Newer is not always better
I’ve seen a lot of interesting things being posted about the F-35, the DoD’s newest wiz-bang be-all kill-all fighter, designed to replace the AV-8B Harrier, A-10 Warthog, F-16 Falcon, and the F-18 Hornet. Most of the articles I’ve seen suggest that the F-35 is more Dud, than High speed death machine. It seems that if anyone dies because of the F-35 it might well be our own pilots. As if that wasn’t bad enough, now we have a senator saying the A-10’s will be gone inside of a year. Scared yet? It seems that everyone is convinced that Drones, and high flying stealthy machines are the winning ticket. I have yet to see any literature or opinions that say that the F-35 is anything more than a disaster waiting to happen.
Now let’s look at the A-10 alone, and it becomes painfully clear that this move is not only boneheaded but highly dangerous. Take this article, which says that the F-35 could not possibly fly as many sorties as the A-10. Even the B model which is supposed to be a V/STOL variant, couldn’t keep up. I’m not an aircraft expert but I can bet that even if they did manage that kind of turn around, there’s no way that the F-35 could carry the awesome array of bombs, or air to ground missiles. One of the other selling points of the A-10 is how it uses relatively less fuel when compared to most jet aircraft which gives it both range and loiter ability that the supersonic F-35 never could match.
But this article, is perhaps one of the most damming of all. It tells the tale of US troops in contact, in Afghanistan, in danger of being overrun. The A-10’s managed to keep the enemy at bay, and used up a lot of ammo in the process. Ammo that the F-35 could never ever match. The reason is pretty simple. The A-10 doesn’t need to be stealthy. It doesn’t need to fight Migs or go supersonic. In fact going low and slow is exactly what it’s designed to do. The A-10 is really the only airframe in our arsenal that is designed solely for close air support. It is designed to kill tanks and ground troops in prodigious numbers. If anyone recalls Desert Storm, the A-10 earned the nickname “Whistling Death” as they tore up whole battalions of enemy troops and tanks at a time.
In my own personal experience, when I first arrived at FOB Warrior (Kirkuk Air Base) there was an A-10 squadron stationed there. They would run regular patrols all over Northern Iraq. I only heard of one instance when the A-10’s were actually called in, but one of the things I liked most about them was that they were quiet. You really wouldn’t hear them unless they’re almost on top of you, and I actually got sleep being at the end of the runway. A few months in the A-10’s were replaced by the “sexier” F-16’s. You could tell the difference immediately. As cool as it is when you see an F-16 do a max power take off the first time, I got almost no sleep because those suckers are loud. More than that, you could tell when they were overhead. You could hear them and point out their general direction when they were miles away. Generally speaking, this is not a good thing in a ground attack fighter. You don’t want the enemy to know they’re about to get corn cobbed until it’s too late. That’s actually one of the few good things about a predator drone, you simply don’t know its there until it’s too late.
Another point where the F-35 fails, is ruggedness. I don’t care how cool the new stealth fighters are, they can’t hold a candle to the A-10. There are several really great pictures of A-10’s that made it back to base with their tail practically shot off. They’re even designed so that if an engine explodes it won’t damage the avionics. I would seriously doubt that any officer in command of an F-35 unit would allow any of his or her pilots to descend low enough to actually pick up anti air fire, let alone strafe targets on the ground. If they did, in some hypothetical situation, how much damage could the highly sophisticated craft really take. Even the mainstay fighters like the F-15 and F-16 don’t take well to AA fire. Clearly someone has forgotten in order to preform the CAS mission you have to go low enough to hit the enemy, but when you’re that low, the enemy can hit you too.
So why the emphasis? Why the urgency? Well Sequester has some of the blame, but in truth the AF has an institutional bad habit of favoring the shiniest new toys designed to fight in a futuristic world, the strangely never seems to happen. The F-104 Starfighter is a great example. It’s a good thing that it was never actually used to fight a war, because it had a nasty habit of killing pilots just trying to land the damn thing. The F-4 Phantom, originally a Navy project, was supposed to prove that a gun was no longer needed for areal combat. Instead, the F-4 proved conclusively that a gun was needed on fighter aircraft. The Stealth technology of the F-117, and B-2 is also another great example it’s supposed to be the ultimate, but we’ve seen examples of both airframes with extreme vulnerability. As awesome as the nighthawks were, they were also extremely vulnerable, one even getting shot down in Kosovo. As far as the B-2 Spirit, each one costs roughly the same as a Ticonderoga class cruiser, and while we’ve certainly gotten our money’s worth out of them, a few years ago one of the bombers (we only had 21) crashed because of water droplets on one of the sensors.
