The A-10, keep it or scrap it?

How would something like this hold up in the presence of modern SPAA?

We lost two warthogs in one day to a strela-10 back in desert storm

Seems like the A-10 wouldnt actually do will in a conventional fight against the Russians, who like to have alots of SPAA hanging around their armor formations.

The A-10 got rekt so hard that they came up with the C variant which turns it into just another 11,000ft+ bomb truck except it's not nearly as good as any other multi-role that we currently operate.

It wouldn't. Average estimated lifespan of a A10 was 7 minutes after entering the combat zone.

To be fair, even dug-in infantry had a lifetime measured in hours.

Or, you know, a dedicated platform COIN/low intensity conflicts.

Honestly a weaponized Piper Cub could probably do the job better than the A10 lol

It's not rugged or minimalist. It's incredibly fragile to the primary AA threat, lacking the survivability of even 4th gen fighters like the F-16 with advanced ECM suites. It's also significantly more complicated than something like an OV-10 or an A-129 while not offering any tangible benefit over these aircraft compared to an F-16.

Meh. Doesn't really do anything that an Apache can't do better.

I guess Im just a little surprised considering how the A-10 is always touted as a flying anti-tank terror.

Im guessing the Spectre Gunships would suffer a similar fate?

Okay but was that typical, or a one-off? How does it compare to other aircraft losses at the same point?

worse, because they weren't designed for that role. They're meant for low intensity/uncontested environments. IIRC, they fly just above stall speed to give the crew the best stability and observation.

A-10s were grounded during Desert Storm because of their awful combat losses. F-16s, F-15Es, and F-18s picked up the slack.

Yeah, that’s not true, and you are a homosexual.

>elementsofpower.blogspot.com/2011/07/debunking-close-air-support-myths-part.html

I'll just leave this here for anyone not ironically shitposting

Attached: 1510214769473.png (246x205, 15K)

They were pulled off the FLOT, not grounded, but it's tantamount to the same thing.

We do. It's called the reaper drone.

OK, but make sure that Russian anti-aircraft missiles which have been in service since the early 90s can blow it out of the sky so hard we have to abandon our empire-building field trip in the middle east as soon as they show up in theater.

The cannon can't actually pen tanks.
It's hard to get rounds on target compared to an attack helicopter.

Everything it does is inferior to an apache except carrying capacity for bombs, and even then, why not use a f-15 or a f-35 and get those eggs there faster?

This shit is tantamount to fake and gay.

Spectres wouldn’t last 30 seconds in a contested environment

It wasted hordes of Soviet armor in Iraq, though.

A pilot I knew said he could literally see the tops of tanks turn white hot from the GAU then they would just grenade.

The package Q strike involved a fuckload of F-16s zerg rushing the Baghdad IADS and we only only lost two of them. Imagine the same scenario with Warthogs attached somewhere in the mix.

except a typical gun run from an A-10 results in maybe 3-7 impacts on the tank itself. I wish I still had the docs but there used to be penetration tests that got posted around here on the subject. It showed that a T-55 was pretty much impervious to the GAU-8 even under perfect conditions

Everything killed hordes of Soviet armour in Iraq, the F-111 killed more tanks than the A-10 did.
And they didn't lose any aircraft to SAMs or AAA despite going up against much better protected targets and flying more sorties.

this may or may not be the report I'm talking about, take from it what you will dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a522397.pdf
This report describes firings of the A-10/GAU-9 weapon system on 7 November 1979 against a Soviet tank company simulated by 10 combat loaded M-47 tanks. The pilot making the firing passes attacked at low altitude and used correspondingly low dive angles in order to simulate movement through a hostile air defense system. Ammunition used in the attacks comprised Aerojet Lot Number AJ79A181-001 30mm armor piercing incendiary (API) rounds, which (continued) proved to be effective damage agents against substantial areas of the U.S. MK 47 tanks used as targets. The pilot in ten successful
firing passes fired a total of 174 rounds of which 90 impacted the targets. Of the projectiles impacting on targets 30 achieved .
perforations of the armored envelope. Significant results include catastrophic damage to 3 tanks, 1 tank immobilized and silenced,
three tanks immobilized only.

Thanks, nice reference!

Does the author of that blog ever make a point?

this

Rather than a reaper drone specifically, how about a drone that can get gunfire onto the ground and survive gunfire from the ground?

Take a small chunk of the cash from selling infinite F35s and have all the A10s just strafe somalia 365/24/7 and BRRRT the melanin off of it.

If an SUV is the target then something closer to a 50 caliber might be more appropriate than a 30mm.