A-10 Movie time (for fans of the Venerable A-10)

www.dslreports.com...


Cool Movie (dated) But showing it's stuff .!

That was a good movie!

I grew up on a farm in the flightpath of an airbase and the A-10's used to sneak up on us quite often. They used a nearby stone quarry as a practice target, never dropping anything, just jinking back and forth on it.

What a good aircraft.

JDub

God thats an awesome plane. Wah. Gotta love that gun.

The A-10 represents the last of the 'pilot's airplane' type platforms with direct mechanical interconnect between the aircrew and all flight/weapons systems. For this, A-10 pilots have a genuine 'thrill of accomplishment' just in physically mastering the aircraft.

It is and always has been however, a very poor CAS machine for the simple reason that the amount of effort required to fly it exceeds the utility of it's (pilot driven) sensors and munitions as an _employed_ weapons system.

Effectiveness has improved somewhat as LITENING becomes more common and PGMs more dense but 'as they work on' digitial connectivity with the ground environment there is still a large gap between talking on and auto-cueing which is particularly unfortunate for the aircraft's nominal FFAC mission.

Any F-16 or 18 can match it's capabilities as a smart weapons platform, especially through weather and at night while the F-14D and F-15E /vastly/ exceed it's potential as a battlefield coordination and all weather PGM machine.

What the A-10 needed to become to have relevance, even in the 80's, was the N/AW adapted night hunter which could trade speed for loiter and long sensor dwell as 'the other half' of a 24/7 CAS system otherwise dominanted (diurnally) by fast movers able to survive the optical threats through high speed and standoff loft capabilities.

In OEF, the most commonly requested CAS service was Marine driven with cardinal point smart bombers on a long standoff and sensorized lookin from altitude. The A-10's 'direct' or 'overhead' support was found to be wanting because it could not sort fast enough to be brought in close (where it's weapons worked) from a visual acquisition. And it drew too much groundfire as it passed to be more than a defensive liability on the way out.

Some commonly misunderstood factors:

1. The GAU-8
Has a limited slant range of 2,500-4,000ft at low levels. At high levels this goes up to as much as 15-20,000ft. But you are literally shooting at a dot on the HUD because you cannot resolve anything. It also requires the Hog to engage in upwards of 5 minutes of climbout recovery.

2. The TF34
Are pathetically anemic and fussy to the extent that a single engine climbout with a typical fuel and combat load is an emergency condition which usually requires stores jettison if not ejection should it happen right after takeoff. Performance is equally bad at altitude where the engine's thrust performance droop is as much as 20% of sealevel norms (themselves only about .50 T/Wr). There is an engine flat-rate upgrade in progress but I do not think it has been fully paid for.

3. The Maverick
Without a separate cueing mechanism (Pave Penny target mark or LIGHTENING) is also about a 2,500ft, _seeker limited_ weapon. This has gotten better in the I2R versions but problems with the LAU-88 (drag and electrical) prevent use of more than two and even this number is challenged when a LITENING pod is carried.

4. Aerodynamically.
The A-10 is closer to a crop duster than even a P-47. As such, it tends to mush unless run at high throttle settings which overtax the pilots ability to engage targets such that (it used to be) they would run at full throttle and part brake just to keep some power on the airframe without overrunning targets. OTOH, at altitude (17-22K feet), the severe camber of the wing sets up an oblique shock which makes the aircraft subject to a VNe that gives a squirrely ride and very poor (power again) margin between the aerodynamic stall and the Mach limiter. Combined with a heavy nose and a lot of drag on the round out, and the aircraft becomes a 'difficult' dive bomber even when Stuka'd out with full brakes. The post-DS autopilot helps here but only a little.

CONCLUSION:
I like the Vulture for it's unique shape and what it is: a COIN airframe with the (Hog Up) maintenance ease to be useful out of some very rough operating locations in relatively low threat (trashfire only) environments. But as a tank buster and deep BAI machine, I'm sorry but they pretty well missed the mark, widely.


KPl.

And just heel the heck is the JSF supposed to take over from the A-10??


