The bottom line is that for the price tag of an F-35 you can buy several A-10's. Wars aren't always about having the best kit. Mostly they're about how well you can manage the resources available to you. Simply having more aircraft in general means greater coverage and that's more important in alot of the places where it's been utilised. Don't be fooled. The military knows what it's doing and it's working.
@@samwamm85 the truth is, we already paid for the A-10s 30 years ago. They are inexpensive to maintain and upgrade. The decision was made to re -wing 100 A-10s to extend their life to 2040.
The worst thing about getting killed by an A-10 is that since the bullets are supersonic you won't get to hear the cool buuuurrrrt sound before you die.
Having worked with this platform both in training and overseas, it is in the same category as ac-130 gunships...a platform meant to be used in an uncontested environment. Agreed that there are better weapons (than the cannon) for armored vehicles, however the cannon is more cost effective for apc/soft skinned/arty/suppression. It is also nice to have pilots, who specialize in supporting troops in contact vs someone who has many mission types in a plane that is easily damaged down low by small arms fire. Another advantage is the time on station and quantity of ordinance. Love the f35 and it's precision weapons, however I do not see the AF pushing f35 drivers to army liaison slots to develop that expertise in supporting ground elements. In the end only boots on the ground hold territory...thus everyone supports the infantry.
Yeah, right. But practice say that 30mm Cannon is an overkill for APC\IFV and 20mm is more than enough while GAU8 cause actual issues with flying performance.
I have a strange love for this aircraft. When most people talk about how much they love the A-10, they gush about its cannon and the psychological effects it has. My admiration for it comes from how quiet it is. Having spent more than a decade on air force base flightlines, I love how it barely roars when it takes off and almost doesn't even whisper when it lands. Whereas other aircraft like the F-15, F-16, F/A-18, F-22, B1B, KC-135, and so on that practically make you deaf when they take off and still roar when they land, I appreciate the A-10 even more.
I was a stinger crewman, in field training exercises the a10 was both quiet and loitered around forever. It also found us, a dismounted 2 man team with a shoulder fired stinger. None of the other fast movers did, occasionally the helicopters did.
Here is an easy take from a Marine 0326 who was blessed to practice my craft in Afghanistan and Iraq repeatedly. It never mattered what fixed wing support we received, but the psychological impact the A10 had on enemy combatants was obvious. Drop a bomb and heads went down, fly the big brrrrt overhead and they laid down as and ran away. Is the A10 perfect? No. Does it stand up against 5th generation fighters, No. Does it have it's place on the battlefield once air superiority has been achieved? IMO, yes. Here is the thing; I don't have to be at the sharp end of the spear anymore so I can appreciate the A10 as it was during my time, younger warfighters will appreciate their own aerial assets.
I was assigned to Wardak Province, Afghanistan in 2008/09 and operated out of FOB Airborne. The FOB was halfway up a mountain and the bad guys were on top of the mountain directly across the valley from us - about two kilometers away in a "straight line". They were pounding the crap out of the FOB using missiles and we had no weapons which could be effective against them (we later got 105 mm howitzers). Air support was called for. We watched two Belgian F-16s drop bombs and miss. Then two British Eurofighters dropped bombs and missed. A (one) A-10 dropped one 2000 pound bomb which did not miss. There were multiple explosions. An after action patrol found the launch site destroyed with about 25 casualties. The casualty count was approximate because - in addition to the bomb explosion itself (huge) - the supply of missiles was also detonated.
Yeah, the GAU-8 fires 30mm HEI, API, and Shit-your-pants-in-fear. If sheer terror is just as effective at stopping someone as death, then it's just as good in that moment.
@@barryfletcher7136 yep, use of the F-16 for CAS is dangerous. F-16s have hit the ground many times because of speed and handling issues when doing dives.
Is all about combined arms efforts. With appropriate electronic “artillery” support assets, the A-10 is the ideal slashing air cavalry assets which will break enemy artillery and tanks facing off each other, allowing coordinated ground assaults. The idea is of persistent sustained air cavalry attacks to silence enemy position permanently or long enough to allow the assault bounding. Can the F-35 be used to do that? The F-35 is more of a standoffish bomber and artillery itself than an air cavalry asset. The video’s author is comparing Apples and Oranges.
Coming from maintenance side as the crew chief I can’t speak much for OPS. I know as far for the A model A-10 she was lacking in many ways but we learned from previous mistakes and improved. Now C model definitely closed the gap and improved night operations and identifying friendly forces. Also got rid of that god awful pave penny pod lol. The gun I agree it’s not enough maybe for personnel or soft armor looking at mobile SAMs. But big thing for my side maintenance friendly love this ugly thing and I’ve worked every legacy fighter minus F-18E and F-14.
@@matthewredman7814 2nd person I've seen comment "A-10C is very expensive". I'd love to know where that came from cause every cost per flight hour article lists it as the cheapest manned combat aircraft in the USAF. I'll say having worked on the C model they're not that expensive especially in man hours. The avionics are basic and same level as later block 16s and 15E models.
Now I know you come from the ground side of the a10. But you may perhaps have experience with other airplane guns. So my question / speculation would be if the a10 would have benefitted more with a smaller but more accurate gun, if it was not effective against tanks anyway? More easy to maintain, more ammo perhaps or some more room for stuff that could help with its aim? If you are not killing tanks, design it for those softer targets more I would think. O_o (me civ noob here, not trying to disrespect)
@@jerryandersson4873 all it would have done was allow for carrying either a larger ammo capacity of 20MM rounds or increased fuel load. 20MM would mean even less armor piercing capability. Pilots would like less time hitting the tanker during combat ops but 2hr loiter then refuel and so on is fairly standard for single seaters. I'm not trying to pump up the image of todays's A-10, it certainly has flaws and short comings. But the video and a lot of these comments repeating Lazerpig points are maddening cause they're based almost entirely on data from the testing phase to first Gulf war. Ammo/bombs change, tactics change, things in general just improve over the amount of time it's been used for its CAS role. The guns accuracy also is nowhere near as questionable as many keep repeating. It's like people took an entertaining slide show as fact and ignore videos of it shooting on target or first hand accounts.
@@jerryandersson4873 the modern versions have a gun stabilization system by adjusting for the recoil (the plane wants to nose up when you fire), very accurate and a digital pip so the rounds land exactly where you think they should. It's very accurate.
I've been in the USAF as a pilot, however I've served with the mudhen (F-15E). It was always very amusing to me when people inflated the capability of the A-10 when in fact the F-111, F-16 and our beloved F-15E are the unsung heroes of close air support, air interdiction and precision strikes. The F-35 and F-15EX will continue to be underdogs in popularity, although they will be the ones that come to the rescue when needed.
@@CODYoungGunna Where did I say it still is in service? It was retired in the 90s. But if you had watched the video, or know something about the conflicts the A-10 was involved in, than you would know that the F-111 and A-10 served together. Which is why I (and Simon) mentioned it. As I called it an unsung hero.
@@CODYoungGunna The next time you attack someone, do so at least when you know what you are actually saying. And do so only when you fully understand what the other person says. You're welcome.
@@HolyNorthAmericanEmpire Ok less do this then not only has the A-10 out live your dear F-15, the USAF are waffling on the idea of getting the F-15EX and the F-35 has not lived up to expectations. In the Gulf War, A-10s had a mission capable rate of 95.7%, flew 8,100 sorties and launched 90% of the AGM-65 Maverick missiles and this was with the older frames. Their aren't many people who are going to say that the F-15, F-16, or F-111 does CAS better. Or are the unsung heros of CAS.
Dad is a vet of Iraq, round one. I'm round two. His company was getting held down by two T72s back in the day. Commander called in close air support, pair of A10s came JUST above the dunes and saved his ass (and the rest of the dudes he was with) So......A10 is a graceful, FORCEFUL angel to me. Cut those tanks in half.
Did you watch the whole video.. A-10 relatively imprecise with dubious effect from 200 m. F-35 - destroys a target each and every time from 70 km away...
@@oledshwfgk3068 No, the slow speed and long loiter times of the A-10 combined with its survivability against ground fire make it better suited to CAS missions than any other aircraft in the American fleet.
@@brianeleighton it's also better suited to being shot down as opposed to other aircraft performing similar missions. it's not a bad plane, it's great, and it's cool, and it's fun, but it is overrated lmao
It's kinda maddening seeing how many war nerds with no experience talk like ground troops fear calling it in cause the Brits had one blue-on-blue incident. Nvm I saw plenty of guys like you JTAC's and TACP's come thank our pilots and get tours of the jet while deployed.
@@XanderH4W6 yeah dude the Brits must have invented all the tests Simon listed here because he's secretly mad about that blue on blue incident you won't hush up about.
A-10 is a COIN aircraft but it wasn't build to be one. So it is a failure and a happy success together. It was build for soviet tanks in the Fulda Gap and you can't compare this to the requirements of the Afghanistan war.
@@Nukefandango that I won't shut up about? I'm only addressing it cause almost every comment thread on here uses "Brits hate it" as a meme excuse to say it's terrible. Also the tests he's referring too were from the late 70s and tactics/munitions change over 40yrs. Even the SOP for A-10s changed during OIF/OEF to be more effcetive in it's role.
My uncle worked as an engineer & my aunt was one of the nurses on staff in case of emergencies, and I've had a special place in my heart for this plane my whole life. As a kid, I went to 'Family Day' at Fairchild Republic in Farmingdale and saw the A-10 being built and the gun, bullets, and all the amazing parts. I remember a presentation/show of all the protection and redundancies in the plane. Being able to walk through the assembly line & see it in so many stages of assembly fascinated me.
I wonder how often an A10 was used against a tank in it's history? I viewed it more as a close air support aircraft, suppressing ground targets and protecting friendly troops. I have friends alive today because of this plane.
It was always designed as a tank buster to close the fulda gap. There are better and more accurate close air support platforms which may have saved more of your friends but when you’ve got a hammer you need to use every problem like like a nail.
If the grunts like it idk why everyone thinks it’s such a pos. And like he said the taliban ran when they realized it was attacking. I can guarantee that saved lives.
@@parkercarpy810 The thing is, most accounts I have seen suggest they very much disliked the A-10 to the point it was withdrawn from theatres upon demand/request by ground forces due to having the worst friendly fire rate of any US airframe. The Taliban would run when any air support was in use tbf. While it saved some lives, any other plane would likely have also done that job just as well if not better.
Yep. I've got friends alive from this truly amazing plane alive one day, and alive the next day when it came back to deliver more protection THE next day too. It's survivability is unmatched. Simon and crew, stop taking $$$ from Lockheed Martin Guys on the ground love this aircraft, so piss off.
In a quiet little dusty town somewhere in the modern wild west, was a group of folks that more or less performed a no-knock warrant on a global scale. Those folks feel a little different about the A-10. Definitely, a lot I don't miss, but one of the things I do is the raspy wake the hell ups from the flying bathtubs and the sense of warm embrace that usually accompanied their mating calls from the sky!
But they did a test 40 years ago that didn't perform well and that is more important. The guy who does this channel is a super douche half of the time. He doesn't even try to look at the big picture. He figures out his opinion and then finds data to support it.
There's nothing quite as reassuring as when you're under siege on the ground and hear those Warthogs approaching... A-10 pilots never have to pay in my bar.
