[Humor] hangar sale...

[Adm.Lee]

https://www.duffelblog.com/p/air-force-offers-to-donate-a-10s-to-ukraine-or-anybody-at-all-really-please-just-f-cking-take-them-a

I think I have room in my shed for one or two...

(Yes, I recognize this is one of the oldest bones of contention between fans of the services and that bird. I even know a few A-7 pilots who claim the Warthog was over-hyped before it was accepted. Please accept this as the tongue-in-cheek it is meant for. It is Duffleblog, after all.)

[Tegyrius]

In an only-slightly-surprising turn of events, Greece offered to sweeten the deal by throwing in a free F-4 Phantom II and a bottle of ouzo.

https://www.twz.com/air/greece-plans-to-sell-f-16s-mirages-to-rationalize-its-fighter-inventory

- C.

[Raellus]

:)

It's not nearly as sexy its contemporary fighter-bomber cousins, but I've always thought the A-10 was cool in an ugly-tough badass sort of way. I think the war in Ukraine has proven, however, that aircraft of that type would have a very low survivability rate in a modern, high-threat environment. In other words, if there'd been a WW3 during the 1980s, the Warthog would have become an endangered species fairly quickly.

On the other hand, the A-10 was praised to the rafters by soldiers and Marines during the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those were low-threat [aerial] environments, and the A-10 excelled in them.

I wonder how the Vietnam War would have played differently had the A-10 entered service 10 years earlier. I'm not suggesting that it would have changed the outcome entirely (I don't believe that any weapon system short of tactical nukes would have), but with A-10s performing CAS missions instead of the F-105, F-4, A-4 "fast movers"*, would the North Vietnamese have been brought to the negotiating table sooner?

*Yes, I do know about the A-1 Skyraider.

-

[Tegyrius]

It's not nearly as sexy its contemporary fighter-bomber cousins, but I've always thought the A-10 was cool in an ugly-tough badass sort of way. I think the war in Ukraine has proven, however, that aircraft of that type would have a very low survivability rate in a modern, high-threat environment. In other words, if there'd been a WW3 during the 1980s, the Warthog would have become an endangered species fairly quickly.

Serious question: is it fair to compare the A-10's hypothetical performance in the 1980s, against air defenses designed in the 1970s, versus the ADA environment in Ukraine which benefits from another four decades of development? I don't know how many of the air defense systems in use in that conflict are vintage systems without subsequent updates.

- C.

[Adm.Lee]

These are all fair questions, but an acquaintance of mine spurs me to ask: is there anything the A-10 *has* done that the A-7 couldn't have done?

The bombload, AFAIK, was equivalent, the speed isn't much different. The big difference is that gun, and the A-10's 30mm isn't that big a difference vs. 20mm over Afghanistan & Iraq. Both designs benefited from Vietnam experience. Neither might have been all that survivable in a very-hostile ADA environment, such as 1987 Germany or 2024 Ukraine?

To answer my own question: Oh, yeah, I was overlooking the '91 war, in which there were lots of Iraqi tanks to be shot up.

[Tegyrius]

These are all fair questions, but an acquaintance of mine spurs me to ask: is there anything the A-10 *has* done that the A-7 couldn't have done?

The bombload, AFAIK, was equivalent, the speed isn't much different. The big difference is that gun, and the A-10's 30mm isn't that big a difference vs. 20mm over Afghanistan & Iraq. Both designs benefited from Vietnam experience. Neither might have been all that survivable in a very-hostile ADA environment, such as 1987 Germany or 2024 Ukraine?

To answer my own question: Oh, yeah, I was overlooking the '91 war, in which there were lots of Iraqi tanks to be shot up.

The traditional argument is that the A-10 is more capable of low-level flight for terrain protection from ground fire and is more likely to survive the inevitable hits. In practice, we'd need someone to do a deep dive into the respective designs' records of combat losses versus damaged aircraft returning to friendly tarmac.

- C.

[Adm.Lee]

The traditional argument is that the A-10 is more capable of low-level flight for terrain protection from ground fire and is more likely to survive the inevitable hits. In practice, we'd need someone to do a deep dive into the respective designs' records of combat losses versus damaged aircraft returning to friendly tarmac.

- C.

I'll go along with "more survivable", not least for the A-10 having two engines vs one. I remember much being made of the A-10's redundant control systems, but have no idea, off-hand, if the A-7 had those, too.

"Low-level flight", to me, sounds more like a pilot-training issue, and with both planes designed for subsonic low-level attack missions, I suspect there may not be much difference here.

A quick skim of Wikipedia turned up that A-7s were well-regarded over Vietnam by the Navy pilots, especially for low fuel consumption. Air Force A-7s had only 6 losses for 12,928 sorties, lowest for any fighter in theater, and second only to B-52s for tonnage dropped on Hanoi. The Navy recorded 98 A-7 losses, no data on sorties given.


Wikipedia again: For ODS, 8100 A-10 sorties, 4 losses.

[Claidheamh]

I have loved the A-10 since I saw them on the flightline in the early 80s and my "uncle" (a Col in the Army) filled my head with stories about their badass-ness. As to survivability over a 90's battlefield in Europe, when I was entering in ROTC in 1990, I spoke with a pair of USAF analysts who were working at the school I went to. When I mentioned the A-10, their eyebrows went up. They said that the 'predicted combat lifetime' of a pilot in an F-15 (in a peer-peer European War) was expected to be 6-10 hours on average. An A-10 pilot average was predicted to be 10 minutes.

That was unsettling.