Thats like a milk float taking the place of a ferrari on a race meet.... or a UK aircraft carrier replacing the nimitz class carriers....rofl a bloody stupid ideas of some people

so the cons of this plane have been covered. thanks for downing a real plane.

this tank with wings is definately one hog you wouldn't wanna dance with.

putting ch1466's points aside this plane could be a real advantage in open ground combat as an air support. with a couple of these suckers doing a pass or two with the clusters and its trusty mega cannon it would clear a battalion of grunts with ease.

obviously this is no fighter so lets not rag on it for not being up there with the hornets, falcons and tomcats. lets put it at the top of its own class of strategic battlefield accessories. put to use in the right circumstance and with the right strategy this aircraft will and has performed its duty and in no way deserves such disrespect. There ain't no plane like it.

Hogs clean the house

[edit on 30-4-2006 by spearhead]

Any F-16 or 18 can match it's capabilities as a smart weapons platform, especially through weather and at night while the F-14D and F-15E /vastly/ exceed it's potential as a battlefield coordination and all weather PGM machine.

I am going to disagree there, the A-10 has the advantage of needing a very low velocity to stay in the air, something you wouldn't say for those fighter turned bomber aircraft, yes, Smart weapons can be used by any aircraft capable of firing/dropping them but none can do it at the low speeds the A-10 does.

And all the aircombat lingo is even above me CH1466, could you explain to me what PGM is? and how is it a bad CAS (Combat Air Support) aircraft? I think it's a little better than your average OV-10 Bronco which is your typical coin (Counter-Insurgence) aircraft

OH and BTW, great video! I quite enjoyed it, is the music Greenday or something?

[edit on 5/1/2006 by GrOuNd_ZeRo]

GrOuNd_ZeRo,

>>
I am going to disagree there, the A-10 has the advantage of needing a very low velocity to stay in the air, something you wouldn't say for those fighter turned bomber aircraft, yes, Smart weapons can be used by any aircraft capable of firing/dropping them but none can do it at the low speeds the A-10 does.
>>


Something made utterly clear in Captain Scott's engagement description (in the above article) is that he has a VERY hard time picking between friendlies and enemies. Presumably because he doesn't have a FLIR that can group the hotspots and his radio link is weak at best.

The A-10 cruises at between 270 and 320 knots. Anything you 'see' (visual CAS as an exercise in stupidity) you had better kill or be willing to fly over. Because the alternative of one bat-turn later (flat plating the airframe and giving all of Allahs loving horde a chance to shoot at it) it's going to be down to 150 knots _on the wrong side of the engagement curve_. Outbound, with no energy to put G on the airframe and everybody precisely aware of it's location.

Also, if you read the above article closely and compare it with a map of Afghanistan's air bases, you will note that the '1hr later' comment is very apt.

www.globalsecurity.org...

You don't come from halfway across the country (Herat and Shindand are still constructing, last I heard) from Kandahar or the Bagram complex in a jet that does all of 350mph and NOT expect a significant "They bled faster than the ambulances could drive..." factor on engagement outcomes. Specifically, if those '800 men' had managed to hump more than 10 RPG rounds or an HMG to the fight or airburst option (RCL or Mortar) which could outrange or topattack suppress the grenade launcher.

They would have in fact annihilated the convoy /long/ before it could be saved.

>>
And all the aircombat lingo is even above me CH1466, could you explain to me what PGM is?
>>

Precision Guided Munition. A clustering acronym under which TV, SALH and Inertially Aided weapons can all be grouped.

>>
And how is it a bad CAS (Combat Air Support) aircraft? I think it's a little better than your average OV-10 Bronco which is your typical coin (Counter-Insurgence) aircraft
>>

Actually, the top speed and energy performance of the two is not all that different, though the A-10 will sustain better with a real warload. What made the OV-10 a mistake was that we were dealing with a conventionally armed (high caliber and later radar laid/prox fuzed) threat for which the OV-10's LARA spec was not adequate to handle. OTOH, the OV-10 could do things that the A-10 could not, such as operate from remote dirt-FOLs and put nighvision into the 75 cubic feet of rear cargo area for use by an RSO/WSO who could also handle the radios (often Day-CAS was flown without a man in the back, simply because it was so dangerous and the Yankee Extractors so notoriously unreliable).