The Air Force, is full of egg heads, that love to have the coolest toys. While no one can argue that’s a pretty human trait, where the Air Force goes wrong is that they forget their sole purpose is to win wars, not look cool doing it. We could have arguments as to the risk aversion in CAS missions, and to be fair risk aversion is a problem every service is having right now, but the plain truth is that we still need the A-10. Despite all the warm fuzzies that the services and Lockeed have been putting out about the F-35, every time I hear about it I get a cold chill go down my spine. I think the rush to get the latest toy, that can do every mission asked of it (many of those missions with wildly different mission requirements) will leave us vulnerable, and quite possibly get a lot of good people killed. Of course by the time we figure that out it will be far too late.
Category: Politics
You lost me at:
“I got almost no sleep because those suckers are loud.”
Really?
Most of this analysis is pretty good but they said the same kinds of things about Bradleys when they came out. There is always a lot of complaining about new stuff not being as good as the classics. So be careful that you aren’t getting to far into cranky old bastard mode when you study it. At the same time, ALWAYS remind them about the dangers of newer and shinier compared to rugged and dependable. The Air Force got so hung up in that trap that they had to buy Korean War Vintage A-1 Skyraiders from the Navy’s stocks to fly CAS in Vietnam.
A few years ago there was a plan to DX all the A10s in favor of the F16 for ground support…that idea didnt fly after all was said and done on Gulf War I.
Didnt fly…see what I did there??
The other downfall I see of the F-35 is that it is single engine. The A-10’s that have been damaged even lost an engine and made it back to base. The Hog was designed to take on Soviet tank formations in Eastern Europe and face Soviet air defenses and survive. She has had upgrades to make her even better and the GAU-8A gun has no rival. That gun alone can make all the difference one for moral in knowing it is there and two what the enemy knows. Also what will be the cost of losing an F-35 verse the A-10? What about a we move into greater ECM and EMP threats, the A-10 was designed to be flown with multiple old fashioned if you will systems and not rely on lots of computers. The A-10 is a true war horse. I can remember when the Air Force wanted to lose them and the Army wanted them only the AF was not willing to see the Army with jets, then Desert Storm kicked off and suddenly it was sexy and killed things on the ground like there was no tomorrow and if I recall one Mi-24. Ask the troops who the plans protect which one they would rather have. The problem with the F-35 boils down to trying to have one airframe that does it all. Hence the coast and time to get it there, trying to jam to much into one plane with the theory of saving money is not the answer. Time and time again this has proven to be a bad policy. Look at some of the airframes we have had that the tax payer and the troops got their money’s worth, they were designed to do one thing and do it well, the B-52, C-130, F-14, F-15, F-16, UH-60, UH-1, A-10, just to name a few all designed with one thing and then made to do more after they were made to do their primary mission very well. Given how long the B-52 and C-130’s have flown and how well they have done I would say… Read more »
The article blaming many of the JSF’s ills on it’s VSTOL lift requirement may well be dead on target.
Aerodynamic drag has major impact on an aircraft’s performance, range, payload, etc . . . . It is composed of multiple components, the most important of which are form, skin, and wave drag.
Form drag is, essentially, the result of forcing an object through a compressible fluid (e.g., a gas). In general, a bigger item means more form drag. (The area rule recognizes this and provides designers guidance on how to minimize the drag for a given cross-sectional area.)
Skin drag is the result of the effects of the gas flowing at speed along the surface of the aircraft. Think friction. (There’s more going on, but that’s a good analog.)
Wave drag is quite complex, and becomes important at transonic and supersonic speeds. (There isn’t a particularly good analogy to everyday life, as with few exceptions we just don’t do things that approach transonic speeds in the atmosphere in our everyday lives.) A good way to think of it is the aircraft “drags” the shock wave associated with going transonic/supersonic behind it; doing that requires additional power supplied by the aircraft, which the aircraft sees as additional drag.
Adding VSTOL with a huge central fan to the JSF design means the aircraft has to have a larger fuselage than would otherwise be necessary, and thus is a “bigger” object being forced through the air. That means more drag – and, consequently, a lower top speed, almost certainly more weight, and less turning ability – than an aircraft without allowance for same. Since the fuselage is common among all models, even removing the fan doesn’t help that much. Doing that saves a bit of weight and complexity, but the drag stays about the same. The basic shape isn’t changed.
I fear the article’s author might be right, and we could indeed be building a real dog with the JSF – a dog that won’t be able to hunt well enough when it hits the fan.
