[Canadian_Mind]

Regina Regina:

The A10 was a workhorse for its time. Changing military oponents and money are the reason for its demise, although I'm sure if they really needed them again they could be quickly resurrected. The U.S. was the only Air Force that I'm aware of to have ever used them in battle or to have owned them. Doing more with less money means that multi purpose aircraft is the way they have to go. The A10 is very slow by any fixed wing standards and the attack helicopters can do the same from much farther distances.
They are realy cool though. I've sat in one and played with the controls which are still cable and pulleys. The gun is impressive and loud but it's seen its day.

I really disagree with this. The 30mm can do to mud huts, groups of mounted/dismounted enemy, and improvised defences that an F-18s 20mm or a LAV IIIs 25mm can most certainly not do. I haven't seen the effects of the 27mm Mauser.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Regina Regina:

What about an Apache with Hellfire missiles? Because that's what are being used to replace the A10 to kill tanks.

The A-10's secondary capability was it's impressive ruggedness. Even with an engine shot out and the fuselage and flying surfaces punched full of holes, they could still bring their pilots home.
One pilot counted no fewer than 50 holes in his kite when he returned from a mission, very few of which were from small arms fire.

The A-10s must be getting expensive to repair because even basic ground maintenance on a new helicopter is at least 2-3 times as frequent as it is for fixed wing a/c.

[BeaverFever]

At issue is the doctrine of low altitude fixed wing. The first Gulf war disproved the F111 and Panavia Tornado, who were the primary "low and fast" attackers but they took took disproportionately heavy ground fire damage/losses.

The A-10 was "low and slow" and although it proved itself capable of limping home after losing half a wing, 1 engine, the landing gear, and 1 vertical stabilizer, the aircraft itself was often still a write-off or prohibitively costly to repair. The laws of economics don't encourage that role.

[rickc]

I don't follow the logic in some of these recent posts. I do not believe that a helicopter is more suitable for close air support than the A-10.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-0 ... h-58-kiowa
We lost a total of five A-10's in the first gulf war. We lost a total of 19 helicopters. Of those 19, 14 were non combat losses. No one is even shooting the thing down, and we still lost them. 14 non combat losses pretty much sucks by any measure. We had zero non combat losses of the A-10. Thats dependable. Thats what you are counting on as an infantryman penned down by enemy armor, or artillery fire. We lost 7 F-16's. Five to combat, same as the A-10. I do not see anyone saying that the F-16 is obsolete. As far as the A-10 limping home, and being a write off, how about the fact that the pilot made it back home? It cost six million dollars to train a pilot these days.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/22 ... d-20130722
The A-10 limps home and saves the pilots life, and the taxpayers six million dollars. How does the laws of economics not encourage that role? The fact is the Air Force is selling out a proven work horse to buy an unproven POS F-35 that will not be able to provide anywhere near the same capability of close air support that the A-10 provides. The grunt on the ground will suffer as a result of the Air Force's decision to play politics and suck up to a defense contractor. This is the best article on the subject I have read so far: http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-us ... 1562789528

[Canadian_Mind]

Every house framer on the fucking planet wants a self-leveling, self-measuring, self-actuating nail gun when a simple claw hammer will do the job just as well at 1/20th the price and will last twice as long. The A-10 isn't shiny, it isn't pretty, but it gets the job done very well at very low costs. The politics behind it is much the same. It's an old plane with only one job that it does very well and is cheap to use, but it isn't the latest and greatest in technology.

[Thanos]

Regina Regina:

So why did no other air force use them and why is the US discontinuing their use?

Not the "US" so to speak, but strictly the upper brass in the Air Force. I rip on the TeaBircher congress-critters a lot when they do it but there's a sizeable contingent of GOP reps that are trying to stop the Air Force from giving up on the A-10. Just because it isn't Top Gun-sexy the way the fast movers are is a damn stupid reason to give up on one of the premiere weapon platforms of the last forty years. If the Air Force is so set on modernization above all else then why they hell do they still spend billions per year on the B-52 fleet, all of which are two decades older than the A-10 is?