What this equates to in a modern context is uncertain. Tube weapons have regressed back to the HMG level which a decent cannon turret ala NOGS could easily out slant but there is persistent rumor of proxfuzed RPG rounds and of course SA-xx which more or less invalidates the entire lolo environment to ANY platform not specifically equipped with MAWS and TADIRCM (Comet is iffy IMO).

OTOH, the real danger is alway going to be the requirement for any 'fast ambulance' to have someone injured before the response is deemed worthwhile. And past a certain point in weapons lethality and tactical massing of fires, that attitude inevitably goes from rescue to hearse. OTOH, _real_ power lies in the ability to deny conflict until such time as the interval between opportunities becomes too great to sustain interest in an insurgent population base. And that can only happen if you have airpower able to perform a SENSCAP role in sanitizing routes and approaches BEFORE any attack. While responding from beyond -any possible retaliatory response- to those which are sufficiently well emplaced (for hours if not days beforehand) as to invalidate any sudden attack within about a 20 second response window.

In this, I don't think much of 'opening up with 720 rounds' because it inadequately describes a process by which (depending on how many motor drives are working) you /rarely/ expend more than 30-70 rounds per run. The more runs you make, the more prepared any defensive response gets to the predictability of your approach line and interval. Or the more likely they are to vacate the target area altogether. And in this case I personally think that 'the enemy fire just quit' means that the Afghani's having achieved what they came to do (denying the progress of the military convoy to it's destination) simply picked up their dollies and went home to 'that village' where the goats became sheep again.

Since _we lost_ the encounter (running around the battlefield like a chicken with it's head cut off rather than owning it thru dismounted maneuver or proper directed fires...) we don't even have blood trails to look at.

OTOH, if an overhead asset had (FLIR) seen the enemy vacate the area and head to a specific hooch, said building could have been vaporized as an example, whether we stayed or not. That the villagers would have remembered well.

This is why the last quote in the story bothers me the most. Because flying overhead 'constantly' for four hours back to base covering a crippled vehicle doesn't mean diddly dip compared to flying 5hrs direct support from the base to destination and then home again. Something which a robotic airframe could easily vulch manage within an overall 8-10hr sortie window at a typical 250nm distance which took less than a half hour to replace on station.


KPl.


P.S. Before I get inundated with firepower uber alles crap about the A-10 and it's 'big gun'; let me remind everyone that the A-10 normally carries about 2/3rds its potential maximum of 1,174rds in the CAS mission and may have even less in hot-high environs like Afg. Out of an original 1,350 possible before they put in the drum stop this comes up to 1101lbs in individual rounds. Yet that gun not only removes /any/ hope of using the internal space for added fuel or avionics, it also weighs on the order of 4,000lbs overall for a system that delivers about 10-15 area-target passes _fully loaded_. Comparitively, the BRU-61 with 4 GBU-39 weighs about 1,650lbs and so two of them deliver the same WEIGHT of munitions capability (1,140lbs) and /nearly the same/ NUMBER of engagements. While being available with 34-47" accuracy from up to 20,000ft and up 'as far as you can see the target' in the CAS mission. Even as they have an ultracritical _airburst fuze_ option in comparison with which, the GAU simply wastes as chewed-up-dirt fragmentation effect outside about 2-10m from impact. Indeed, my recollection of the Zuni rocket (with half the warhead weight of the GBU-39) is that an airburst setting yielded upwards of a quarter mile worth of lethal splinters. So far from being a superior area=infantry kill mechanism, the GAU approach to strafe-attack is apt to do less _instantaneous_ damage to dispersed targets. While forcing the aircrew to enter the trashfire zone multiple times to deliver a weight of CMix that is fractionally significantly less (1,101/4,029 = .27) than the equivalent boom-to-rack ratio of the SDB (1,140lbs / 1,640lbs = .69).

