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Comment by meerita | Hacker News Reader

While the A-10 is not comparable with the F-35 playground, it was a plane that saved the budget and fit well into the military. The service made, the capabilities and the cost was really good. Same with the F-15. I think the F-35 is the result of hubris.

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The A10 is only viewed as successful today because its very old.

Back in initial production in the Carter years they discovered awful metal fatigue problems in the wings. In the early Reagan years they bolted on braces to toughen up the joint. Still kept failing. Around the turn of the century barely before the GWOT the air force realized the wings were failing so fast they'd run out of replacement wings around 2010, so right after the GWOT started (which is getting to be one human generation ago...) they rushed a contract thru to slap repairs on the existing wings and then replace entirely with new wings. As of late 2010s the wing replacement project (about $2B) and the air force desire to get rid of the A10 were dueling with each other, kinda crazy. AFAIK that battle continues today. With new wings we'll be flying those things into mid century.

There's never been an engineering project that hasn't had teething problems.

Currently, the F35 does not have its wings falling off, the gun mounts merely need beefing up. Thats better than the A10 track record. If thats the worst problem the F35 has, that's pretty good!

There's also a lot of irony in that the A10 has been under seemingly continuous avionics upgrades for its entire life; you could probably build a F-35 with 1970s avionics for an 1970s price.. so unfair to compare a price tag for a 1970s plane that's been infinitely upgraded since, with a 2020s plane and its 2020s price tag. Also the leadership of the air force has been trying to get rid of the A10 for some decades now. Some doctrine insists close air support should be an army helo job, not an air force strategic bomber job.

The problem with the A10 is if you don't expect soviet tanks to pour across Germany there's no point in a giant flying gun. And if you need air launched anti-armor, the army does a better job with human on board helos and the air force does a better job with drone launched missiles. It just doesn't seem to have a point anymore. It can be made to work, and has worked, but the alternatives are a better match. The troops can and have been supported with a A10, but they'd be better and more quickly supported with multiple apache helos or a swarm of existing drone platforms for the same cost and effort.

> The A10 is only viewed as successful today because its very old.

It's more than that. The amount of service, casualties dealt that any other aircraft I would dare to say. At the Gulf War in 1991, teh A-10 destroyed more than 900 Iraqi tanks, 2,000 other military vehicles and 1,200 artillery pieces. The A-10 has more casualties than the F-16 with more than 4k built againts just a 700 production of A-10. I think it's remarkable, just as comparison. All aircrafts had problems and were upgraded. All of them. Some of them with bigger problems others minor. The problems in the A-10 came after 8000 hours of service.

The other thing to note when comparing the A-10 to F-16 is that the A-10 is a close-air support jet - when in combat it is flying slower and lower to the ground and therefore a much easier target than an F-16 dropping bombs from a higher altitude.

> The problem with the A10 is if you don't expect soviet tanks to pour across Germany there's no point in a giant flying gun.

You should check out some videos on YouTube of the A-10 in action in Afghanistan and Iraq - particularly the ones from soldiers on the ground. It’s a devastating and effective weapon. The only thing that delivers comparable capabilities is the helicopters (and maybe the AC-130), but none of them have a gun like the A-10.

I’m not military, but know plenty of people who are (and I’ve read a lot about this). My understanding is that ground forces love the A-10 for what it can do for them. They can communicate with it and give the pilots precise instructions about where to deliver the rounds. Drones can’t do that.

Ground troops do love the A-10 but there's plenty of reasons the brass has decided to retire it.

The A-10 was specifically made for CAS against Soviet armor. It's essentially a 30mm cannon with wings. The nature of warfare has made that role much less feasible, though; armor is more effective, anti-aircraft weapons are more deadly, and detection methods are more accurate. There isn't a lot of room for big, slow, low-flying planes like the A-10 in modern warfare.

Nowadays it obviously isn't used against mass formations of Soviet armor. Drones are capable of delivering the same kind of support that the A-10 is used for, just not necessarily the drones the US military uses today.

The thing is it was ineffective against Soviet Armor within a few short years it reached active service. It's 30mm was of little to no effectiveness against T-72's. It would instead have to use it's Maverick missiles against tanks. But at that point why not use something which can carry more Maverick's instead of a flying 30mm?

> They can communicate with it and give the pilots precise instructions about where to deliver the rounds. Drones can’t do that.

That isn’t true. We can target with laser precision from the ground, using a drone as the weapons platform. The A-10 was great at making a big mess (like an artillery barrage, but calling in drones can unleash hellfires with the accuracy of hitting a Honda Civic.) Drones can also stay on station for 12+ hours and you don’t have to wait for them to show up.

All the drones I’ve seen have relatively limited weapons capacity. Nothing close to the A-10. I do agree this is probably the future, but we’re not there yet.

I think I completely agree. Most A10 doctrine is typically to establish air superiority first, and then use A10 for ground support missions [1]. The F-35 is supposed to employ stealth to do more penetrating missions when you cannot assume air superiority. This is more important with adversarial nations getting more and more sophisticated with their anti-air programs, like with Iran purchasing S300 systems from Russia. These modern system have very powerful radar, and pose a large threat to operating aircraft in the vicinity. Navigating a wartime arena dotted with radar without modern stealth technology creates a lot of challenges for our air force.

In a similar vein, the gun on the F-35 seems more of an afterthought. I think the capacity is super limited even compared to F/A-18s. But it's again supposed to be dropping GBUs- not strafing targets. And besides, modern air doctrine for air to air combat is going to be at the extend of sensor range. I wouldn't be surprised if the sixth gen fighters ditch cannons in lieu of more fuel/more misses/better radar evasion profile.