@@armymanaka360 It's obvious you've never been in combat. I speak from personal experience. When your position is about to be overrun by enemy combatants, an A-10 is most welcome. But you go one taking out his ass.
I think his point is that the A-10 was not as effective at what it was designed to do - destroy Soviet tanks in Europe. No doubt, as a close air support platform, it was highly effective but the targets were softer than a Soviet tanks column that would have included antiaircraft defenses. Never having been put to THAT test, this is pure speculation.
@@armymanaka360 I agree with MojoPup. In support of infantry, particularly in the mountains of Afghanistan, this is a very scary weapon. The problem isn't friendly fire. The problem is its speed and new shoulder fired anti aircraft missiles.
@@academicdeaneducation6671 It seemed to do pretty well against Saddam's tanks in Kuwait. I know I wouldn't want to be inside a tank that gets hit by those depleted rounds...jus sayin'
Its not lauded by the aviation enthusiasts... Its the ground pounders that love it. I have 3 personal friends who still walk this world thanks to CAS from one of these airframes.
To be fair, the question here would be, would they have been saved just as easily by another airframe? And all the data points towards yes(and probably with less dead British soldiers as well)
@@aquila4460 It certainly could have. But because of the maintenance costs associated with these higher-performance aircraft, and their longer down-times per mission, it was cheaper and easier to use the A10 which was designed for close air support.
@@Amalgam67 It was designed to kill tanks. It's used for CAS because it's not as good at killing tanks as it was meant to be. For CAS you could argue a smaller and more accurate gun would be just as effective as the 30. Happy your friends got out of those situations but that's not a metric of design efficacy.
When you think about it, if 30 mm autocannons were good at killing tanks, we might put them on tanks? Or at least on tank-killing vehicles. But on the ground, 30 mm is used for lighter vehicles, infantry, shooting up buildings, that kind of stuff. Tanks tend to carry something around 120 mm for killing each other, and if you want to trick out something like a Stryker for an anti-tank role, you put TOW missiles on it. Now, on the role it played in Afghanistan, air support against softer targets, the arguments seem weaker. Here you've got a rugged, reliable plane that can fly from dodgy airfields and bring an awful lot of stuff to the party. And of course the ground forces love it.
Nah, 30mm autocannons are best used for heavy suppressing fire or fighting APCs or IFVs. If one has to confront tanks, its lighter to utilize ATGMs/RPGs/Recoilless Rifle. Beside the penetration of GAU-8 is not much help even if its using Depleted Uranium rounds.
The effectiveness of the cannon is not in dispute when dealing with infantry, not its intended purpose. The cannon’s intended use is against tanks, when fielded the T80 and T72 were more or less immune to the 30mm. As a result of its main armament the early A10 was given no means of identification of friendly targets beyond a pair of binoculars. Aircraft with more complex optics like the F111 and F16 would use lantern thermal imaging pods allowing for PID of enemy targets. This results in aircraft like the F111 and F16 being more effective for close air support (the F111 killing more tanks in the gulf war) while also having far fewer friendly fire accidents and lower aircraft losses. Early A10s were ineffective at their intended role in comparison to more versatile aircraft, more vulnerable to enemy AA, and caused more friendly fire incidents than any other American aircraft. In 2006 an American A10 strafed a Canadian company of Lavs, 16 ton armoured vehicles that the Taliban would never field. This should never happen
The psychological value of just the sound of the A-10's 30 mike mike opening up and the whistle of it's engines approaching, can not be overstated. During my 2 deployments in Iraq, i was only ever pinned down by direct fire once, and that sound was like auditory manna being dropped from heaven. I'm sure whatever the opposite of that is, the enemy was feeling.
I've heard the same from people I have met that served. When they got in a bad spot the sound of the incomming A10 brought immediate cheers and morale boost
I think that's the biggest difference with other aircraft. The A-10 is really all about close air support. Like an angel watching over the ground troops from above. And the psychological effects on both friendly and enemy troops can't be underestimated.
The 30mm gun hasn't been its primary weapon for nearly 2 decades. It mainly uses mavric missiles and guided bombs just like any other jet can do. It just does it while being super slow and shitty.
That's funny, everywhere on military oriented sites all I read is how ground troops love this machine. I did however, specialize in military history and people underestimate the morale boost to troops knowing they have proper support or believe in something.
Yeah. So imagine the moral drop troops would have when they believe this machine is good support but as soon as they go against a peer to peer enemy it gets shot down.
Watching this video back-to-back with your first Megaprojects video on the A-10 from 8 months ago was a surreal experience, since they present very different takes on the aircraft and its effectiveness in the combat zones/roles it's been used in. I feel like this video could have benefitted from more direct juxtapositions with your previous statements about the aircraft, particularly because there are several cases (including the potential overstatement of A-10 kills that may have been misattributed from other aircraft/sources) where what you now call the "perception of the A-10's performance in the common zeitgeist" is ...basically what you said eight months ago in your original video about the aircraft. There's no need for a formal retraction or recantation, but I would have appreciated a quickly bullet-point rundown of "here's what I said then, here's where I'm saying something different now, and here are the points that still stand from my first video on the topic" at/near the end. As far as my personal opinions on the A-10? I'm not qualified to answer, but I think that in terms of aviation platforms designed for Cold War era combat doctrine, and with the upgrades it and its potential hardpoint loadouts have received over time, the A-10 is far more relevant to the modern battlefield than the fleet of nuclear-capable bombers built for the Strategic Air Command. It's worth asking about potential replacements, but like the A-1 Skyraider before it - CAS seems like a role where prior generation aircraft do often seem to be good ENOUGH at the role to stick around long after their generational equivalents in other roles have been phased out.
I vaguely remember reading something that when the Army brought up the idea of retiring the A-10 infantry commanders protested it heavily. I believe they cited that even though the plane is decades old, it still does it's job perfectly.
Against what it faced in Afghanistan and maybe even Iraq but the story would be different vs more modern adversaries. The fact is the money might be better spent on more modern systems.
The A-10 is flown by the Air Force, the Army isn't allowed to fly fixed wing combat aircraft. What actually happened was the Air Force has wanted to retire the A-10 for decades. The Army said if the Air Force retired it, they should amend the rules regarding combat aircraft to allow the Army to operate it. In the end, ground combat veterans in Congress stepped in to stop the Air Force from retiring it.
The British specifically requested A-10s not be used for CAS near them because they caused far more friendly fire incidents than any other CAS airframe.
I can't speak to a lot of what was said in this video, but I do have first hand knowledge that the accuracy of the gun was much better than what was provided here. I pretty much grew up on the Smoky Hill ANG Range outside of Salina, KS. My dad started serving there when I was in grade school, and I joined the unit when I grew up. A large part of our job was maintaining the target area and the A-10 regularly put 30mm holes all over the target vehicles we put out as targets. Most of the targets weren't tanks, and the A-10's were shooting practice rounds instead of the depleted uranium rounds they would use on a battlefield. So I can't even speak to how well they would or wouldn't do against tank armor, but even their practice rounds were tear through any other heavy vehicle we could give them to shoot at. I can't think of a single strafing run that I watched where they just totally missed a target without scoring a single hit like this video would suggest.
The thing saved my life. I'll not bash it, I've seen what it does to massed enemies in light cover. Hint: it's not pretty and it sounds scary as hell for added effect.
Your opinion and those of your brothers in arms is what matters. I know there are thousands of ground forces that came home because of air support from the A10, including a close friend of mine. Nuance is very important indeed. Thank you for your time in service and glad you are here to give your perspective. God bless.
It didn't save you. The pilot flying it did save you. And he'd do that in other airplane as well - arguably better as per this video. Let's not antropomorphize things, it just detracts from the brave operators of these tools who do amazing things with good and bad gadgets alike.
Thank you for your service and for this comment. Brought tears to my eyes. The only time a "thing" saved my life was my handgun, but I'd never thought about the concept of a "thing" saving my life. My gun was my tool that I had on me, had practiced with for years and operated myself. I just thought of it as a part of me. The thought of being certain that you are going to die, then, by some miracle a 3rd party "thing" showing up seemingly out of nowhere saving your life is quite thought provoking. I'd never bash it either.
As somebody who has served in Afghanistan I can vouch for the warthog it’s an absolute BRRRRT BRRRRT Beauty it’s been a soldiers best friend for years and has saved countless lives
Not as many as the unsung heroes, F-111, B-1B, B-52, etc. They don't have the sexy (but useless) gun, but they can be on station for ten trillion years, and they all carry huge bomb loads.
@@IntrusiveThot420 B-52s are high level carpet bombers that will destroy an entire city just to kill a target. A-10s are surgical strike aircrafts and I’ve witnessed it’s accuracy first hand. This guy in the video is just biased and pushing his own opinions as to why the A-10 sucks. As I’ve already mentioned this video fails to mention that the original 30mm rounds were not technically made to penetrate armor and were not made from depleted uranium.
@@dawnsredemptiongaming5567 yeah, nobody can take away the morale effect of strafing enemy positions. But it killed more friendlies than any other allied jet too... Either way, glad you survived the sandbox! I'm angling to work for a defense contractor on the next generation of air support so that y'all never have to worry about getting snuck up on ever again.
This video is literally blatant propaganda for Lockheed Martin and a commerical fo the F-35 which they so desperately want to replace the A-10 and it is NOT fitting to do so, they're still so pissed the USAF was basically forced by the DOD to allocate 800~ mil to replace all the A-10 wings to keep them in service rather than replace all those A-10s with what? 8 F-35s? It's a fucking joke, this is just more $$$ greed bullshit politics being pushed through social media. Megaprojects, I see you, fuck you!
Well you are focusing on one aspect of the aircraft. I can tell you as an infantrymen in the army we loved it. I has another rolls to which it is very well suited.
I think one factor you may have overlooked is the cost of deployment. While the F-35 is definitely more accurate and versatile than an A-10, it costs at minimum $190,000 per trigger pull. Command isn't going to dispatch one of those for close air support for a small group or operation. Its likely the A-10 was cheaper to deploy for small operations, and thus earned more "respect" from the troops on the ground that needed support because when they called, the A-10 actually showed up.
Only on no threat environment. In environment with some AA threats, A-10 become a liability as it is way less survivable compare to anything else Air force field in air support role. The biggest example is the wars against Iraq, the US led Coalition had air supermacy, yet A-10 had way higher attrition rate than anything else. Turn out slow and low flying aircraft are way more vulnerable to outdated AA in Iraqi hands let alone modern AA
And lastly why DONT YOU INTERVIEW THE TROOPS THAT WERE IN DANGER CLOSE SITUATION NOT SOME OUTDATED REPORT BY A PANTYGON EGGHEAD BEFORE YOU TRASHTALK THE A 10
Served in the Third Marine Aircraft Wing during Operation Iraqi freedom I. My squadron was an F/A-18 squadron operating out of Kuwait. On the base from which we operated there were f-16s, f-18s, harriers, and a-10s. The F-16s were tasked primarily with overwatch, where the other three types of combat aircraft operated mainly in the strike roll. If memory serves correctly, we had 60 f-18s in five USMC squadrons, One Marine and one British harrier squadron for around 40 aircraft, and forty Air National Guard A-10s. Each type of aircraft has a very distinct sound when it takes off, and the f-18s flume more than twice as many missions as the harriers and the a-10s combined.