This being one of the reasons why a UCAV and indeed any true 'bomber' airframe can spend more time on station than your typical attack/fighter optimized cowboy sixshooter junky. In that it simply doesn't waste as much mass on worthless weapons system effectors.

>>
OH and BTW, great video! I quite enjoyed it, is the music Greenday or something?
>>

Talking about love lost due to 'carelessness' is hardly appropriate to a movie centered on professional killers doing their job with great precision. And the driving beat as some kind of faux battlefury incitation is also something A-10 pilots struggle to fangs-out avoid at all costs because basically their only real defense against the Golden-BB typical of the CAS environment is luck and randomized pass-interval shock value.

Ch1466
that is a pretty good technical paper you have written. It is full of jargon and really looks impressive. But if I want to know just how terrible an A-10 is I will ask Saddams Tanks from Gulf war 1. Opps I forgat they are all dead. Something about an A-10 doing massive dammage to alot of them. So I guess I will haqve to ask a combat infantry vet what his feelings are on an A-10 being his close air support.

You know its articles like yours that almost got the A-10 scraped in the late 80s. It was the people who were out there ponding the ground that wanted them to stay and it was Saddams tanks that made the A-10 a standard for flying tank busters.

[edit on 1-5-2006 by ultralo1]

ch1466 - loads of jargon, light on reality.

Quote " I'd fly the Hog into combat with just the gun and nothing else!" unquote....
US Army Pilot.

Quote " get it in, get your wing man 90 degrees oblique on a run in, and as you are going over to the front, he will be coming in on the side and carving the enemy up whilst their still searching for you over head" unquote.
US Army pilot.

Quote " Never, ever fly into enemy terrotory low and slow unless riding a Hog. Any thing else is just plain stupid" unquote
US Air Force pilot.

Quote " never, ever have i ever been so happy to see an aircraft as I was when the four Hogs blew an entire tank division apart in front of our four light strike vehicles" unquote.
US Navy SEAL Team Leader (First Gulf war)

No disrespect ch1466 if I can find this much supporting evidence to back up the A-10, and if the aircrew and the ground troops love it, whats the beef? It does it's job very well, and comes home alive even after taking a battering (That being what it was designed to do) (See linked piccie).

www.tonyrogers.com...

www.aircraftresourcecenter.com...
And ch1466 before you say anything, just READ WHAT THE CAPTAIN HAS TO SAY ABOUT HER A-10 !

The only replacement for an A-10 would be a new build A-10. (And that A-10 pilots a cutie!)

Ultralo1,

>>
That is a pretty good technical paper you have written. It is full of jargon and really looks impressive. But if I want to know just how terrible an A-10 is I will ask Saddams Tanks from Gulf war 1. Opps I forgat they are all dead. Something about an A-10 doing massive dammage to alot of them. So I guess I will haqve to ask a combat infantry vet what his feelings are on an A-10 being his close air support.
>>

No. It's a commentary on what a piece of crap the F-16A through C.40 are and in general how 'light fightering' caused us to take a massive step BACKWARDS from the PGM capable/BVR capable/All Weather capable F-4 mission force we had painstakingly built up by the end of Vietnam.

A-10s were all flying north to hit IRG and SCUD targets because the F-16's couldn't make the grade for range, loiter with munitions or high altitude D-Toss accuracies. However; when the A-10's flew above 10,000ft, they themselves became the target of every radar SAM still operational 'at depth' in the enemy IADS to the extent that one section flew for two hours, expended all their mechanical countermeasures in 2 minutes and came home, only to see F-16's 'raising dust right across the FLOT' in a CASBAI role which nominally the A-10 should have been executing.

Of course this made for some truly pissed phone calls to the Hog Desk at CAOC but it doesn't endorse the A-10, only the utter stupidity of a force model based on the F-16 'as it was'.

FWIW, after the initial A-10 helicopter shoot down, everybody went gun-happy and they lost 2-3 planes in a week because the aircrews were flying lower and lower and staying longer and longer in the area without interval to put the enemy back to sleep. In a Euro-1 jet that looked like a stark black 'vulture' against the sky.