As with the late 50’s/early 60’s when they (the Pentagon) decided that guns on fighters jets were obsolete, because missiles were the future and the first models of the F-4 wasn’t equipped with guns and dogfighting was taken out of training, so too, do things come back around to that way of narrow minded thinking. As it turned out, the North Vietnamese were kicking our ass in the sky with outdated Mig 17s to the point that we had to go back and mount guns on our fighters and retrain our pilots in the art of dogfighting (that’s how the Top Gun school came into being). We will find that the same thinking will require us to re-look at our decision at the cost of many lives. They tried to phase out the A-10, before, and were jerked back to reality.
Replace the venerable and war proven A10 Warthog with a new, slick and unproven toy? Sacrilege! Also the kind of thinking I’d expect from politicians and their military PC hacks.
Titanium bathtub. I just like the sound of that.
From a 2002 article by Rodford Edmiston: “Oh, and remember the A-16? During the Gulf War some F-16 fighters were modified to A-16 status. Their performance was so dismally poor they were quietly withdrawn and returned to their original configuration after only a few days of operation. The A-16 didn’t have the range or the stability or the loiter time needed for the mission; especially the loiter time. And it was just too fast. The pilots couldn’t take good aim, because the relative velocity of plane and target was higher so aiming was harder. Admittedly, part of the problem was that some needed targeting software wasn’t available. Still, given this poor showing, and the success of the A-10, it was pretty much inevitable that the A-16 was quietly swept under the rug.”
The Usaf has a long-standing habit of thinking that the newest and shiniest toys are the best toys, which is not true. New and shiny things don’t make better weapons. They just look pretty.
Each of the services flying high performance aircraft have such different sets of parameters, it makes it difficult to have a “one size fits all” airframe. The USAF and Navy – based on the success of the F4 – tried to come up with a joint fighter to replace the F4. Variable geometry wings were thought to be the answer to the special needs of landing a jet on a carrier. The result was the F111, which failed in it’s Navy version due to issues with the landing gear IIRC. So with the F35, we’ve come back to the future.
The Hogs are like old muscle cars, well-built, dependable and no matter what comes along you just can’t replace them.
So, because egos in aerospace are more important than practicality and common sense, if we ever go to war with China, we’ll get whacked like house flies.
V/STOL is not a practical quality because no one has invented a way to control gravity (meaning an anti-gravity lift). And that’s the hold-up on producing a useful and practical plane configuration. These guys watch too many Star Wars movies.
It works good in BF3 LOL!
If the USAF doesn’t want keep the best close air support plane in the arsenal, bring back the Army Air Corps to fly them!
Does anyone remember the story of the Douglas A-1? Initially developed during WW II as a torpedo bomber, it was essentially obsolete when it became operational with the advent of the jet. Someone figured out that a piston driven propeller aircraft that could carry a lot of ordinance for a long time would probably be a good thing to keep. Despite not being sexy, they were a mainstay for CAS for the Navy, Marines, and USAF during Vietnam.
As an Infantry type, I have always said that the only aircraft in the USAF inventory that was worth a crap was the A-10.
An analogy to military aircraft might be made to carpentry tools. How many of us would trust their home renovation to the guy who shows up with one huge tool – the combo nailgun/brad nailer/circular saw/drywall screw shooter/palm sander/electric screwdriver with electric plier and hammer attachent? Seems the Pentagon, once every generation, designs an airplane like this. See TFX.
USAF’s Fighter Mafia has always hated the A-10. They quietly tried to retire the A-10 prior to Desert Storm. Rumor had it that the Army made a bid to have the funding for CAS diverted to their own budget so as to operate the A-10 fleet as Army aircraft. The threat of losing part of their budget supposedly caused the Air Force to relent.
Two planes that should never be retired: A-10’s and B-52’s
Neither are flashy or shiny, but purpose-built to do a job very effectively and take the hits to keep doing the job!!
@18
You forgot the C-130 and all its different variants. It can do it all from CAS, refueling, Command and Control and moving people and equipment.
@19
100% Agree!! The “dirty 30” does everything well but long haul (for those who have been in one for a “long” haul, you know what I’m saying)
Interesting example of previously mentioned ruggedness:
http://badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=270670618011
@17. I remember that story as well. I think it was circa 1989 or so.