I was assigned to Wardak Province, Afghanistan in 2008/09 and operated out of FOB Airborne. The FOB was halfway up a mountain and the bad guys were on top of the mountain directly across the valley from us - about two kilometers away in a "straight line". They were pounding the crap out of the FOB using missiles and we had no weapons which could be effective against them (we later got 105 mm howitzers). Air support was called for. We watched two Belgian F-16s drop bombs and miss. Then two British Eurofighters dropped bombs and missed. A (one) A-10 dropped one 2000 pound bomb which did not miss. There were multiple explosions. An after action patrol found the launch site destroyed with about 25 casualties. The casualty count was approximate because in addition to the bomb explosion itself (huge) the supply of missiles was also detonated.
I was there when we built that fob in 07. I’m one of the names on that wounded in action board in the old toc. They saved our ass in a firefight along the apple orchard on the road headed into the valley. They will forever be the best infantry air support in the world as far as I am concerned.
You missed to two most important factors. $/kill ratio and psychological effect both on enemy and friend. If the Taliban, as you put it, is taking cover, the mission is at least partially accomplished. Sending an F-35 with astronomical maintenance costs and better things to do equipped with a million dollar + guided missile to kill some ground troops might not be the solution. Especially since getting intelligence with a 1 sq. meter accuracy to an F35 is likely not possible in a timely manner and the fact that there are not that many F-35's for that kind of mission. To me, the solution seems simple. Increase the accuracy of the gun. The A-10 air-frame is outstanding. Not your top video.
@@hill160881 But any aircraft ISN’T doing the job better. It’s a surprisingly cheap, effective enough platform for hellfire missiles and psychological warfare. If the taliban are running for cover every time CAS is called, then their job is 90% effective. CAS doesn’t win wars, ground troops do. If the CAS can give the ground troops room to breathe then that’s a successful sortie. And keep in mind, comparing a vehicle built in the 60’s against an aircraft whose service life started 7 years ago that costs 1,250% more is absurd. The F35 has some incredible aspects but is 1 F35 better at CAS than 12 A10’s? I don’t think so. The A10 is VERY flawed, but what it lacks in quality it makes up for in quantity.
@@hill160881 If they can get out of the hangar and show up. The F-35 has poor reliability but the A-10 is almost always ready to go. Plus you can literally buy 4 A-10s for the price of one F-35. Each of those A-10s will be heavily loaded with missiles as well as armed with a cannon. Add this up you get continuous CAS coverage versus spotty CAS coverage. This video doesn't do a very good analysis of this. Availability rates for aircraft is an enormously important stat that wasn't even factored into the critique of the A-10. I'm not saying the A-10 program (like all other military weapon systems) shouldn't be scrutinized but all key factors have to be considered when comparing one to another.
I was in the USAF staioned at RAF Bentwaters (an A-10 Base) and and worked closely with both the Piolts and Aircraft. You are sadly mistaken as to the destructive capability of ths aircraft.
That time A-10's were retasked and flew night missions in the February of Desert Storm. Not because of them being ineffective, but rather they were EXCEPTIONALLY good at SCUD hunting. Low Speed and IR AGM-65's found and destroyed SCUDs in Western Iraq at a record pace (the F-111 was no slouch at it once A-10s found the targets). in hindsight a 25mm GAU may have been better with higher velocity and the ability to hold even more ammo. Also the video said Seven A-10s were lost, it was six out of 70 that took damage.
it didn't fly at night in DS, it hunted during the day and was absolutly great at it, but it didn't have much ability to fly at night and thus night hunting was left to the F-15E, Tornado and F-111
Remember that the mass majority of kills the A-10 achieved against armored targets was not made by the gun, but with Maverick Missiles; ordinance that could be carried by all sorts of other aircraft.
@@kf4hqf2 the durability of the a-10 was good, but it has been overstated. and do you know what's better than being designed to take a hit? being designed not to be hit
@@kf4hqf2 As the video pointed out; the A-10 has the worst survivability record. Had to be moved AWAY from where the action because of losses and was only allowed to fly at night. So many other platforms that performed the role better.
As someone that was adjacent to A-10's in operations (I was in Armor Cav), nothing that I have seen in the first fifteen or so minutes of this is wrong. Yet the context is. The A-10 is not the attack asset you send out to kill large numbers of tanks, it is the one you send to kill the ones 1000 meters off of your friendly positions. That is where the low and slow works (along with time on station) and that has been a thing going all the way back to Korea. If I want to do tactical in even remotely contested air I want a fast mover. The A-10 is the bridge between an attack helo and something like an F-16. It is has very good survivability vs a multi-role and can move faster with more weapons then a helo. And that gun is like pulling a knife in a gun fight most of the time. The rest of the fights vs soft or light armor it is just way to spread the love. At best modern aircraft carry just a few smart munitions. With that gun and a little time..... Priceless.
Yup, I was armored cavalry too.... , 3rd ID... and I instantly understood the . *_TONE_* . of this video to be fundamentally misunderstanding the role [and importance] of the A10 it is the . ONLY . aircraft that CAN do what it does, for _Soldiers_ *this is not a **_Best OF_** the Air Force, .... type of aircraft* but it IS absolutely *BEST AT* exactly what it does. ... that's why it's still in service
Yes. Unfortunately, this is where most of Simon's videos have been heading recently. He starts with his erroneous assumptions and ridicules those that disagree with his arguments. All while ignoring the fact that he is blind to his own assumptions. He thinks he "knows better" . I am about to unsubscribe to all of his channels due to this trend.
It's survivability is a lot lower than you think. The entire aircraft is vulnerable to HMG and light AAA fire. It was designed to be cannon fodder while taking 2,3 or 4 tanks with it.
@@AutomationDnD the DOD is mothballing nearly all of them this year and funding for it has disappeared from the DAA in favor of better CAS platforms and improvements to the F-35
I've seen grown men and warriors cry when this beautiful beast has come over and smashed the enemy,in my opinion this and the apache r hands down the saviours of cas
As a tank buster with just the gun, yes. But as a ground support platform like the old A2 Skyraider, there is nothing the US inventory that can carry as much ammo/weapons for the amount of loiter time it can do. Well nothing short of say a B1.
Man it’s crazy to go back and watch that old John McCain testimony about the a10, when it gets brought up about the b1 doing CAS and McCain shuts it down. Now we know it’s actually a FANTASTIC CAS platform since it can mount a Targeting Pod
What good is all that with the garbage optics on the aircraft. It's more likely to kill friendly troops than it is to provide accurate cas. It's a trash plane that needs to be replaced.
@@danield2685 well for a long while the AC130 couldn't carry guided munitions. A10 from the front outset can carry 11 maverick missiles. I think the same only plane that could carry close to that is the Strike Eagle.
That was 18 minutes of taking a very shallow look at a weapons platform that very much out performs close to anything else we have. I don't care if an F-35 can get there 3 times faster if it can only stay on station for 20 minutes and drop a single bomb. I'd rather have the jet that can stay on station for 3 hours and drop every manner of bomb, laser guided rocket, AGM-65, CBU, laser guided bombs, JDAMs, etc. Yeah, the original concept touted the gun back in the 70s. Big deal. Weapon systems evolve over time. Hell, the F-16 was supposed to be an interceptor with just a couple of short range AIM-9s. Now it's a very competent multirole fighter with an insanely wide & varied arsenal, and a very diverse mission profile.
yeah, this was definitely a missed opportunity. The A10 is designed to loiter. It can stay on station for long periods of time, and it can carry 16,000 pounds of ordinance on 11 hardpoints. The F35 is great and all, but the main benefit to its survivability is its stealth, which is compromised by using anything outside of its internal bay, which has a limit of 5700 pounds of payload.
@@Eanki_ please tell me you're joking, because replacing the A-10 with something that has a turn radius measured in miles and can only drop bombs and costs 3x as much per flight hour is insanity. Congress tried to propose something like that and John McCain famously shot the idea down. Look it up.
@@DasPenguin85 Yes. I know McCain pulled the smartass stunt. Too bad smartass doesn't equal correct. The Bone is capable. The Viper even better. The A-10 is a bomb truck with smart munitions. The Viper can play bomb truck. So yes, there is a system that can take over if ever.
Everyone wants to judge but coming from boots on the ground and the A-10’s had our back and did a great job knocking out an entire enemy fire team size of Tallys. But everyone’s entitled to their opinion.
I appreciate your service. And comment. I have watched hours of documentaries on this plane. I admit it is not the fastest and itis not the prettiest. But it has found its roll. Surely a blind man can see the difference in cost of weapons and ammo as well airframes between the 2 planes. The A10 cost around 17.5 million todays money and the F35 a real bargain for tax payers at 79 million each. That is now after all the RD was sorted. The first batch of F35's only costa coll 225 million each. The warthog might not be as advanced but it still has a place into days close combat support. I have hear that the Taliban flee like roaches with the lights on everytime they here those GE turbo fans coming for them. I did not even watch his entire video. I want to see a F35 fly home missing half of a wing!
@@jvmiller1995 Well all morden a10 have been upgradet for around 100 million each so its not a cheap plane any more. Just saying. And the gun is redeamed accuracte with in a 75 feet radius and only hit 80% of its sheild “accuret”. The a10 is shit and Can only be use in battles Where No aa is precent
@@jvmiller1995 reasons why A10 is outdated. 1. lack of modern electronics. A10 pilots have to use binoculars in their cockpit to independently attack enemies. 2. low and slow will get you killed. See Ukrainian MANPADS. 3. they have to do #2 because of #1. 4, it would cost less to replace every A10s with an F35s than if they were to be upgraded to fix these issues. See @Magnus Munch 's comment about upgrades that have already happened.
You also wrongfully decontextualized the A-10's losses in Desert Storm. Some 70 of them were hit, some of them several times, yet only 7 were lost, after flying 8,500 sorties --- entirely a third of all Coalition sorties during the entire war, during which they were exposed to enemy fire more than all other Coalition combat aircraft combined. It's losses per-sortie flown are so low that statistically, they're even lower than the Coalition aircraft that fought in the war without any losses. That's also worth comparing to the USAF's pre-Desert Storm projections that the entire combined fleet of 700 A-10s fighting in such an environment would suffer 7 losses every single day. The *actual* result ended up being 7 losses after two continuous months of fighting. Furthermore, you claimed that 12 A-10s were shot-down in Desert Storm. Incorrect. The A-10s shot-down in Desert Storm were the following airframes; 31-JAN-1991, #80-0248 (A-10A): Shot-down by an Iraqi SA-13 Gopher SAM over Kuwait. Pilot ejected safely, but was captured. 16-FEB-1991, #78-0722 (A-10A): Shot-down by an Iraqi SA-13 Gopher SAM over Kuwait. Pilot was killed on impact. The pilot of #78-0722 had been circling the crash site of #80-0248, in an attempt to protect it's downed pilot. 16-FEB-1991, #79-0130 (A-10A): Shot-down by an Iraqi SA-13 Gopher SAM over Kuwait. Pilot ejected safely, but was captured. 19-FEB-1991, #76-0543 (A-10A): Shot-down by an Iraqi SAM over Kuwait. Pilot ejected safely, but was captured. 22-FEB-1991, #79-0181 (A-10A): Hit by an Iraqi SAM over Kuwait, and crash-landed upon RTB. Pilot ejected safely. 27-FEB-1991, #77-0197 (A-10A): Hit by an Iraqi SAM over Kuwait, and crashed upon RTB. Pilot was killed on impact. Here's a site that lists all of them; www.2951clss-gulfwar.com/loses.htm That's *6 A-10s,* not 12, and that fact is public record. You were wrong by a factor of 2. Whoever you got your information from duped you into spreading lies. Did you even do any research for this video, or did you read off a list of talking points someone else handed to you? Also, forcing the Taliban into cover made the A-10 a failure? Are you being serious? When enemy troops are forced to take cover, friendly troops have the upper hand. Finally, regarding the F-35, you present a bunch of DoD/Lock-Mart talking points, but they're all unprovable.