This act of stupidity resulted in the USAF _disallowing_ all subsequent gun attacks until the frantic '1 week to go!' reroling back to CAS in the final prep for Saber's leapoff.

Given that the A-10s of the time had no LASTE or IFFC, there was no way for them to fire the GAU accurately from altitude using the 'iron sights' and so their summative contribution to the game can best be described as 'salvo the four bombs on Home Depot to lighten up then look for something useful to put both Mavericks into'.

To which I can only say: Whoopy.

>>
You know its articles like yours that almost got the A-10 scraped in the late 80s. It was the people who were out there ponding the ground that wanted them to stay and it was Saddams tanks that made the A-10 a standard for flying tank busters.
>>

Which is why one Iraqi general from the Habbaniyah division I think it was stated: "In thirty days of air war, I lost 2 tanks, in one half hour with the U.S. Army, I lost 60..."

The A-10 was not doing it's job. First, because it was doing the job of other airframes that couldn't do theirs. Second, because it lacked, from the very outset, the kinds of avionics which would let it attack threats from above the trashfire floor, effectively making it a 2-shot missileer.

What is worses is that, of some 700 airframes manufactured by RFC in the 70's and early 80's, fewer than 300 were available AFTER the 'great success story' of PGW-II. Which means that, by the mid-90's, the type could not even fulfill the majority of 'specialist' missions (CSAR was taken over by the F-16 by 1994 in ONW/OSW) which nominally it might have fast-Skyraider fulfilled as an Air Commando type AFSOC platform.

The A-10 works until somebody decides to shoot back with something that can kill it. The difference being that it costs a lot less to tag one than it does any F-teen because they are designed to play above 10K feet and have (now) the smart weapons systems to plink with. The Hog comes looking for the boarspear which will impale it.

Nor is the A-10 as a LITENING ship all that impressive because it costs you a Maverick to upload the pod and the type's hot-hi altitude performance with even just 2 GBU-12 is pathetic.

CONCLUSION:
If you want a multikill, forward firing, weapons system, put APKWS/LCPK onto a 70mm CRV-7 or a 120mm Zuni. With the right warhead, the effect is the same as the GAU for about twice the standoff per equivalent altitude and the total system weight is about 1/4 as much. Otherwise, load up on SDB and piddle packs and be prepared to hover. Because effective CAS is defined by effective COP as the interval of ability to kill between need to do so. Plus the sensors to see it coming.

As the above poster's article illustrates so effectively, if you ain't there, you are little more than a fast ambulance waiting to become a hearse. And the A-10's weren't there.

It never fails to amaze me how people CHOOSE to buy into the 'cavalry myth' propoganda like complete suckers for what is obvious in any properly parsed rereading of the text.


KPl.

It never fails to amaze me how people CHOOSE to buy into the 'cavalry myth' propoganda like complete suckers for what is obvious in any properly parsed rereading of the text.

Dude I respect your knowledge on the subject but this one statement got my goat. I was stationed with several guys who were there. So to them and me it is "cavalry Fact".

Originally posted by ultralo1

It never fails to amaze me how people CHOOSE to buy into the 'cavalry myth' propoganda like complete suckers for what is obvious in any properly parsed rereading of the text.

Dude I respect your knowledge on the subject but this one statement got my goat. I was stationed with several guys who were there. So to them and me it is "cavalry Fact".