[1]. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a18236/why-the-a-1...

For a high-speed modern aircraft like the F-35, the gun is primarily for signalling intent to a non-responsive aircraft. The gun is fired so that the tracer shells pass within view of the non-responsive aircraft. Preferably it is noisy enough to be heard.

The non-responsive aircraft is expected to wise up, realizing the situation, and then land or leave the territory.

It's interesting you categorize both A-10 and F-15 in the good bucket because the same group of people responsible for the A-10 (F-16 and F/A-18) were very against the F-15. The F-16 and F/A-18 were actually spun up in opposition to the F-15 by the "Fighter Mafia". That group of people favored cheap, numerous planes that did one job really well, hence the F-16 and A-10. Both of those are undoubted successes but at the same time most people would consider the F-15 a success too. I wonder if F-35 would ultimately prove to be a success the same way the F-15 did.

Indeed, the F-16 was success, as well the F-18. F-15 was too a success, at its way. Another good example but now well retired was F-14. But the entire generation of planes of that era was really good. F-35 was beaten in dogfight by a F-16 in excercises. I don't think it's a good plane because it's heavy and want to do everything planes aren't good design either.

The F-35 was not built for dogfighting. It is supposed to sense and launch long before the opponents are even in visual range.

I'll go on a limb and claim for publicity and political fallout reasons there will never be enough BVR RoE airspace to make BVR relevant to aircraft design.

There's a difference between the classic definition of BVR meaning slinging a missile at a blip no one has seen 30 miles away, vs the F-35 concept which is to have excellent sensor suite leading to the pilot having excellent situational awareness so the pilot can shoot down the other plane before the other plane knows they're present, etc.

Its tricky to get into visual range to visually identify the target as a mig-21 and not a 767 full of civilians without at least some dogfighting performance.

The F-35 it's multirole. single-engine, all-weather, stealth multirole combat aircraft, designed for ground-attack and air-superiority missions. So it has to deal with all kinds of dangers. It's I-want-to-do-it-all aircraft that will not outperform anyone who specializes, unless the technical advantadge is on, ie. killing by range without being seen. But F-35 could kill lesser aircrafts, maybe 3 or early 4th generations but cannot outmatch other fighters with same technology. F-22 is way better for that.

3rd gens? Really? Don't you think it's a bit unbecoming to exaggerate so much considering it has achieved 15:1 kill ratios? It's IRST capability even actually gives it the capability to spot F-22's first. Furthermore, the F-16 was do-it-all aircraft. And it did it damn well. The F-35 is even better.

New generations fighters have the same range detection. And "stealth technology" is still on claim, in fact russian radars detected many planes with ease. An F-117 was shot down too. I will not rely on that, since all the 4th gen airplanes and 5th have same capabilities.

RCS reduction specifically targets X and S band radars because those are the ones which are precise enough used for firing solutions. You need those bands in order to either direct a missile onto a target or have a active seeking missile find it's target. What you're talking about is L band radar, which has existed since the 40's. But it's use is as a early warning system. The problem is that the resolution of it is orders of magnitude worse. For it to be actually useful today you need to build a massive radar which is very power hungry. That's a perfect target for a first hour cruise missile strike.

And that's not even getting to the part that the only reason why L band can even detect F35's and F22's is because that they have features like vertical stabilizers which are too small relative to the wavelength. B2's and B21's do not have this issue.

Finally the idea that one F-117 shot down somehow invalidates that fact that the F-117's stealthiness provided it protection with 99% effectiveness is absurd. The reason why it was shot down was because of USAF's arrogance in flying identical flight paths day on day and a SAM operator realizing this and succeeding in targeting it the moment it opened it's bomb bays, when it's stealth was degraded.

>The F-35 was not built for dogfighting. It is supposed to sense and launch long before the opponents are even in visual range.

The very same hubris caused trouble in Vietnam, which were fixed with rapid re-introduction of guns to fighters, and dogfighting to fighter schools. Sad to see this lesson having been lost.

Don't forget that the US still deploys F22 and F15... The F35 isn't replacing those planes.

Are you sure that the F16 was a success? After all, it was decried as a horrible plan early in its program and service just like the F-35[1]. Also, that F-35 that lost to an F-16 was software limited undergoing testing for the explicit purpose of testing its limits. The plane has had those limits raised since and it has done very well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM

A fair point! I guess I was trying to use F-15 and other aircraft that were decried as bad by critics early on but later turned out to be successes.

Worth noting that the F-16 is not what the Fighter Mafia wanted at all; they preferred a daytime only fighter that carried only a couple of missiles, while it's evolved to carry much heavier ordnance and much more advanced sensors. However, the simplicity of the design concept did result in a much easier path to service. The initial design was an MVP that was followed on by successive upgrades, whereas the F-35 is more of a program designed to come into being all at once.

From those more in the know I've heard they are constantly having to fight to retire the A-10 which is a program mostly kept alive for solider morale and civilian fan reasons.

The rumors are that the leadership in the Marines would much rather have more single engine turboprop aircraft like the T-6 or A29 for Close Air Support missions, aircraft which cost at least 10x less to run.

John McCain wouldn't let the Airforce retire the A-10 because most of the A-10s were based in Arizona, and he was afraid of the job losses from having airbases close (aka the dreaded BRAC).

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