He doesn't understand the value of forcing the enemy to take cover because he doesn't understand the nature of combat and fire and movement if he worked half as hard doing some damn research and understanding warfare as he did on his beard maybe his videos wouldn't be so f****** lame
US Government statistics on the post 9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had 80% of the CAS sorties being flown by aircraft OTHER than the A-10s. There were more A-10s that were constructional write-offs than just the six mentioned in that list lost to ground fire and SAMs. A lot of the ones which didn't get destroyed completely did take so much damage as to be stripped for parts and then buried in the desert. The original tooling for the A-10s has long since been destroyed and Boeing's re-winging program involved building new wings with new tooling to a different design than the original wings. Its common practice to strip the ones taken from service for spare parts to keep the others flying. Out of 716 built, 43 are on display, less than 300 have been re-winged and remain operational and the rest are writes off or in storage to canabalize for parts.
The fact that many of those seriously hit got their pilots home is a testimate to their brilliant design and quadriple flight control redundancy. This video is a troll
@@DeeEight _"US Government statistics on the post 9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had 80% of the CAS sorties being flown by aircraft OTHER than the A-10s. "_ That was a lie, and it was exposed. They only tracked sorties from 2006 to 2012 in that document, and the end date was conveniently just before the worst friendly fire incident in the entire Afghan War, in which a guided bomb dropped by a B-1 (the aircraft the USAF was pushing _ultra-hard_ to replace the A-10 in the CAS role at the time, and the narrative their document was created specifically to prop-up) killed and wounded a ton of ISAF troops. The 2006 date is more significant, however, particularly given that half the Afghan War preceded it. You know what the USAF didn't mention about 2006? That was the date in which ISAF was finally able to re-pave the runways in Afghanistan (which had been literally falling apart since the 1980s), allowing all of the USAF's warplanes to operate from bases inside the country. Before that happened, there was only a single jet-powered combat aircraft that was able to operate from the runways inside Afghanistan, due to the innate FOD resistance and ruggedized landing gear no other US warplane had --- the A-10. This also meant that A-10s arrived to the scene of a battle minutes after take-off, while all the other aircraft were a half an hour or more from Afghan airspace by the time they arrived, usually arriving at the firefight with tired pilots, lots of fuel already burned, and inferior payloads and loiter time. When those facts were brought to the attention of the press, the USAF stopped talking about the report. _"There were more A-10s that were constructional write-offs than just the six mentioned in that list lost to ground fire and SAMs. A lot of the ones which didn't get destroyed completely did take so much damage as to be stripped for parts and then buried in the desert."_ No other Coalition warplanes suffering that much damage even made it back. _"Out of 716 built, 43 are on display, less than 300 have been re-winged and remain operational and the rest are writes off or in storage to canabalize for parts."_ Half the A-10 fleet was retired in the early 1990s, and these airframes were never re-activated. Most have less than 10 years' worth of wear on them, and the survivors still have their original wings. The A-10s that were re-winged had all flown for more than 30 years.
@@markfrombriz It's WAY more than that. The A-10's control system isn't hydraulic with a cable-and-pully backup, but a cable-and-pully control system that's merely hydraulically boosted; as a result, it's relatively easy to control even after hydraulics have been lost. But much more important is that the control cables don't all thread through a single common pathway, like they do in most other aircraft. If an F-16, for example, takes a 30mm shell though it's control pathway, it'll sever not only all of the hydraulics, but both of the manual backup cables as well. The A-10 has multiple cable pathways, on opposite sides of the fuselage. Another little-known fact about the A-10's hydraulics is that they operate the landing gear in the opposite way from most other aircraft. Pressurizing the landing gear _raises_ it rather than lowering it; if all pressure is lost, the landing gear falls into the lowered position and locks into place. At least two A-10s have safely landed after hydraulics failure, though a third one cashed on landing. Contrast the A-10's ability to land safely with the "manual back-up" controls you see on most other warplanes. They don't give the pilot anywhere near enough control to attempt a landing, and were included in these aircraft to make them just barely controllable enough to fly to a safe area to eject behind friendly lines (though admittedly, that's a LOT more important than it seems; when F-105s lost their hydraulics over Southeast Asia, the stick slammed all the way forward, and the aircraft entered an irrecoverable high-speed nose dive, and many F-105 pilots found themselves dead or locked-up in the Hanoi Hilton as a result). As far as I know, the A-10 is the only warplane in service today that has all of these attributes, though the Su-25 might have them as well.
This man’s research didn’t tell him (or maybe he ignored it) that even when the A-10 was scheduled to be decommissioned (I think in the early 2000’s) they hung on to it anyway, to this day, and probably indefinitely because of how successful it has been-and in such high demand by troops on the ground. This machine is a lifesaver for us and the sound alone strikes fear in its enemies. Long live the A-10.
The A-10 keeps surviving because of politics. It's literally politicians. If an A-10 base is to lose the A-10, that means a lot of constituents lose jobs and representatives lose re-election campaigns. That's literally it. It's an obsolete airframe that will be no match for modern day peer nation militaries. If we went to war with China (many say it's a "when" and not an "if") then the A-10 won't ever see the combat theater. My wing commander literally said that last week. The reason the A-10 has been so successful is because it hasn't had to face any competent surface to air or air to air defenses. What the A-10 has faced over the past 20 years is primitive technology but believe me, China knows exactly how to knock the A-10 out of the sky like swatting a mosquito. 5th gen aircraft have countermeasures that the A-10 doesn't have. My wing commander literally described the A-10 as being like a 38 year old overweight guy showing up to a 20 year high school reunion wearing his old football letter jacket. Yeah he was a superstar decades ago, but he keeps hanging on to those days as if nothing ever changes, yet everyone else moved on. He's an overweight balding guy hanging on to his glory days that were decades ago. That's exactly what people who keep praising the A-10 are doing. The A-10 needs to retire. It's served it's purpose. It will NOT be effective in a modern conflict. Continuing the A-10 based on it's service record would be like putting a fleet of B-17s in the air above China as well because of its effectiveness in WWII. Every airframe needs to retire at some point. And the A-10 is at that point. You don't want to have them all getting blown out of the sky with no more advanced replacement in the foreseeable future before you realize it's combat ineffective. The A-10 has only been as successful as it has been because we've been fighting a primitive "military" for the past 20 years and it hasn't seen any opposition in the air, or from the ground. It's done. You really need to watch this video. ruclips.net/video/tFcXNpdKh4E/видео.html This is being played for pretty much every new aircraft maintenance person that joins the Air Force. Chinas technology is catching up to us. It doesn't explicitly mention the A-10 in the video, but the message is the same. That video is literally from the DoD and is being shown to every brand new Airman to hopefully help them see the reality of their futures in the Air Force. I joined 1 year after September 11th and I just hit 20 years in. My entire career has been spent fighting primates in the middle east. The future we may go toe to toe against a significantly stronger opponent. Plus, if you look on a map, you will see how close China and Afghanistan are. China has had a front row seat to observe how the United States military operates for the past 20 years. They've studies us. They know our moves. They know we have a culture of "yay the A-10 is the best thing ever" and they know what our plays are.
There's literally nothing you could tell me at this point that would change my opinion of the A-10, and other service members would say the same. I don't care about it's projected kill rate against Soviet tanks in a hypothetical Cold War gone hot, The Ukrainians and Iraqis have proven that battlefield tactics are more important than sterile tests. Also, consider morale. Nothing says "Fuck yeah!" to the troops on the ground like the BRRRRRRRRRRTTTTT of an A-10 as it decimates a close air support target. There's a reason it's still in service after decades of trying to kill it.
After reading some of the other comments, I was reminded that it is not only the physical damage that a weapon can deliver but also the psychological damage. Think of the German MG 42. The sound of 1,200 rounds per minute made you want to keep your head down, but I doubt the physical damage was significantly greater than the M1919 Browning.
Newsflash: anyone that hears a Borwning is going to want to keep their head down too. It's a fucking gun lol. Psychological damage is just a bunch of unquantifiable mumbo jumbo. An aircraft that the enemy doesn't see or hear and blows them the hell up is more effective.
@@CODYoungGunna And more werewritten off because of heavy damage after they landed, and they had a restricted airspace during Desert Storm because of that.
@@benjaminparent4115 that's false. Loss from a military standpoint means that the frame cannot fly and is not repairable. They USAF has reported 5 losses of A-10s during the Gulf War.
Perhaps the thing it is mostly know for, the sound made by that canon, is it's greatest asset, my grandfather was an artillery gun sergeant in North Africa WWII and despite the Stuka being one of the least effective, being slow, and poorly armed it was the most terrifying because of the scream it made when dive bombing, a shell fired from distance would be more effective but it came with no warning if you heard it explode then you'd survived, the Stuka was a constant source of terror and reduced morally a significant margin. A country's greatest assets, particularly in these close quarters battles, is its soldiers break them and every other part of the battle becomes easier.
Same with the Hawker Typhoon. If it could bring everything to bear on a target it was formidable. What it couldn't do was kill a Tiger unless it was very lucky. That didn't stop Tiger crews running when typhoons appeared - simply because of the reputation of the aircraft. Mind you - it must have been damn unpleasant being inside a Tiger when 4 20mm canon and rockets are thudding into it.
@@keithhealing1115 Unpleasant indeed for the Tiger crew, and they would be pretty neutered if that amount of firepower landing on and around it took out pieces of track, damaged the main barrel or machine guns. Certainly could be frustrating psychologically to get near the lines just to get shaken up and have to turn the big boy around again back to a repair area (after getting the tracks functional again).
@@ryanotte6737 Turning the Tiger round for repair was chapter two of the manual wasn't it? Straight after "1. Congratulations on your purchase - here's how to turn your new Tiger on."
It was designed to replace the A2 Skyraider CAS mission The A2 Platform was worn-out after Vietnam. A-10s aren't perfect but they aren't trash when doing their designed mission. The truth is in the middle
@@spot6888 Close air support is risky especially when a position is being over run. This is were it was supposed to replace the SPADS the A-2. They weapons should have been chosen for this role, the Air Force should not have given into mission creep. The aircraft is a fine platform, the gun is the problem.
I live near Hagerstown Regional Airport. Hagerstown Airport was home to Fairchild Republic. The A-10 was largely manufactured there. Unfortunately while the airport is growing and becoming busier every year, the factory lies abandoned and unused. However, there is a museum there (Hagerstown Aviation Museum) that is doing some great things!
And it wasn't particularly effective from those attack vectors either, as raw data proves. It was a jet designed to kill tanks that is bad at killing tanks and can't survive air defense in peer or near-peer warfare. It's used as CAS but is less useful for that role than helicopters are.
According to LazerPig the A-10 killed more Iraqi tanks in ‘91 with missiles than the 30mm gun because the gun wasn’t up to the task and never had been.