The first question you have to answer is why the Cavalry were needed at all and what their response means, tactically-

1. You sent out an understrength vehicle team with compromised opsec from the getgo a 'conditional certainty' due to the indig forces attached. Not least of these was insufficient gun trucks and insufficient ammo onboard them but going ANYWHERE more than an hour out from air or FSB is _moronic_. In fact it stinks of the 'I know, let's send out a smaller unit and see if they'll bite!' doctrine of SEA.
2. T'wer me there would also be an airmobile or air assault unit able to put down a (preleaped) Mike Force behind any '800 man' (how the hell do you mass that many people in a high desert environment without marshaling logistics and transit route notices via UGS?) attack with the intent of bagging the limit on live intel and lamenting woman who watch their husbands paraded off like chained dogs.
3. You did not reach your objective. Which means someone else has to do the S2D2 dance /again/. Just to prove you haven't been scared off using that route.
4. You did not maintain unit cohesion which meant you had to drive back 'into the valley' and rerisk soldiers which had just escaped. Assuming you had a choice on entering the choke to begin with, this is double-the-dumb-blonde Spearmint factor.
5. You did not decisively engage the threat to a finished fight condition, _owning_ the battleground and if need be the village that you can be equally 100% sure 'were cheering the home team'. Which means the next time an opportunity for this crap happens they will be encouraged by a partial success and a chance to modify their tactics and weaponeering rather than cringing, utterly terrified of bringing down the wrath of the Americans. The chief definition of change being how to respond to airpower.
6. You did not have adequate coordination with your air support (GPS, + lase, + offset bullseye fixed point = secure threat positioning) nor a specific initial response plan to dismount and defilade or run a mounted endrun hasty attack against the ambush when SOP is ALWAYS to defeat shock of fires by getting out from under and turning THEIR flanks with shock and _maneuver_.
7. If you had had another BHD scenario, you didn't have the numbered CAS elements to cover both parties or go to the rescue on the ground. And /another/ hour to wait for more.

The next thing that must be dealt with is how you define Cavalry-

Hollywood would have you believe in The Cavalry as an over-the-hill force to save the settlers 'at the last possible second' (staked bait goat).

The military defines the Cavalry mission as a _screening force_ designed to PREVENT surprise engagements by acting as a tripwire and/or speedbump so the main body can have time to react.

WHY are you playing to Hollywood's model? Especially when the best cavalry element is one which has been on-scene for upwards of 8-10 hours BEFORE you got there and has the sensor technology to be _completely_ untouchable from the ground?

What frankly pisses me off is that if they had first-and-lasted the column with mines or salvo fire LAW, not a single one of you would have lived long enough for help to arrive via Hollywood's definition of fast-ambulancing. And you jolly well know it.

Lastly, you have to put the tactical picture into the Strategic One-

And you KNOW damn well what our getting our sorry butts kicked out of Iraq ultimately means in terms of 'What's On Second.' The AfG insurgent tactical competencies will rise exponentially with the arrival of foreign assistance even as familiarity with your doctrine will lead to a contemptive exploitation of it in theirs. The very same force model (as is proving untouchable in Iraq) will then likely be used with a highly proficient technical cadre using cutout/throwaway emplacement teams for IED or small ambush until the success rate leads to quadrupled 'volunteer force' rise in the total insurgent numbers. Leaving us with yet another 'insurgency becomes civil war' condition as the primitive minds over there respond to whatever independent parties have the apparent strength to inspire them into taking trophy kills when and where they can. Because you're in their bryar patch now where everyone lives by reputation and coup is the name of the game on foreigners whom _nobody_ will begin a vendetta to avenge.

/Never Intending/ to 'win' tactically, is how the insurgent threat NEVER LOSES, ultimately, strategically.

Thus the only way for the occupation force to win is to make sure it's a game never played. Meaning you have to be leaner, cleaner, harder, MEANER _all the time_. Every time they come at you, you have kill them, utterly. Leaving them so in terror of what happens when Americans do a little house cleaning that no fatwa from a crazed mullah across the border is incentive enough for them to play more than possum.

Under such partisan loyalty conditions, the only thing you have going for you is the certainty in their minds that each attack will be met with a no-holds-barred OVERWHELMING FORCE response that makes every little abo aware that they might have to pay for what their mother's second cousin does with wargames on their turf.

ONLY then do you get the dropped-dime alert that is 'good relations with the local population' which in turn secures your patrol elements from further molestation.

We at home depend on YOU to be so potently vicious and unrelenting as an in your face 'presence' in these peoples lives that there is no incentive for a threat to try another into-CONUS attack. Do you think your friends are fulfilling their MOS description with little whoopsy-save stunts like these?

