A-10 will be needed for future conflicts.

Was the A-10 used in NATO's involvement in Kosovo? In that conflict, NATO air power had kind of minimal effect against the Serbian military compared to how many missions were launched attempting to destroy tanks and other ground units. In contrast, the bombing on infrastructure and civilian targets are what hit harder and put far greater pressure aon the government. In other words, my own take is that air power can do a lot, but sometimes it won't. That conflict was different from Soviet and Warsaw pact formations moving through anticipated corridors- in many cases right out in the open. In that conflict, NATO had to look for individual targets dispersed in the country rather than just zapping large targets coming their way. It wasn't that easy.