It's really impressive how well this video represents how data can be misinterpreted. The worst part is that this whole video seems to be a bad faith argument. They compare the A-10 to an F-35, a plane that's 30 years newer, is vastly more expensive per unit and per hour flown, and they are comparing guns to missiles. You can't get a worse argument than that. They even disregard the fact that the A-10 is capable of bringing more missiles to the fight. I could go on for pages about how the information is incomplete or misrepresentative but I'm sure everyone else is doing the same. I'm just dumbfounded that they thought this video was satisfactory enough to go out.
Isn't comparing guns to missiles kinda the entire point? Having an anti tank fighter that uses a gun instead of missiles or rockets was a bad idea to begin with.
@@existentialselkath1264 but it doesn't use the gun instead of missiles or rockets. It's in addition to. The A10 has 11 hardpoints with a 16,000 pound capacity, capable and regularly armed with air to ground missiles (EX: AGM-65 Maverick), precision guided bombs (EX: the JDAM), and rockets including precision guided rockets like the Hydra 70mm/APKWS.
@@existentialselkath1264 the A-10 does use missiles. It can hold far more missiles than an F-35 and I believe it can hold more dedicated air to ground weapons than the F-35 but they didn't acknowledge that at all.
@@reimusklinsman5876 types of missiles, targeting systems, radar, stealth, the price of a retrofit for all the advanced weaponry, etc. I don't know for sure, but it would surprise me if after all of that an A10 is a better value proposition than an f35
When you build an airplane in the role of an attack helicopter the A-10 is what you get. There is an important context to the A-10 that's often overlooked; this was built around the Army's parameters for an attack helicopter that the AirForce then improved on because the AirForce didn't want the Army to buy a helicopter that happened to have fixed wings speeds approaching that of airplanes. Every flaw and vulnerability an A-10 has is one that attack helicopters have, but the A-10 by comparison significantly mitigates many of those. For instance the AirForce will talk about all the ways the A-10 shouldn't be flown in contested air space as if that automatically makes using F-35A's or other combat jets the better choice in all missions, but the A-10 serves a critical role in the combined arms tactics necessary to the success on modern battlefields and that means in situations where the A-10 is meant to be used the Army and Marines are using their helicopters and Ospreys. Making it either a moot point as air superiority will have been established, or the AirForce is adverse to a risk the Army and Marines take on all the time and the AirForce is simply willing to trade lives of infantry. The A-10 is a victim of being an attack fighter designed for close air support as the Army imagines that role but flown and rated by how the AirForce imagines ground attack. Part of it is that on some level the AirForce doesn't make enough of a distinction between ground attack and close air support, from the AirForce perspective they're synonymous. So the A-10 is always measured against higher and faster flying jets, not against the helicopters that maintain more of a persistent presence on the battlefield. All the criticism of the A-10 are valid, but even if the A-10 were retired today, the Army and Marines would still need something like the A-10 to fill that gap. And while advances in rotor craft have been coming along in recent years, the most advanced attack helicopter can't do what an A-10 can. If the Army had a helicopter that could shoot from 200 miles away and perform like an F-35, they would still need something like an A-10 that can come in closer and remain on the battlefield for a protracted periods of time. Something that's hard for the AirForce to accept is that the survivability of the A-10 was so emphasized in design, is because to some degree the airplane needs to be expendable, even if the pilot isn't. But the notion of providing air support from a distance means you're removing the the airplane from the battlefield to remove that risk, and that frees the enemies energy and effort to focus on the ground forces these planes are suppose to support.
Not true. The USAF had the A-10, Army had the Cheyenne, and Marines had the Harrier. There was an argument that the airframes overlapped. The government agreed that each one was different enough and they could all be build. The USAF and Army agreed to not interfere on each other. The Cheyenne was plagued with problems and delays, Lockheed couldn't make it work. Forget air superiority. You can still be shot down with air superiority - SAMs/MANPADS/AAA. Always a threat no matter how much superiority you have over enemy air forces.
Its called a Drone. Probable MALE sized. And those are cheaper and more expendable still. Boots might like more embedded smart weapons like Pike, drones ( suicide or not ) and laser-guided Mortar glide kits more, Those they can control themselves and are more readily available to local forces. Hell, Pike could make an acceptable weapon for company-level infantry unit-controlled drones as well.
The thing as pointed out by this video and others, is that if you need an aircraft for CAS work... you don't need an A-10 to do it. As shown, the GAU-8 isn't really an anti-tank wonder, so you don't need an aicraft carrying a 30mm cannon for that task. Subsequently, if you need to take out soft-armored targets, then every other attack aircraft in the arsenal is more than capable of using their own weapons to do so, even their 20mm guns. If you need to take out tanks from the air, again you're not going to use the GAU-8 for that express purpose, and so you'll use surface-to-air guided missiles and bombs, which any other attack aircraft in the sky is capable of carrying. The A-10 is heavily armored, and can fly low and slow for CAS yes, but again its roles are already fulfilled by other aircraft either more economically, or more effectively such as subsonic attack aircraft (which can get there faster), helicopters (which can loiter longer), or drones (which are truly expendable and thus can fulfill "aggro" if you want to call it that). Also, I'm pretty sure that the machine that's expected to take and absorb damage for the troops from the ground are... well, tanks. The doctrines of most air forces supposed that aircraft are not meant to take hits or attract ground fire, and instead their role in CAS is to hit the enemy hard enough that the enemy's combat capabilities are impaired or negated completely, not loiter around the battlefield attracting enemy fire. Otherwise you'd see stuff like AC-130's used more in CAS, an aircraft with superior firepower and loiter capability to the A-10, and yet the AC-130 is only deployed for very specific types of air support missions, typically when there's no anti-air capabilities expected such as when defending a base from attack. The A-10 is basically a specialty aircraft that can't even excel in its one specialty when it needs to be, and the things it needs to do to excel in that specialty can be done by other types of aircraft better.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD air superiority means enemy planes bug out, which will make SAMs Huntley, and manpads cannot replace SAMs. Commies had great success with SAMs in Vietnam, so in Desert Storm the destroyed the extensive, capable SAM network. Only worry for the destroyers was small arms fire
I served in special operations in the early late 80s the Airforce was looking to get rid of the A-10 by giving it to the Army as a close air support platform. I was a 2lt at the time having spent time as an enlisted operator. The transfer would be about 10 years out, but there was a search for Army guys who were experienced in combat arms branches. I fit the bill and was a graduate of the Joint Firepower Controller's Course. CAS was my thing. A handful of us were tested and a tentative list was developed. While waiting on flight training Desert Storm kicked off. I spent my time in the sand box having my ass saved several times by A-10s. After the war, we asked about the transition and the Airforce had changed its mind because the A-10 was the air hero of the war. The A-10 saved us multiple times in Afghanistan. I have a good friend who retired as an A-10 wing unit commander. I will risk my life any day if the A-10 is on tap for CAS.
I was a Marine Corps grunt. There isn't a fixed wing craft I'd rather have for air support than an A-10. When we called in air and got an A-10, it was relief.
Yep.... all air frames/weapons systems pairings are a compromise. I know Simon doesn't write these, he just reads them, and sure there are, as with all systems, the great and the not so great aspects. The A-10 is the number one fixed-wing close support plane, and you're in excellent and extensive company in praising them. The vast majority of those who hate it are the ones it's zeroing in on.
Are we talking about the aircraft that hasn’t been build since the 70s, has killed more of its own soldier then any other U.S aircraft combined, suffered the most losses out of any modern U.S aircraft and pilots are required to use binoculars to identify targets, since it is so outdated.
Mald more A10 fanbois the mighty vark killed 3 times more tanks with less sorties. Who cares what the A10 gun sounds like? It’s hardly accurate and killed many US service men.
In beast mode with the sensor suite that thing boasts? It would do the job as well as an F16 would. If you're involved in aerospace engineering, esp on a stealth aircraft, then you recognize how insanely easy the A10 would be to hit with a modern MANPAD. The thing's max speed is slower than the P51D mustang and it has two exposed turbofans in pods giving that heat signature straight exposure to IR sensors.
@@tonymorris4335 Actually, the A-10 is relatively hard to hit with an MPAD, when it is close to the ground. It may be slow, but it will come, kill, and be gone before you can even get a lock. The JSF simply cannot survive at low levels, is too fragile, with the radar resitant paint easily damaged, and would also be needed for other missions, making it less available for close in air support.
@@tonymorris4335 it's actually the opposite with the engines, they are positioned forward so the vertical stabs mask them from the side. They are also specifically non afterburning to reduce heat output.
@@Estuardomendez13 Not really, depleted uranium is pretty much dirt cheap. Shooting it at someone is actually saving us money on storage and disposal of what would normally be nuclear waste. The A-10s gun is outdated as a tank killer, but tanks themselves are becoming more scarce in favor of things like the BMP-2 or the bradley.
@@EldrichtKnight yeah but they still have to use hydras cause the gun is so inacurate the british refuse air support from a 10 in fear of freindly fire it doesnt matter if your weapon is cheaper if it is useless
I know this is an old vid but Today A-10s are flying nightly from Polish air fields with training provided by the US Air Guard. All A10's are flown by weekend warriors as part of the deal to keep them in service. The Gun is not the primary weapon. The primary weapons are Mavric missles and guided bombs. Other than that you did pretty good.
The GAU/8 is the main wepon of the A10. It is literally built around the gun. The A10 has to use its missile and bombs to reliably hit anything. The gun is so inaccurate that the A10 has the most friendly fire kills of any military aircraft. And for how much I dont want to use wikipedia as a scorce I'll do so in this case. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II
I think its more that Congress has a soft spot for it and won't let them get rid of it despite them saying they need something better to replace it for years now.
It certainly does deserve its reputation and comparing it with the F-35 is not a very fair comparison as there is half a century difference in design. As for the high loses in combat, this can only be expected as the A-10 operates low and slow which makes it both vulnerable and lethal to enemy ground forces. Later advances in technology have given its cannon a wide range of different projectile rounds for penetrating armour or taking out soft targets with each round acting similar to a hand grenade so pin point accuracy is not really required. As for the pilots who fly these aircraft, they deserve the highest respect as they know the risk factor is stacked against them due to the nature of their missions. It requires the pilot to get their hands dirty by taking the aircraft into harms way to complete the mission and wreak havoc on the enemy!
@@osric729 ...... I totally agree........ I am a big fan of Simon's work and I really do appreciate the effort he and his team puts in....... but this one I think is based more on opinions rather than facts.
In Nam, we had the A1 Sky Raider out of NKP. Avgas, single radial engine, single flight controls. What could go wrong with that when you are subjected to ground fire. I felt sorry for them, but did appreciate their help.
there is a story about when talk of scrapping the A-10 was on the table, the US Army said they would take over the A-10 fleet cause they obviously thought it was a handy CAS aircraft. USAF got offended that Army would want fixed wing aircraft so decided to keep it. I always wondered if US Army played on USAF desire to keep fixed wing combat aircraft out of Army hands.
@@ravener96 Thing about a cannon that sprays like a shotgun is that shotgun tend to find their targets. Having a low hit ratio per burst doesn't matter as long as every burst hits.
@@Deepingmind it matters when you dont have infinite ammo. an apache pumping out five-round bursts can be suppressing and killing the enemy for hours. the A10 has just a few seconds of fire, meaning you only get a couple of passes.