I don't. They are just setting up the psychology by which Ia Drang becomes Tet. Or worse. And so we will look weak because you look careless.


KPl.


P.S. The only hope we have for AfG is that once PG Oil is no longer an American Dollar driven enterprise and Iraq's 20 billion barrels specifically no longer our personal reserve to influence OPEC pricing (Euros or otherwise), even as we are -physically- off their holy dirt; that anything east of Longitude 51 will be seen as too much of a backwater to bother. I don't think UBL can afford to leave it that way if he intends to remain a 'local hero' but I also frankly don't believe that he is the ultimate driving force behind this. And he, unlike U.S., has a fall back declarable victory position.

I happen to think the A-10 is a great A/C. I can still remember a flight of them flying over my head, at an airshow, I couldnt hear them until they were right above my head, about 1k AGL

ch1466 do you ever agree with ANYTHING ANYONE EVER has said on ATS?

Originally posted by ch1466Comparitively, the BRU-61 with 4 GBU-39 weighs about 1,650lbs and so two of them deliver the same WEIGHT of munitions capability (1,140lbs) and /nearly the same/ NUMBER of engagements. While being available with 34-47" accuracy from up to 20,000ft and up 'as far as you can see the target' in the CAS mission.

No way. Are you meaning to tell me that a newer weapon system is better than a 30-year-old one? SURELY YOU MUST BE JOKING! Clearly old technology is the same as modern tech, especially in terms of weight, power, and accuracy. Why, just look at the difference between the GBU-43/B and the and M102 105mm! Clearly the slick C-130 is far superior to the AC-130 gunship, because the AC-130 has absolutely no other advantages over the slick version.

XB70,

>>
Why, just look at the difference between the GBU-43/B and the and M102 105mm! Clearly the slick C-130 is far superior to the AC-130 gunship, because the AC-130 has absolutely no other advantages over the slick version.
>>

The GBU-43/B aka 'MOAB' is a weapon of _exceptionally_ narrow mission utility undoubtedly spec'd up by someone who has watched one too many late-late reruns of 'Outbreak'. It might be different if the weapon could be carried by a LO asset. Or if it had significant (DSHTW) penetrator capabilities as we now desperately need to pop Iran's buried nuclear facilities. But it is instead, in essence, a BLU-82 with guidance and thus about 10,000ft more altitude capability to get the delivery truck up out of the MANPADS envelope.

BLU-82 is in turn, less a Korea War 'kill the human wave attack!' system (though that was it's original purpose) than an instant-LZ maker. And I don't see much need for that in SWA, do you?

Given the major threat floor restrictions on the AC-130U and the current trend towards horned sheep insurgent tactics, even by nominally main forces, why would you associate what amounts to a point fires platform with either of those munition-not-mission target sets?

I myself do not have much admiration for the U-Boat, simply because, even with the AAS-52, Mk.44 and ATIRCM upgrades, it's basically going to be a one-gun pony to remain safe in daylight. While, at 170 million apop, you can't have 'a squadron for every LID' as one USAr general has stated would be his preference.

There are some rather smarter alternatives to the all-gun system approach, namely a 25km ATL and the CABS 60-100km options. But even here, you will _always be limited by the inventory availability of the airframe_. To the extent that if you have 2-3 country occupation commitments, an inventory of 20 airframes and twenty teams doing patrol ops in each country, the likelihood of a 7 airframe detachment putting a 300 knot platform over the unit in trouble, 100-300nm away from another unit which is getting simultaneously hit is _damn near zero_. Certainly before said force is nailed to a cross or the enemy fades.

OTOH, if you have a UCAV which costs _25 million_ then the loiter values remain nearly the same because you can afford nearly eight of them for each AC-130 you replace and a 450-500 knot cruise speed means that they can fast-switch in place on a 9-10hr loiter over individual units or be CAS-stacked at a mean distance of 2-5 minutes between several to respond to individual crises.

All because the total number of aircraft available beats the Spectre/Spooky's overall longer endurance and fires count.