And the USAF has always hated the CAS mission. It’s a dirty and dangerous job, especially the SEAD piece, and it conflicts with their institutional self-image of flying off in sleek fighters to do battle with the sleek fighters of the enemy
If you guys only knew how stupid the USAF leadership really is, none of this thrashing around with the F-35 would be surprising. Between the F-35, F-22, CV-22 and B-2s, it’s amazing the USAF has any money left at all. I spent the last 6 years of my career with the 6th Special Operations Squadron, the only dedicated Aviation FID squadron in the DoD. When I joined we had almost 180 experienced personnel that could train foreign air forces on Mi-17, UH-1N, UH-1H, UH-60, C-130, CASA 212, DHC-6 Twin Otter and AN-26 aircraft (all for a yearly operations budget of around 5 or 6 million dollars). When I left last year, they were under 80 personnel and were in the middle of switching to Polish M-28 Skytruck operations only (which no one but us and the Poles fly.) All of that unique capability was just thrown away by the Air Force. Sadly, USSOCOM was so focused on doing HVT hits all over A-stan and elsewhere, they just let it happen.
So, it may sound like an exaggeration, but the Air Force is trying to commit organizational suicide as we speak. As a result, the Air Force is going to get a lot of our people killed in the next big war we fight (probably with China.) You read it here first…
Memo to Air Force and idiots inside the Pentagon:
Air power has NEVER won a war. It’s the people on the ground who ultimately get shit done. Your mission should be to support them.
And a F-35 ain’t gonna do jack in that regard. Senator Zell Miller was dead on. The Dems really do want us throwing spitballs at the bad guys.
You know what the real reason for their existence is? Money to GE, a huge Obama donor. They got the 2 billion dollar no-bid contract to design the (underperforming) engine for the F35. Let’s talk about this piece of shit aircraft. Let’s even compare to the M16 rifle in a few ways. My understanding of the creation of the M-16 is that it was wanted by some, hated by others. Some generals, allegedly, purposely hobbled it in any way they could, including by delaying development and proper testing. Many did this, not out of hatred for Stoner or his system, but because they knew the M14 and the M1, and had a lot of faith in them. Let’s compare that to the F35 No one wanted it. The F22, already made and out of eXperimental, into reality, was a better fighter craft for Aircraft-Aircraft fighting. The A-10 is, at the current time, pretty much THE WORD in ‘oh hi, you’ve got a tank and some people on the ground? Be a shame if I turned them all into hunks of shit and red mist’. VTOL was on the way out (NOBODY had much good to say about the Harrier. Ever.), with only the Osprey being used, and even that being a questionable project. The F-35 was jointly developed with people we may some day fight (China). It was a VTOL. And the whole thing was such a massive clusterfuck o’ stupid personal interests that, rather than scrap the project a few billion in as being worthless, they poured in more money and lowered the standards. The engine was designed by GE aviation in Cincinnati, OH. They were given the contract. Anyone who wanted to bid for it was told to fuck off. Guess who got a lot of money from GE and its masters in the 08 and 12 elections? Barack Obama. Long story short, we should relegate this piece of shit to the scrap heap and cut our losses. The A-10, like the B-52, is tried and true. The F-22 is doing well. The F-16 and 15 are doing… Read more »
@15 Bobo, as a guy on the ground in VN like you I loved the A1-E Skyraider, in could stay around a long time and down a lot of hurt on the VC/NVA. After I got out of the Army I met an old Navy pilot who drove one in country, he became my flight instructor and friend for life, I think had I been on the ground in the later wars, I would feel the same way for the A-10. Give them to the Army!!
I can’t believe we are still talking about this…actually I can. Being a former AF type person, the AF has been trying to get rid of the CAS mission for many years. They don’t like it…doesn’t match the air superiority and deep penetration missions. I don’t think it has to do with risk, or danger, or lack of give a shit about the ground pounders. The AF still does the SEAD piece for example. They just don’t have a dedicated air frame for it like the old Wild Weasels, just repurposed the F-16 for that mission; and sure I’m bias but don’t tell me that penetrating enemy air space isn’t risky. When it comes down to budget lines though they would rather put that money into air frames which get them those capabilities to obtain and maintain air superioty and let the other services take care of their close support needs. The Air Force beieves this is the best way that it can contribute to “winning wars”. Finally, going from a lot of air frames to fewer makes budgetary sense again. Less supply chain and replacement parts issues, more interoperability, etc. I know for a guy at the sharp end none of this means shit but I sat in a lot of meetings with four stars and they talk budget, air frame life cycle, etc. I’m not saying that’s the most important factor in their decisions but it’s a factor. And can you blame them, after the shooting stops and you’ve flown the wings off your aircraft it’s not like congress is going to be understanding and authorize a lot of extra money to replace those things. @17 There was discussion in the mid-90’s, even after Gulf War I, of the Air Force handing the A-10s to the Army! It did not come down to AF funding per se. Sure, the AF did not want to lose those funds but they had already mothballed a lot of the A-10s that went to GW I and there were much fewere units so in the scheme of things I don’t think it… Read more »
This issue is nothing new, nor is it solely confined to the Air Force.