I'm an old AGE guy, USAF post 9/11 volunteer, SSgt (fmr). I was lucky enough to serve with the A-10 at Osan AB, South Korea. The hype IS REAL when it comes to the A-10. They don't get "hard broke" from anything. They're practically flying tanks. You're not gonna win a dog fight in this thing, but it does what it's supposed to and does it well.
@@coolcoolercoolest212 That's te risk you take when you're providing close air support with a plane that had countermeasures and avionics from 1979. It was the Air Force's bastard child and they ignored updating it for as long as they could.
@@coolcoolercoolest212 Which it did. What he failed to mention is that is also has the highest rate of friendly fire of any American aircraft ever built
It's not cheap to fly and helicopters don't need a runway at all. Helicopters are better because they have a chin turret that can always be aiming at the enemy, the A-10 can only aim at the enemy briefly when diving on a target then take a couple minutes circling around to do the same thing. Helicopters are also way better for shooting rockets, and rockets are what made dive attacks obsolete in the first place. The A-10 cannot carry a larger NUMBER of weapons, just heavier weapons, weapons that are too heavy, if you drop a 1000lbs or 2000lbs bomb on enemy troops position when the enemy troops are less than 300m from your friendly forces you'll decimate your friendly forces due to the huge fragmentation radius.
Cheap to build, too. No 2-seat version so the pilots first flight is solo. No Weight-on-Wheels switch, so the weapons could be inadvertently fired while taxiing. No relief tube, so pilots ferrying across an ocean wore diapers.
1. I’m a Desert Shield/ Storm veteran. The day of the ground war, the A-10’s saved our asses, and most importantly, our lives. We also had AH-64’s doing air support while we went into Kuwait City. 2. I really need to learn the metric system if I’m going to listen to your videos 😂
We had a10s on station multiple times during my deployment, and they are a fearsome weapons platform. There's nothing like it, and the only thing more effective to have hang around in an AO is a pair of apaches.
We will se how it is when it goes up against a formidable opponent. Without full control of the airspace the A-10 like any other slow ground support aircraft would be easy targets. I am not saying it's a lousy aircraft as it's not. You just can't prove how good something really is until you put it against the best resistance.
@@CharliMorganMusic a helicopter or drone could not maintain flight and fire the gatling gun the a10 has. A helicopter could take out 1-4 tanks with its missile payload. A drone can take out 1 tank if it is the right drone. But an a10 is the only aircraft that could destroy an entire row of 10 armored vehicles without breaking a sweat.
@@MrSpudz2 Because the bombs are landing close to the target. The "Close" in CAS doesn't refer to the proximity from the target to the aircraft, it refers to the proximity of friendly forces. The newer generations of the B-52 are capable of precisely delivering PGMs onto the heads of targets, even if those targets are within close proximity to friendly forces. B-52s were one of the best CAS platforms we had in Afghanistan.
It's an old design now. We could probably make something better for the close infantry support role today, but that would be a big defense spending fight.
Yes, it’s an old design. BUT, whenever it’s head goes up on the block with congress, it always get taken down, by numerous generals, and by the very military it supports. More often than not, the troops loudly reverse the path.
I get the idea of this video was to provide a counter opinion to the more widely accepted opinion that the A-10 is awesome. But why didn't you approach this from the very real and realistic argument that the airforce is constantly making, that the A-10s mission is obsolete in the developing AA proliferation environment and the F-35's stealth and altitude advantages actually serve the war fighter better then the A-10. You barely spent any time on the F-35 comparison and most of the critiques of the A-10 you posed are flawed perspectives in so many ways. This whole video comes across as someone who just cherry picked reports and news articles, not from someone who talked to people who actually spent real time with the airframe either in real life or even in a sim. As evidence to this you kept referencing how the A-10's gun was always used against armor from the sides or rear and not the front. Well DUH! What A-10 pilot would attack a tank from the front when they are literally in an airplane that can circle around and line up a rear or side aspect strafe! If attack from the front was the only option then they would use a maverick or a laser guided rocket or any other precision munitions! News flash the A-10 carries a ton of munitions! Like I said I know this was part of the thinking critically double header you did with the F-35 but, unlike the F-35 video this one was just approached from the wrong angle. There is a very real argument to get rid of the A-10 and you missed it completely. (For the record I like the A-10 and F-35 both should be in service in my opinion.)
The "A-10s mission is obsolete" Seeing Russians invade Ukraine in 2022, by driving miles of armored vehicles on roads, is the literal textbook scenario that created the demand, the purpose, and task of the A-10. Despite all of the advancements in weapon systems and aircraft, the most effective, efficient, and lethal weapon against armored columns, is still the A-10 Warthog. I can only imagine the screams of the A-10 pilots as they watched lines of tanks on the news, bottlenecked on roads, as they are sitting ducks. That was the very purpose of the A-10's existence, and the scenario that the pilots were trained to engage in.
@@gregpaul882 well remember helios are the domain of the army, plus the airforces thought process on the a-10 is complex and shouldnt be over simplified by blanket statements. There's a real arguement that if you sent in 8 f-35s into ukraine right now they would do more for the war effort then 8 a-10s or any other combination of fighters. Anyone who is claiming an a-10 would simply mow down the Russian armor without being under threat it self is probably over simplifying the situation. The su-25s the Ukrainians own have not faired that well and that is the closest plane to the a-10 in the world. Of course in a sanitized air space give me 8 a-10s all day probably going to out perform the helios in most mission types too
The way I figure it, the GAU was there to bat clean-up after the A-10 had used it's primary weapon payload. This comparison by L. Simon Hubbard places the GAU in a primary role, which was never the case. WARTHOG!!!
I kept waiting for him to discuss the real tank killer.. the Maverick. As you say the GAU is for cleanup, the Maverick was the vast majority of it's kills in 91.. add to that rockets for infantry or smoke rockets to mark for follow on fast movers.. and it's a different plane. The intended 1980's role for the A-10 wasn't to go straffing tanks in a hostile air zone, it was supposed to carry a max loadout of Maverick missles for the tanks, and rockets+gun for BMP's and the like.. it was understood the air defenses had to be worked down before sending in the hawgs.. the survivability portion was meant to withstand UP TO 23mm cannon fire, not SAMs. This video felt a lot like saying a Corvette is over-rated because it's gas mileage is bad.
For almost all aircraft, any built-in weapon system (like the gun) is considered 'primary' while any externally attached weapon (like missiles, hanging under the wings) is considered 'secondary'. It's just an odd quirk of technical-writing; doesn't mean anything in real-world practice.
@@AaronCMounts technical jargon is irrelevant to the fact that your primary weapon system is the one youre using first... no fast mover is primarily using the gun...
@@robertwink9989 "the survivability portion was meant to withstand UP TO 23mm cannon fire, not SAMs." You right, it was outdated the moment it was designed.
if the gun wasnt the main weapon, why carry it. its unreasonably heavy and with pretty poor performance. for the mass of the gun you could carry a bunch of extra missiles, which would serve you better.
and here i was thinking all the apache gun cams showing them blasting dudes from kilometers away with pinpoint accuracy was the pinacle of CAS, of course you need to miss a bunch and make them run, much better
and they do hear it as it's going so slow...if they were fired at by an F16 doing 500 kts then they would not run and hide...they would be dead. The A-10 is kinda cool...but it sucks as a warplane. I have read that report. 10 tanks in the desert with no cover, not moving and obviously no air defence with the pilot taking 16 minutes to line up and shoot at each tank....and NONE destroyed. Yes they were damaged - but in any realistic situation that A-10 would have been shot down 10 times before getting a single kill. The A-10 should have been retired in 1971.
Exactly...so what is the F 35 carrying to hit within 1 metre from 72km away? And why exactly cant the hog carry it... lovely big gaps in specificity in this video you could fly a B 52 through
@@carldavies4776 But both platforms (and their proponents) miss the point that a part of CAS is simply deterrence. A visible/audible A-10 orbiting above is a signal that maybe the enemy should keep their heads down rather than attack. In other words : "The Whole Point of the Doomsday Machine is Lost if You Keep it a Secret!"
Lets see: Comparing an autocannon to a missile in terms of accuracy: check Comparing an aircraft designed in the 70s to one made in the 00s: check yup, looks like a fair comparison to me
But is this exactly what the "A-10 go BRRRRT" crowd does. The F-35 will get through, and hit the target with precision munitions when the A-10 will be unable to do so. And BTW, more CAS in Iraq and Afghanistan was done with B-52s and B-1s dropping precision guided munitions. So how fair is it to compare a 70s design to a 50s design?
@@jslaon allow me to attempt to clear things up 1) well thought out reply. Hard to find on yt these days 2) i have no horse in this race 3) My point in comparing the GAU to guided munitions was more a dig at the concept itself. Of course it’s not going to be as accurate, it was never designed to be. The technology that can hit a dresser sized target from 50 miles away is of course going to be better at that job than a few hundred lumps of metal 4) comparing a system to its, it could be said, direct replacement will usually not end well in the older things favor. Didnt know that about the bombers in those conflicts though. Learn something new every day.
@@MenacingBird I 100% agree with you, but the absurdity of the A-10 discussion I think is what the writers are really pointing out here. It's a crazy discussion these days.
@@MenacingBird Yeah, the bomber thing is pretty cool. We are doing a lot with "bomb trucks" people just don't hear about. When a BUFF drops a JDAM from 35K it is just an explosion and troops in contact are no longer in contact. A-10s making gun runs makes for great video for sure. In Desert Storm the Iraqis were more afraid of B-52s overhead than A-10s. They could see the formations way up there (couldn't touch them), and had to sit and wait a couple of minutes to see if they had just unloaded on them or if they were on their way to ruin someone else's day.
I think it's somewhere in the middle. I also think a third option to why the numbers were inflated could be to instill fear in the enemy. These were public numbers so it could act as a deterrent. A old Corvette is very sought after even though it doesn't drive well or go that fast. It's how it makes people feel, be it the driver or the spectators.
If your daring enough, it can take off with 7x 2,000 lb bombs + a full wing-load of fuel and ammo for the gun. Beyond that... yea.. the outer pylons can carry 2 Sidewinders a piece or single rocket-pods/single-500lb bombs, the two further in from the wingtips can carry bombs/rockets or the targeting/jamming pods, next set inward are the ones that can carry up to 3 Mavericks each, Next pair in can carry bombs/rockets, and the 3 under the belly can carry bombs, or the center one can carry a extended range fueltank.
That ordinance can be carried and delivered by other aircraft just as or more easily. Take away the gun and there's nothing unique that the A-10 offers.
@@thelastholdout Those ' other aircraft' dont fly slow enough, or low enough, to really benefit infantry. Nor can they 'loiter' with that same load for nearly as long. When your looking at the A-10, its not the 'weapons' it can carry you look at, but the 'role' of that plane and how well it can do aspects that are part of that role. It doesnt matter if your -1 radar signature strike aircraft capable of mach 20 can deliver a bomb on a target just as easily as an A-10 if it cant sit there and wait to see if the guys on the ground need a 2nd run or not as it runs out of gas in 3 minutes, or turns into confetti if some yahoo with a AK peppers its wing. =)
@@Gwydion_Wolf apparently you didn't pay attention to the part of the video where it mentions that the A-10 is just as vulnerable to ground fire at low altitudes as the other aircraft you're criticizing.