At the same time, if you can hit a guerilla force as a grouped target while they are moving up from a staging point or even as a preemplaced ambush 'newly sprung', the instantaneous onset of precision fires /usually/ means more than a sustained engagement capability, if only because you have a much higher morale and C2 effect on the remainder of hillbillies. And you can tag the dead idiots via a DNA+photo database back to the village they came from with the intent of putting SOF in their midst for a couple weeks of good hard 'talking to' renegotiation of contract afterwards.

Either way, I would rather have a limited /fires/ (8 shot) asset on-site, with _great sensor tech_ (EOTS and XTRA) feeding me and my ROVER terminal _in convoy_ to show exactly what is wickedly comething at my team as well as to provide a kind of instantaneous mapping cue to the terrain in general.

Than a 'cavalry' response which takes an hour out of Kandahar or Bagram. Or even 15 minutes out of Shindand or Herat. These being fast ambulance solutions which aren't worth diddly dip to the already dead.

The difference (and the sadness) ultimately being that the UCAV can 'also do' the first day of war mission far better than either an A-10 or a MQ-1. And thus it is not a limited Air Commando type asset. But one which threatens the 104 million dollar F-35 as a superior D1R1 _bomber_. This being ultimately why the Blue Suiters will never let a UCAV onboard to fulfill the CAS=COP mission for which the F-35 is (in turn) nearly as much a cripple as the AC-130.

Greed and partisan self interest at work. Welcome to the procurement farce and tactical betrayal of trust that is America's Defense Dollars at play.


KPl.

I'm sure glad you picked up on my blatant sarcasm.

With you talking about the costs of everything, I'd like to know the comparison in costs between a GBU-39 and a couple of bullets. What costs more?

XB70,

>>
With you talking about the costs of everything, I'd like to know the comparison in costs between a GBU-39 and a couple of bullets. What costs more?
>>

The original predicted price for the GBU-39 was 64,000 dollars apop over 12,000 munitions. The latest estimates show a volume savings over 24,000 unit rounds of about 46 percent or 30 grande each.

www.defenselink.mil...

A 5.56mm round runs 21 to 27 cents, depending on whose numbers you use.

www.ecomass.com...

This of course ignoring the massive waste of money training a teenager to be a killer and then dumping him on society with next to no other redeeming social skills. Military unemployment is 16% and rising with the mass-exodus of the 'unbelievers', double that of the national average, whereupon they discover that wearing a uniform doesn't mean bleep in the real world and they have to double up on college and work hours just to play catchup. Since college is about 12 grande a year for cheap local universities and 44 per year for a private institution, and since 60% of the U.S. military comes from poor rural regions and/or demographic groups where the ability to have the _baseline_ education to be ready for college is highly questionable. You can probably also add that level of waste to a society devolving itself towards a consumerist, 'service', herd-ethic as well.

And then there's the 'Congressionally Mandated So It Must Be Patriotic' death benefit of 100 grande for all muzzle mutts.

www.theregister.co.uk...

So whether you believe it's training a massive Cold War force structure to win wars but not enforce the peace. Or the ultimate 'green' costs of recovering all that lead. Or simply the waste of the 300 grande that X's parents put into getting you to an IED CNN moment. Or the 100 grande added that you pay them for not sitting sonny down and giving him a lecture similar to the one I just gave you.

IT'S STILL A BOMBS BEAT BULLETS ALL THE TIME ARGUMENT.

Because the only way to convince a bunch of just-above-stone-age indig gits hyped up on religion and drugs. And bored out of their skull in a hostile = always gonna be backward environment. Is to smack them so hard from such a bolt-from-blue standpoint that they NEVER GET UP AGAIN. In terms of the ethics of a coup-based combat psychology.

>>
I'm sure glad you picked up on my blatant sarcasm.
>>

Sarcasm, as with any shovel, can be used to uncover finer points of truth hidden by distractory data. Or to whack the readers over the head so that they die laughing before as they are buried by their own ignorance of the things they give up to funny men.


KPl.