A-10 vs. F-35 report released – sorta

 

OK, let’s make one thing clear: I am a dry-land kinda guy. No amphobious (intentional misspelling) stuff, no higher’n corn, no lower than potato(e)s,  not a wingwipe and could probably barely fly a plane to the scene of the crash.

Now we all know the Air Force has been trying to get rid of the A-10 since, well, they got it. Not exciting or sexy enough for the pilots, they say. But its battlefield abilities are unquestioned. Nowadays, the Air Force says all its functions can be done better with an F-35, and in 2018-19 they tested both planes in a variety of scenarios to see how they stacked up. Then they effectively buried the test results, and after finally resurfacing them, redacted the report  heavily..

The flyoff focused on the relative abilities of the A-10C and the F-35A to perform three distinct mission sets: close air support (CAS), airborne forward air control (FAC[A]), and combat search and rescue (CSAR). Unclassified official definitions of those mission sets from the reports are reproduced below.

The ability of the A-10 and the F-35 to perform each of the three mission sets was judged on a variety of factors, but the report lists two critical metrics for each one. For CAS this was targeting time and engagement time. When it came to FAC(A) the focus was on brief generation time and correlation time. Lastly, coordination time and recovery time were the primary measures of performance with regard to CSAR.

All testing was done on a low- to medium-threat basis, since the A-10 was not designed for a high-threat (ie. dense SAM coverage) environment.

A-10s and F-35s involved in the flyoff flew a combined total of 117 and a half flight hours across 69 sorties.

Nowhere in the unredacted portions of the report is any definitive statement about whether the A-10 or the F-35 was deemed to be superior for conducting any of the three missions in either permissive or contested environments. The first bullet point in the executive summary, which might offer a broad general conclusion about the results of the flyoff, is entirely redacted.

A partially redacted section strongly indicates the flyoff concluded that more F-35 sorties than A-10 sorties would be needed to prosecute the same number of targets in permissive environments. This makes sense given the Warthog’s substantially larger payload capacity. However, this portion of the report also notes that “the number of sorties necessary to complete the same mission objectives in contested environments would depend on air defense suppression plans.”

There is too much in it to summarize briefly, so WarZone is the place to go. A few salient facts:

1) The CAS testing seems skewed to favor the F-35’s more limited targeting abilities.

2) For CAS, the A-10’s 30mm gun has 6 times the ammo capacity of the F-35’s 25mm gun.

3) You can mount a mix of weapons on the A-10’s wing hard points. On an F-35, apparently they all have to be the same – and mounting weapons there significantly reduces the “stealth” part of it. Sounds to me like that limits its adaptability to a changing mission in flight significantly.

4) Ground communications were restricted in a way that slowed A-10 response times.

5) Even with inert weapons, assessments were performed by computer imaging and self-evaluation.

6) And, has been said before, the Air Force is making no effort to pass along all the hard-won CAS knowledge the A-10 community has gained over the years.

From the sounds of it, the Air Force stacked the deck  to make the F-35 shine as much as possible, despite its minimal loiter time, high expense, and limited adaptability.  Read the article – maybe I’m wrong.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Air Force, None