@@thelastholdout Its not made of adamantium.... (well except for the bathtub the pilot sits in, thats the closest it gets :D ). but what it does have is redundancies in damn near every single system. Redundancies that those other fighters don't have. The A-10 isnt some mystical aricraft that deflects AAA fire or waves as SAM's fly past, but unlike other aircraft, a 'glancing blow' isnt enough to take the entire plane down. The Designers of it KNEW it would get shot, KNEW it would get hit.. so they built it to 'take' those hits. An F-18 isnt 'made' with the idea of it getting hit.
I have loved your collection of channels for a while now but this episode really spikes my respect. I am an aviation devotee to the core. I worked on the B-2 bomber production run, carry an A&P license, and worked at Edwards AFB for several years. To me, the love of the A-10 is in the purity of the design. Weather the ultimate result was successful or not, you can't deny the single-minded purpose of this machine. The idea of a aircraft today that still uses mechanical flight controls but has redundancy in it is impressive. To see how the large, high mounted turbofans minimize potential FOD or ground fire damage, or even the dual vertical stabilizers form more redundancy if part of the tail becomes damaged. Not to mention the fact that a majority of the fuselage is there to house that massive gun. God, it is just damn cool to think about! I'll admit it. Like if you got a policeman to be honest and real for a short moment, they would all admit that when they're performing a car chase, with the lights going and the siren blasting, it's exciting. There's just certain things that us guys think are cool and the A-10 is on a very short list of such machines. I'd put the SR-71 in a similar category. In today's world, there is no justification for flying a Blackbird anymore. The cost is immense. But the cool-factor will always get a thumbs-up from me! So, to have the guts to put together a video like this gets my respect. Because I know of all the primitive parts of our brains that resist looking at the truth and facts surrounding the matter. I also appreciate your ability in investigations to be able to cut through the surface-level info a cursory web search would bring. And ultimately I appreciate the mention that this is a highly complex subject that needs to be thought of that way. And, to that end, my own thoughts on the viability of the A-10 and it's continued use is that as some have said here in the comments, there is a psychological affect using this aircraft can have on ground forces. I also see the lack of tank-busting ability as was the original intention not so problematic as redirecting this aircraft towards close air support a better application of it's assets since the pinpoint accuracy needed to knock out a tank is not required when you're simply trying to lay down a bit of cover fire so your troops can make their moves in relative safety. Don't get me wrong, a big part of me wants to see this plane succeed no matter what the facts / truth says. My hats off to you for being the better man!
wrote: "So, to have the guts to put together a video like this gets my respect." -- I wish they would research subject a little better, perhaps ask themself a question - why, aircraft that Congress and ASAF tried to get rid off so many times, since early, eh, 1980s(pretty much its introduction) still get financed to at least year 2035? Is the pilot in F-35 comfortable to come down to verify that there are no friendly troops around before dropping munition from 72km away, or perhaps do a strafing run, because friendly troops are too close to comfort to be splashed by 250-500lb bomb. After all its a CAS, and not a bombing mission. It a similar situation of why fighters have a long range missiles, and also 20-25mm canon(just in case), ever since "hey day" of F-8 vs canon less F-4, and just as canon less MiG-21.
@@RussianThunderrr Congress isn't trying to get rid of them, it is overriding the will of the people that actually have to use them because they create too many jobs in their district. The key group keeping these things funded is the Arizona congressional delegation because of Davis Monthan AFB near Tucson and the Utah delegation trying to protect all of the maintenance work at Hill AFB.
@@CODYoungGunna What a poor ignorant rube... Since RUclips does not allow outside links in comments... "Arizona's U.S. representatives and senators are again rallying in support of the A-10 "Warthog." Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., introduced a bill this week calling on the House of Representatives to continue funding the Air Force program. The bill has already received support from Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.; Rep. Tom O’Halleran, D-Ariz.; and Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., sponsored a Senate version of the legislation. “The A-10 Warthog is a vital fixture of Southern Arizona and the bedrock of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, which employs hundreds of airmen and contributes millions of dollars to our local economy,” Kirkpatrick said in a written statement. Arizona's Tucson-based 2nd Congressional District, which Kirkpatrick represents, "is home to the largest contingent of the A-10 fleet, and preserving this aircraft is one of my top priorities," she said.
@@fewetoo dumbass civilians. The A-10 doesn't directly fund anything, it's the Air Force base that brings an additional 10,000 plus service members and their family to the south side of Tucson that help fund pump money into that city. You could replace the A-10 with literally any other frame in the Air Force and these congress members would be saying the same exact about that frame! If you don't know what you are talking about then don't talk about it! Thank it from someone who was stationed at DM for 5 years of their life! All these congressmembers are doing is mentioning the flagship frame of the base!
The gun needs to be upgraded to fire slower and more accurate with fragmentation rounds. As a surface attack aircraft it actually does it very well with the recent cockpit and sensor upgrades. When air dominance is achieved, A-10 is the most cost effective air support vehicle there is. That's probably why it's still in service. From the UK, May the Queen find her Peace, God save the King.
*there is currently in the US inventory. A gripen is cheaper to operate and arguably more useful and those small turboprops used in counterinsurgency should be even cheaper, if not more effective due to longer loiter times.
@@spyrule OMG! The first time I saw the C-130 in action was in Iraq. We called in a strike while on patrol. That was amazing! But, with air attached directly to me, I'd still rather have the A-10
One huge factor this video did not mention at all: the A-10 anti-tank missile armament. The cannon is much better used against support vehicles.Just as the fighter-bomber aircraft, the A-10 can engage targets with guided missiles and, in contrast to fighters, does not have to worry about air-to-air ordinance taking missile spots.
Your arguement perfectly shows why the A10 is redundant, just a fighter bomber with air to ground missiles can do the a10s job better and more accurately, while actually being able to defend itself from enemy fighters and better dodge sams
The A-10 is only useful when you have total air superiority. It can't hold its own against anything else in the air. Even AA missiles and artillery pose a huge risk for them. They're rated against 20mm AAA fire, which is why the Soviets moved to 23mm, which chews through the titanium tub.
@@TalesOfWar Dude, AAA have very limited range, and the missiles can be launched from standoff ranges of those. So do MANPADS, by the way. Given the operating cost, there is some benefit to having A10s in environments with low anti-air threat, such as Afghanistan and Iraq - I don't think those will be the last wars of this sort. However, A-10 could be definitely replaced by an even cheaper turboprop aircraft.
@@nexpro6118 that’s why it’s just a close air support of ground forces plane. How many terrorists in the middles east have anti air, that can’t be countered with flares or gets destroyed, before you go in with ground units.
Wow! That was actually hurtful. I am an A10 guy and hearing all of this made me fall into a fetal position and cry, "No No it's not true". You're saying that squirrels drop acorns on my roof with more accuracy. What's next, the USS Reagan is powered by oars.?
The video seemed to ignore the 16,000 lbs of mixed ordinance the A-10 carries including 10 Maverick air to ground missiles., as well as the fact the gun is useful for more than tanks.. close air support isn't just about shooting tanks.
Usual cherry picking that this channel does. Very poor vids. This will be the last I bother to watch. Not only are they always poor quality, but jam packed with adverts...
100% agree the A10 could carry much more missiles/bombs then any other jet. It's main mission was to support ground troops and that it did. Saved a lot of soldiers. Here, they only discuss the "gun". That's not fair and being a bit bias.
@@yvesgysel9834 the A-10 conducted only 3% of all CAS missions during WoT. Seeing that the A-10 cant do much else and we had permissive airspace during the whole war, its time to admit the the A-10 is taking up too much space in the USAF inventory for a mission set that other airframes do more amd more effectively. squadrons equipped with A-10s would be better served flying F-16s, especially Air National Guard Squadrons, who's job is to defend domestic airspace
It isn't filling that role. It is more or less filling the role of supporting SoF operations in small scale engagements where a limited size operation may require independent air support outside the availability and/or without the footprint of high-end air assets. For something based on a crop duster, it can carry a lot of kit and tech.
@torakazu yes for non-peer targets like in the GWOT the Super Tucano is almost as effective for a tiny fraction of the procurement and operation cost. And against a near-peer force it's just as much a liability as the A-10. The A-10 got lucky, it's been serving for almost 30 years almost exclusively against forces that were already completely outdated by the standards of the end of the Cold War. Now Russia and China, two military exporting powers with the ability to field modern combat air defense (effectively or otherwise) are resurgent and trying to reestablish military supremacy. The A-10 cannot fight in those wars during the stages when the USAF needs to provide widespread CAS. Realigning the strategy to provide similar CAS vs lightly armed terrorist cells at a fraction of the cost is a smart move that lets the USAF redirect funding to modern replacements for its aging 4th generation air fleet.
Hello Simon, I won't dump on your quite interesting analysis, but there is still the fact that this machine, which, by all rights should be relegated to the status of museum ornament, is STILL in service, with many people advocating for the building of new ones to replace the old and exhausted ones, or for engineering a modern version of it, all this because there simply are no other aircraft that are suitable for low altitude, low speed, precision ground attack, and especially none that could handle half the punishment these babies are made to take. Now, I have no idea if that role is still really needed in an age when we can aim a missile within a couple meters of the intended target point from hundreds of kilometers away, but some still seem to think so.
Normally I like his videos, but I was a USAF crew chief & worked on these planes. He implies that USAF brass had a conspiracy about the A10. Nothing could be further from the truth. USAF brass kept trying to can the plane. It was saved MULTIPLE times by the ARMY & MARINES who asked for it to stay. Yes other planes had good rates, but they didn't linger in the kill zones as A10 do, the tests for the plane weren't done with the ammo that it ended up using. I've SEEN the plane with that gun shoot through MODERN tank armor FROM THE FRONT MYSELF! I've also talked to chiefs who had combat A10 duty and been told 1st hand accounts of survivability. I think it's the difference between academic knowledge & practical.
Now that you've done an apples to oranges comparison of the A-10 to the F-35, do an apples-to-apples comparing the A-10 to its exact predecessor, the A-1 Skyraider.
That’s irrelevant when people try to say we need to keep it. It’s clear it should be retired. It might have been the right airplane at a time, but that time has past.
Maybe I missed something, but I've always thought that the A-10 was intended to provide close air support against Infantry ground Soldiers and light armored vehicles, not tanks and bunkers. From everything I've read, it does this admirably. While it would be nice to have a fast-moving aircraft available, the A-10 can loiter in the area for extended periods, much better than helicopters.
CAS is the primary role, but the 30mm is mainly for engaging tanks (from the sides, back, and top. Nobody expected it to get through the glacis,) or at least that task is what inspired the use of a 30mm and to a lesser extent the whole project.
The A-10 was intended for combat on the European theater. It was to be used against massive Soviet bloc tank columns attacking through places like the Fulda Gap.
@@Dragondoc4 A task for which it was unsuited, as it's gun couldn't pierce the armor of anything more advanced than a T-55. By the time the Soviets were pushing T-55's through the Gap the A-10s would have all been dead already.
@@Dragondoc4 This is the correct answer! Remember the pictures of those mile long Russian vehicle lines on the roads in Ukraine? Imagine what just one A-10 could do strafing that. Now imagine what a squad of A-10s would do! Yeah! And that is why they built the damn thing.
