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Comment by krapht | Hacker News Reader

The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks, so I wouldn't say it's a raging sucess. In addition, it would certainly be blown up immediately if it came within shooting distance of a tank by any number of man-portable anti-air missiles.

What it can do is provide reasonable close air support against Toyota pickups and infantry, but replacement parts for the plane or the molds to create them don't exist. The A10's titanium airframe will soon need wholesale replacement as it reaches its fatigue limit, so the entire plane would need to be remanufactured.

A drone-based replacement would be far more cost efficient. I don't see why mothballing the A10 is a poor decision.

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"I don't see why mothballing the A10 is a poor decision"

Because we do not have any aircraft that can stay on station above our troops stuck out in the middle of nowhere and keep them safe by shooting for multiple hours. Every other aircraft (drone include) is a drop-a-few-and-leave. That is not good enough.

Where have we faced modern main-battle tanks?

We should remove close air support from the Air Force's mission and give it back to the Army.

I thought the AC-130 was pretty good at that. It's even worse at not getting shot down of course but could provide fire support for just as long and over a wider area.

I haven't heard of an AC-130 doing it, but the folks that I talk to mention the A-10 often. More of a sharp shooter thing instead of an area effect thing.

> The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks, so I wouldn't say it's a raging sucess.

I love those improvised battle tanks by the guerrilas that the US has been encountering in their last 30 years of wars.

Yeah good thing no one we're dropping bombs on today has any armored vehicles.

http://defensetech.org/2015/01/07/us-airstrikes-agaisnt-isis...

US also don't have boots on the ground. And it's not as if ISIS has the vaguest idea how to use what it has.

Yes that's right there's no one over there right now and that hardware is a black box impervious to anyone figuring out how to use it.

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/1-000-soldiers-from-the-82nd-...

You make it sound like the A-10 doing close-support is the only way the US has to destroy a tank from the air.

> What it can do is provide reasonable close air support against Toyota pickups and infantry

So can helicopters, drones, and Harriers.

No actually they can't. Well maybe Harriers but helicoptors are vulnerable because they enemy has manpads and drones have too much lag for close air support.

As far as I can tell from this list[1], five A-10s have ever been shot down, while destroying at least 1500 battle tanks and AFVs[2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_combat_losses_of_United... [2] http://www.2951clss-gulfwar.com/statistics.htm

Wow. This is the equivalent of three Rudels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Rudel

Ironically some input from Rudel was apparently used during the development of the A-10. At least this is mentioned on the Wikipedia page linked above.

>The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks, so I wouldn't say it's a raging sucess.

Heh heh. No. There isn't a tank in the world that can survive an attack from the GAU-8. And it's not a "minigun". A minigun is, you know, small.

The A-10 also can carry a variety of missiles and bombs to get the job done.

I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion, though. Sniper pods have made "low and slow" unnecessarily risky.

> "The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks"

This is the most ignorant comment in this entire thread. Please go read about the A10's gun -- the GAU-8/A. There is no mobile armor in the world that can withstand even short bursts of fire from it.

Prove this statement. Given that the A-10 shoots from above, that's where the armor's thinner. DU penetrators do a fair bit of damage, independent of the rumoured radioactive burst upon compression. Couple of rounds in the engine probably turn the tank into a bunker.

I wonder what a drone built on the same philosophy as the A-10 ("We built the most awesome machine gun ever, let's strap a plane to it") would look like.

Minigun? Have you seen the size of the shell fired by the GAU-8? It's designed to shoot through the top of the tank, either the turret, or the engine. Quite easy to do, even against modern tanks. Now whether it can do so against modern air defenses is to be determined.

And the primary anti-tank weapon of the A-10 isn't its gun, but the Maverick missile.

In addition, it would certainly be blown up immediately if it came within shooting distance of a tank by any number of man-portable anti-air missiles.

Why do man-portable anti-air missiles only exist near tanks?

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