I imagine the option of having a microwaved Hot Pocket on a long mission without blowing the fuses would be nice.
Also, who are we fighting who would have a good air defense the second week of the conflict?
(Don't say China. China has replaced Confucianism with Waltonism, as in Sam.)
You can't. What you can do, is make attack aircraft more numerous, cheaper, and more expendable -- which almost certainly means unmanned. Manned combat aircraft are becoming dinosaurs for much the same reasons as battleships did.
Most MANPADS have warheads weighing less than 5kg, a few kg of HE is enough to cause significant damage but the A-10 was built to fly with half a wing, one engine, one rudder/elevator assembly, and a mountain of shrapnel stuck in the pilot's armored tub. MANPADS will get a mission kill on an A-10 but they aren't powerful enough to bring one down the majority of the time.
Stand-off attack with smart munitions is a different role than CAS; so this isn't so much F-35-can-do-CAS as F-35-is-sufficient-because-CAS-is-not-necessary.
EDIT: to be clear, I am characterizing the position here, not endorsing it.
It's been said before, turned out to be untrue before, and I see no reason to believe it this time. Until someone finds me some credible infantrymen who say that CAS isn't needed, I will not support putting boots on the ground without a strong CAS game.
EDIT: re: EDIT: Fair enough! Don't worry, I haven't downvoted you or anything like that. As far as that position, I feel like it is maybe not the most honest one from some folks since the F-35 has been touted by some as a platform with which to do CAS.
Stealth?
For close air support, maybe the US wants to use fast, stealth aircraft firing missiles to spots specified with laser designators, GPS, etc.
As I recall, at times the USAF claimed that to kill tanks an F-16 with a missile was better than the A-10: Sure, the gun on the A-10 is amazing, but the A-10 flies low and slow and should be vulnerable to, say, MANPADS. The F-16 flies higher and faster, fires a missile, and then is out'a there.
Maybe the USAF wants the F-35 to be better, still: Use stealth.
Sure, maybe soon the USAF will want its missiles to kill tanks, etc. fired from drones, maybe even stealth drones.
>For close air support, maybe the US wants to use fast, stealth aircraft firing missiles to spots specified with laser designators, GPS, etc.
Yeah, the Air Force always says that, and the ground troops always demand A-10's Apaches, etc.
>As I recall, at times the USAF claimed that to kill tanks an F-16 with a missile was better than the A-10: Sure, the gun on the A-10 is amazing, but the A-10 flies low and slow and should be vulnerable to, say, MANPADS. The F-16 flies higher and faster, fires a missile, and then is out'a there.
The Air Force always claims that they have a good reason to get rid of the A-10.
The fart-gun while awesome, isn't the real reason troops love it so much. The ability to loiter on station for a long time and keep enemy forces down in defensive mode is. Neither fast-movers, nor helicopters can loiter as long.
>Maybe the USAF wants the F-35 to be better, still: Use stealth.
Stealth isn't a panacea, it's a buff against the enemy's radar. And, yeah, drones/unmanned are the future.
Some versions of stealh try to lower their heat signatures, e.g., hide the jet engine output from the ground by an extension of the part of the plane below the engine and mixing the jet exhaust with cool air. For the F-117, can get a little view of its engine output at
http://aviation-design.fr/images/jets/rc-jet-model-f-117/lar...
Looks like they tried to hide the exhaust heat.
I love the old warthog, but in the days of drones, I can't see much of a use anymore.
They will absolutely defend themselves militarily over the dispute in the South China Sea or Taiwan.
They are quite keen to start a skirmish with their neighbours to assert their authority and dominance over the region.
They're heavily invested in us, both in terms of bonds and in terms of selling us stuff. Both of that goes away the second they challenge us militarily, and their economy couldn't take it.
In a ground support aircraft, slowness is good, because then it can turn over the battlefield. Anyway, the plane can take a huge amount of punishment and still fly.
Russia is going to continue to assert themselves against NATO's encroachment into the former USSR countries and China wants to be seen to be their region's unquestioned superpower. Both have a lot of political support internally to demonstrate their military strength.
Really, the biggest problem with the A-10 right now is that the airframes are getting old, but that's a problem with our entire aircraft inventory. e.g., the F-15 having been grounded multiple times in the past decades because of airframes literally giving out and breaking up in training flights.
The A-10 fleet is supposed to get rewinged to help with this; the USAF signed contracts with Boeing to build the wings before they started actively fighting spending money on anything that isn't the F-35.
As Iraq and Afghanistan proved, you need extremely close range support and sustained fire. The cannon on the A-10 is good enough for the sorts of targets they're dealing with, armor is rare, and it has significantly more mobility than the other best alternative, the AC-130.
What use is the F-35 when it can't linger, has extremely limited bombing capability, and can't strafe when necessary?
The A-10 is an extremely pragmatic solution to a messy problem.
I don't get why that is. The plane was designed in the 70s, when personal computers were the size of closets. Even if it was tight, I can't imagine new tech taking up more space than the old tech did, even if there's more of it.
That makes no sense at all. It is a nonsensical statement.
>and the sensors have placement requirements which conflict with the aircraft's configuration. All of this adds up to having to re-wire the aircraft, do a new layout, and move around a large number of parts.
Unless what you're really trying to say is that the stuff designed to fit a different specific aircraft can't be directly bolted on to an A-10, then I simply don't find those remarks credible. And if you are trying to say that, then you aren't being reasonable.