Thread: A-10 Successor

It depends what kind of ground targets you want to engage. If you are in a full scale conflict and dealing with large number of land forces, with organized and mobile air defense, you will need more sophisticated aircraft to provide strike missions. But if you are fighting insurgents than pretty much anythin will do that can fly and fire something.
Personaly, I think that whole system of warfare needs to be re-designed since warfare itself has changed. Need for highly integrated platforms is smaller nowdays than it was before. It's kind of funny with the economy calculations, chasing 3000$ worth of pickup van with 6 insurgents armed with 2000$ worth of weapons (ak47,rpg's), creates a need for a weapon system that costs arround 5000$. Using A-10, (it is effective, no doubt about that) for such targets is too expensive. So the best way to eliminate that truck,by my humble opinion, would be an turbo prop UCAV armed with 50 cal machine gun, since it is cost effective or airborne javelin missles if things get more serious. That 50 cal machine gun would need a superior optics so that can fire it's rounds in a populated areas and avoid unwanted deaths among civilians.
Something like OV-10 bronco with 50.cal machine gun turret and few javelin missles, looks fine to me.

[QUOTE=starsiege;276875] it is obsolete cos helicopters have usurped the role of the A10. and modern anti aircraft defence aquisition is VERY fast indeed. a figther doing mach 1.5ish or more while doing its strike run would have a high chance of escaping..but a lumbering A10?..

Even if Mach 1.5 were possible, down in the weeds (and it isn't, especially with underwing stores) it would simply be much too fast for the pilot to see and then react to the target of opportunity. I spent a long time as a Forward Air Controller) and it was found that the best speed for a ground attack aircraft aircraft (fighter bomber) was between 420 to 480 knots providing the pilots of both aircraft were not only skilled but current in their respective skills. It was up to the FAC 'Lingo Dog' to recce the area and find a good IP from which the attack aircraft could be guided to the target.

Originally Posted by Shipwreck

The Hog indeed didn't prove immune to IR SAMs, as shown by the A-10 losses during ODS :

* 2 Feb 1991 : A-10A (SA-16)
* 15 Feb 1991 : A-10A (SA-13)
* 15 Feb 1991 : A-10A (SA-13)
* 19 Feb 1991 : OA-10 (SA-9)
* 22 Feb 1991 : A-10A (SA-16)
* 27 Feb 1991 : OA-10A (SA-16)

As noted in the CPGW report :

1. "The A-10 is susceptible to threats due to the longer exposure time caused by insufficient engine thrust which limits rate-of-climb, acceleration and maneuver, and cruising speed."

2. "While the survivability features of the A-10 are good, future aircraft should be designed with higher performance to reduce susceptibility to damage while maintaining low vulnerability."

In response to A) Considering how many hundreds of MANPADS and other IR heaters were shot at the Hog, the few that were lost is not really indicitave of any inherent shortcoming, nor is the loss of so many Tornadoes so early in the war indicitave of any real shortcomings. The one jet that DOES have an inherent draw-back wrt IR heaters is the AV-8B.

In retort to B) The F-16 is so fragile that even at 500kts it is at extreme risk in a low altitude environment.

As far as increasing performance while maintaining protection, nothing comes for free. A jet as heavy as the A-10(with the wing configuration it has) would need a massive amount of power to have "F-16 like" performance. Indeed the never exceed speed of the A-10 is only about 450kts in any case. All that additional power would negatively affect range and loiter time....both bad things for a CAS bird. To me, the A-10 would be completely fine with an attack speed of around 400-425kts, which the newly planned engines should provide, and which CURRENT hogs can easily achieve in an attack dive anyway.

Originally Posted by Versus

It's kind of funny with the economy calculations, chasing 3000$ worth of pickup van with 6 insurgents armed with 2000$ worth of weapons (ak47,rpg's), creates a need for a weapon system that costs arround 5000$. Using A-10, (it is effective, no doubt about that) for such targets is too expensive.

I think that is false accounting. Those $5000 equiped lads can do far more damage than that in human and material terms. My argument against using birds like the EF2000 and F35 in such a role is suitability and survivability, rather than just on cost (although cost-effective death is always preferable)

So the best way to eliminate that truck,by my humble opinion, would be an turbo prop UCAV armed with 50 cal machine gun, since it is cost effective or airborne javelin missles if things get more serious. That 50 cal machine gun would need a superior optics so that can fire it's rounds in a populated areas and avoid unwanted deaths among civilians.
Something like OV-10 bronco with 50.cal machine gun turret and few javelin missles, looks fine to me.

Interesting idea on the UCAV front - but I would worry about the survivability of a UCAV operating like that. If a turbo-prop UCAV is loitering within effective .50 cal range, then it is loitering within MANPADs range. A true A-10 successor can dive to strafe and move its self out of dodge. I'm not sure how the MITL side of a turreted UCAV would work either. Launching an F&F Hellfire from a Predator is a different proposition to the realtime tracking and
engaging of a target with a gun.

Originally Posted by jgetti

I would think such an aircraft could be quite popular as well. However, I have a feeling that if we attempted to replace the A-10 with a new design, the pentagon would request an aircraft that had all sorts of high tech bells and whistles, and not nearly enough good old fashioned ruggedness and armor (though effective, this is part of the problem with the Apache). Then by the time the aircraft production is to begin, it will cost 20 times as much and will require another decade to complete (maybe that's a slight exaggeration). But maybe I'm just pessimistic,, hehe.

lol.. it does seem that airforces find it very hard to produce simple, reliable designs anymore, without massive feature creep. It's a shame that NATO armies dont really seem to have an input into fixed wing-design. I've a feeling they would come up with something more like the A-10 than the EF2000 or F35 for this role.

A private, modular design by one of the major air manufacturers might be the best way forward. The risks would be far less than for a new fighter, and if you take a purely off-the-shelf approach for weapons/avionics then you cut out a massive amount of the associated R&D costs. You could sell this sort of a/craft to a huge range of buyers - from NATO, to emerging powers like India, to developing nations who need a reliable COIN a/craft... I suspect a sort of snobbery about the plane would, unfortunately, keep it out of most developed a/forces. (Which is bloody stupid)