Politics, future lobbyist jobs for Air Force officers after the retire, and procurement dollars. That's all that's going on in the background with the A-10 sage. Typical Beltway sewer activity and not much else.

[BRAH]

The A-10 is impressive.

[bootlegga]

Regina Regina:

The A10 was a workhorse for its time. Changing military oponents and money are the reason for its demise, although I'm sure if they really needed them again they could be quickly resurrected. The U.S. was the only Air Force that I'm aware of to have ever used them in battle or to have owned them. Doing more with less money means that multi purpose aircraft is the way they have to go. The A10 is very slow by any fixed wing standards and the attack helicopters can do the same from much farther distances.
They are realy cool though. I've sat in one and played with the controls which are still cable and pulleys. The gun is impressive and loud but it's seen its day.

^^ This.

[herbie]

We should get some A10s. Imagine when the N Korean armored divisions land in Prince Rupert how we could chew them to pieces in the mountain passes.
Because Prince Rupert doesn't have a High School football team led by an effeminate dancer to save our asses.
Come on back on track. F35 - fighter plane. Should we buy it or look for what another? We don't need tank busters at this point.

[Thanos]

Not sure where the assumptions that the A-10 is good only for popping armour came from. Every bit of it's weapons package shows that it's equally effective at nailing hardened positions, enemies on foot or in trucks, trenches and dugouts, and buildings as it is destroying tanks and APC's. The only defect with the A-10 is that it isn't sexy enough for the Air Force brass. Like I said, they're determined to get rid of the 'Hog but they're also still bound and determined to keep the ancient B-52 going, and that thing is only good for dropping iron bombs from a height where the accuracy really isn't much better than what it was for the bomber fleets of World War Two. There's no legitimate reason for the largest military in the world to rid itself of one of the most effective and lethal aerial ground attack platforms ever built. With the kind of money the US has access to the only thought should be "we'll have both the F-35 AND the A-10" because they can more than afford it.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

Not sure where the assumptions that the A-10 is good only for popping armour came from.

True this. Back in the 1980's the USAF and the USN reportedly did a joint exercise with the USAF testing their strike capabilities against the Navy. The surprise the bus drivers threw in for the Navy was having a squadron of A-10 come in at wave top level to 'kill' a bunch of Navy targets.

At the time the Navy didn't have a decent radar for distinguishing low flying aircraft from surface (wave) clutter and the exercise exposed a vulnerability that the Navy has since resolved.

But the exercise revealed that the A-10 is still a versatile aircraft and I recall they've flown off of aircraft carriers (in exercises) without needing arrestor hooks or catapults. That's pretty versatile.

[Thanos]

Those WW2 videos of Navy fighters shooting the shit out of Japanese ships at places like Truk remain impressive today. Be neat beyond words to see the A-10's do the same thing to some ships today.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

Those WW2 videos of Navy fighters shooting the shit out of Japanese ships at places like Truk remain impressive today. Be neat beyond words to see the A-10's do the same thing to some ships today.

One of my fave videos was of a B-25 that had a 3" recoilless cannon in the nose and then eight .50 on the fuselage tearing the beejeezus out of Japanese ships along New Caledonia...it was most impressive!

[Thanos]

The Hawker Hurricane was pretty much obsolete against all other enemy fighters by 1942 but the Brits were still using it in the southwest Pacific to shoot up Japanese transports evacuating their troops from the Indonesian islands in 1945. Absent of anti-aircraft protection, ships are still the nice big dumb soft targets that Billy Mitchell proved them to be back in the 1920's.

The Stukas loaded up with underwing 37mm cannon are well known as tank hunters. But the Germans also tossed a 75mm tank-buster cannon into the belly of some late-model Ju-88's to play havoc with the Russian armour columns that were streaming westwards. Not enough to make a difference at that point in the game but apparently they were pretty effective. I have no doubt that things like that were studied and considered when thing like the A-10 or Russian Su-25 Frogfoot were originally put on the design board.