Take the development of the SSN over the past 40-50 years. I’ve been crew on a 637 and a 688, and have stepped on a VA-class boat.
From a habitability standpoint, the 637 has it all over newer boats. Don’t believe me? Ask the COB of a VA-class how many guys he has hotracking in the Torpedo Room any given underway.
637’s could basically outperform a 688 in every category except top speed, where they weren’t outdone by a whole lot, and even then, SSN’s DO NOT operate at high speeds for long periods of time. 637’s were deeper diving, had FAR better handling at low speeds (i.e., good for surveillance, launching/recovering SEALs, etc) and were simpler to run. Only the relative age of the plants made maintenace an issue.
So why didn’t we improve the 637’s? Politics. Rickover and others wanted a SSN that could run with the carrier battle groups, and got something close in a 688. Granted, SSN’s usefulness at an SOA of 20-plus knots is about as useful as a football bat, but they could keep up with the battle group, so I guess there’s that.
The multi-function has a purpose, to a point. I like my Leatherman–keep one in the truck for simple jobs, etc. But I’m not so foolish as to think it will come anywhere near the capability of an honest-to-God toolbox with tools designed for their specific purpose.
The A-10’s saved my men on more than 1 occasion. The F-15 and AH-64’s did too. Keep it around. Doing CAS is what they are designed to do (along with killing tanks).
If old designs were useless, then biplanes would no longer be in the air.
Throwing out a useful piece of equipment just because it isn’t slick and shiny is as dumb as saying there is no longer any use for compasses or sextants.
Besides, I really do think the Airfarce management tends to watch FAR too much sci-fi and mumbles ‘why can’t we have those toys?’
Well if they want to get rid of them, I’ll take two A-10s.
Nothing quite compares to seeing one of those things jinking in on a target then unleashing the scunion.
The Air Force cannot win a war but they can lose one.
We have to have air superiority fighters to protect bombers when they bomb.
Wars are won by taking and holding ground and protecting or freeing populations.
We need air superiority fighters to protect transports supporting ground operations.
We need ground attack aircraft to support ground operations — helicopters cannot survive shoulder-fired SAMs. The muj proved that in the 80’s with our SAMs.
The A10 is the best ground support aircraft the US ever built. I think that they are taking it offline to free up money for something else.
In my opinion the F-35 is no replacement for an A10. Stealth depends on the aircraft shape. Shoot holes in it and the holes aren’t stealthy. It will be impossible to repair those holes in the field so the solution will be to avoid holes. As numerous other people pointed out you cannot do ground support from 10,000 feet AGL.
If the Air Force is not going to support ground troops with missiles and gunnery then the Army and the Marine Corp will have to go back into the ground support business. The Air Force will fight that. This will probably be politically impossible until we lose an air base or bunch of ground-pounders because the Air Force could not or would not support them.
Why is this country so excellent at forgetting lessons learned the hard way?
I had a friend who worked on the JSF concept many moons ago, so this was a bad idea many, many years in the making, and the main aim was to save money, not produce a kickass plane to win. The sales pitch was simple: A joint strike fighter that can take on all missions for all branches, and save money by being one base model to train on and maintain. Yeah, you just threw up in your mouth.
(Also, not sure if wikipedia is correct, but they are saying the engine is a Pratt & Whitney, not GE. Speaking of wikipedia, it’s probably a bad sign if the article on the aircraft has a section on all the controversies that’s as long as the description of the aircraft. Compare and contrast with the articles on the F-22 or the A-10).
I thought the a-10 was considered out dated with the prevalence of continuous rod warheads that makes the armour on the plane irrelevant.
Stealth Aircraft have a place. IN research and proof of concept roles, and a very limited combat role for first strike. The A-10 does need to be replaced, it’s old and they’re breaking. BUT, it needs to be replaced with a dedicated CAS platform of similar ability. The F-15/F-16 need to be replaced with low cost airframes of similar ability (The F-18 would fit the bill just fine). These are not just my words, but these are the words my father spit out (He is a retired 28yr USAF Fighter Pilot). Interesting note, this same idea is what got us the F-111 and it ended up being best at a mission it was never designed for.