It's probably overrated by enthusiasts, but I'd imagine it would still have a lot of value against legacy Soviet era equipment and tactics. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has given us a belated demo of what the Cold War turning (conventionally) hot would've looked like, using almost the exact armour of the era (with a light smattering of more modern and ultimately ineffectual equipment). The A-10 might not be instantly devastating against T-72s but they'd only make a small proportion of armour in the field. More modern and specialised weapons (e.g. missiles or newer planes) could focus on these while the A-10 could tackle the T-62s and supporting IFVs, BMPs, Grad launchers, supply trucks etc using far cheaper weaponry.
The widespread misconception here is that the "Tank Killer" name tag for the A-10 warthog has something to do with the guns that go BRRRT. The guns are for clearing paths and removing large swaths of enemy combatants from the gene pool. The A-10 kills tanks with it's primary weapon the maverick missiles. It does cleanup with the guns as a cheaper way than wasting it's more expensive and limited supply of missiles. This allows it to stay in the field of operation longer.
@@sariukx Well obviously. I mean, we ARE assuming our troops loaded their guns before trying to shoot right? Since A-10 generally fly close to the tree tops AAA systems generally would be ineffective. I would worry more about SAM. A-10's are not the end-all weapon. No platform is except the one we never want to have to use. Any campaign has several components that must work together, and that includes air superiority. A good field commander would seldom put troops on the ground unless he had already achieved this. ( Something the Russians have apparently failed to learn ).
Russia fields over 3000 T-80's, but I doubt they have enough fuel to field even close to that many for an extended period of time. A-10's would give the supply columns a tough time, but Russia does have many SAM's in the column so there would certainly be lots of losses.
I think I'm a bit late, but..: No arguments made here about the recon capabilities. An f35 (or whatever) can launch from a much greter distance, sure. But who's gona get the intel, what to shoot and where? If ground troops can't paint the target, A10 can. F35 can't.
Every time they try to get rid of it the army says 'show us something that can replace it' and then it stays. Not overrated. As a grunt on the ground doing the real work of war the A10 is incredibly valuable not only for what it does but for the morale and confidence of the people it supports.
Yep I've heard enough stories from Marines that were hitching a ride on our ship who talked about how the loitering A-10 flights, after lighting up the battlefield with their truck load of hardpoint ordinance took out insurgent hiding in buildings and light to medium targets with the GAU passes until they were relieved by the next flight of fully loaded A-10s, all within tens of meters from them. It was to the point where they didn't even realize the AHs were around for DCAS, the A-10s were just saving them left and right from being over run. The F/A-18 would hit targets and then it would be radio silence until the next group cam in, no loitering for immediate support, the F-35 would fall in the same camp.
it might be over hipped but when your the infantry man and your taking fire from the ridge then a A-10 strafes the ridge with that GAU-8 its your best friend.
@@pickle2636 True,my best friend is now disabled thanks to the American pilot who shot up his A432 during the Gulf war,one minute a bodybuilding Fusilier,next minute a guy on wheels :(
Here is what you need to know. A-10 is exceptional for what it brings to the Army and sometimes Marines and it's loss/damage rates are acceptable within that lens. Under the lens of the Airforce it is not a winner. A single A-10 has, more times than one can count, saved countless ground forces lives as, much like the JU-87 Stuka of EARLY WWII, the A-10 has a disproportionate phycological and morale impact on the battlefield. Those who have lived under the A-10's protection or have defecated themselves when they see one in the sky knowing they will be targeted know the A-10 is the undisputed champion of CAS. I would have taken 1 A-10 over 2 F-15/16 all day. The only thing I preferred over A-10 was AC-130 gunship in orbit.
I think a good comparison is made, whilst neglecting to recognize that A10 and F35 reflect different eras in modern warfare and in many ways the F35 has learnt from the very operational conflict experience (much of it on the back of the A10's workload) that highlight the A10's 'accepted' innate vulnerability. Its armour derives from its role: low & slow close air-support. It was designed to be down & dirty, mixing with the confusion on heavily defended ground, where attrition rates would always be high; a reality accepted at that time. Talking about 1m accuracy from 70km range is all very well, but at what cost per unit? 70s Cold War tactics always envisaged high attrition rates, even for more sophisticated western weapon systems. Such is the nature of developing warfare tactics. As a comparison, the zero loss rate of Harrier FRS aircraft in the Falklands conflict is rightly lauded. However, when quoting that click-bait statistic, few draw attention to the Harrier GRs lost over land in the same airspace and time frame
Ooooohhh, where to start? In the first place, Simon gives you all sorts of facts about the tests of the aircraft when it first was tested, and tells you that it was poor at what it did. He leaves out why it was built in the first place, and why the program was cancelled when it was. In a word, both things happened for one reason: politics! The Air Force never wanted the plane in the first place: they're dedicated to flying high and dropping bombs on the other country's factories, destroying their infrastructure, and of course shooting down the enemy interceptors that try to stop them. The A-10 doesn't do that, so of course the Air Force didn't want it, and essentially tried their best to avoid ever buying any. They were thwarted by a particular Congressman who was the chairman of one of the appropriation committees. I can't remember the guy's name, but Hedrick Smith's book "The Power Game" explained the political side of this very well, back in the day. Essentially, if the Air Force wanted to buy any aircraft or have a budget one year, they had to agree to build something in this pacifist Congressman's district (you can guess his party if you wish). The plane was accordingly built, and the year he died and was replaced on the committee, the Air Force cancelled any further orders of the plane. Simon thinks they were protecting it during the Gulf War; in actuality the Air Force has been trying to mothball them for decades. He's right that the F-35 is the Air Force's substitute, and that they're trying to convince people that it's better. One of the tricks here is something he's glossed over, not notice, or ignored. The Air Force designates an aircraft by a letter and then a number. C-17 designates a cargo plane, therefore, and B-52 a bomber. The A-10 is an attack plane, as was the A-1 before it. The F-35, you'll note, doesn't have an A designation. That's because it's a *fighter* rather than an attack plane. Now the Air Force would probably argue that a fighter *can* attack ground targets, and they'd be right. Fighter aircraft have been atttacking troops on the ground for more than a century. The trick is that when you have an aircraft and you try and have it be "multi-role" as the Air Force is currently doing, you're essentially trying to have your cake, eat it too, give it to friends, feed your cat with it, and use it for roofing material, all at once. It'll be sorta good at all of it...yeah. It's sort of like trying to say the El Camino can replace an old F-150. Sure, it's a pickup...but really? Do I think the A-10 is the be-all-end-all of aircraft design? Of course not, it's a what, 40+ year-old design? The Air Force should be trying to build a replacement for it, something dedicated to flying air support for ground troops. They won't do that, of course, because while Tom Cruise has been in two sexy movies (admittedly flying Navy aircraft) no one has ever made a movie about sexy ground support aircraft. As an aside, look back at the successful air campaigns of the past. All of the successful campaigns in WW2 involved ground support pretty much exclusively. You could argue that some of the early Luftwaffe terror attacks--Rotterdam springs to mind--did work, but do we really want to build a branch of our armed forces around the premise of killing civilians? *All* of the strategic campaigns that we conducted were failures at their intended objectives, with the possible exception of the Japanese in 1945, and we had to nuke them--twice--before they gave in. All of the really successful air campaigns of the war, from the Blitzkrieg victories 1939-41 through our dash across Frrance into Germany 1944-5, all of them were largely successful due to tactical air support. The only benefit the American strategic bombing campaign accrued was in shooting down large numbers of Luftwaffe interceptors, which had to be withdrawn from front-line combat (mostly in the Soviet Union) to try and stop our bombers. All of our wars since have been characterized by a propensity of the Air Force to try and strategically bomb the enemy into submission, and it's always failed, with Viet Nam heading the list of failures. So of course the Air Force wants that sexy fighter, the F-35. As for the F-35 itself, I haven't watched the video, and won't because I don't want to waste my time. It's no doubt a very good fighter aircraft, and in the absence of any dedicated air support aircraft (which has been the Air Force's goal all along) it's probably not terrible at that. It's also deliberately hilariously expensive, because they sourced the parts for the damn thing from (so I read) 47 of the 50 states. That means cancelling the damn thing will be done over the dead bodies of 94 Senators, which of course was the point. The cost could have been substantially reduced if they'd sourced the parts from fewer places, but that would have meant that it would be easier to cancel. It was recently reported that they'd suspended delivery of the aircraft after it was discovered that one of those suppliers, American of course, was getting the alloys for part of the aircraft from...you guessed it, drum roll...China! This isn't the first time this has happened, and since the plane consists of parts that are made everywhere, it's doubtful it'll be the last. One final note: Simon notes correctly that the F-35 is faster than the A-10. That can be good, and it can be bad. Fast, highflying aircraft can destroy targets they can see, tanks perhaps, but enemy soldiers? Pretty hard to see at those high speeds. Does that mean the A-10 is vulnerable? Jeez, it turns out it can be shot down, what a shock! An aircraft that can "loiter" over a battlefiend, contact friendly ground forces and be directed to targets, is very valuable. I'm sure the F-35 can do some of this, and the Air Force will no doubt insist it's better at it than the A-10...but of course no one wants to ask the Army. Their answer might be different.
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Woah. 8sec from release
A-10 = bad.
F-111 = good.
F-35 = sexy.
The bottom line is that for the price tag of an F-35 you can buy several A-10's.
Wars aren't always about having the best kit. Mostly they're about how well you can manage the resources available to you.
Simply having more aircraft in general means greater coverage and that's more important in alot of the places where it's been utilised.
Don't be fooled. The military knows what it's doing and it's working.
Removed for a reason
@@samwamm85 the truth is, we already paid for the A-10s 30 years ago. They are inexpensive to maintain and upgrade. The decision was made to re -wing 100 A-10s to extend their life to 2040.
The worst thing about getting killed by an A-10 is that since the bullets are supersonic you won't get to hear the cool buuuurrrrt sound before you die.
Why worst? You die instantly, no last fear due to sound or posture. Just death. I prefer that.
I prefer not getting killed by a shart sound
Nor will you get to hear the roaring rrrrreeeeyynnnoooollldddsssss as it flies by.
Since it's going to miss with like a hundred bullets before one hits you, you'll probably hear it plenty.
even worse, dying from it when you and the a10 are on the same team
Finally. Now Simon becomes a person who could be invited to a LazerPig conference.
I have no idea what that is. Yay.
LazerPig's argument was that the importance of the cannon was overemphasized, but it still performs well with guided munitions
First Simon covers the F-35, now the A-10. LazerPig is gonna be in *ahem* Hog Heaven.
I kinda thought his writers had found LazerPig's channel and copied some notes yeah.
@@Gangxisiyu I mean to be fair fact are facts no matter who's saying them
Having worked with this platform both in training and overseas, it is in the same category as ac-130 gunships...a platform meant to be used in an uncontested environment. Agreed that there are better weapons (than the cannon) for armored vehicles, however the cannon is more cost effective for apc/soft skinned/arty/suppression. It is also nice to have pilots, who specialize in supporting troops in contact vs someone who has many mission types in a plane that is easily damaged down low by small arms fire. Another advantage is the time on station and quantity of ordinance. Love the f35 and it's precision weapons, however I do not see the AF pushing f35 drivers to army liaison slots to develop that expertise in supporting ground elements. In the end only boots on the ground hold territory...thus everyone supports the infantry.
Yeah, right. But practice say that 30mm Cannon is an overkill for APC\IFV and 20mm is more than enough while GAU8 cause actual issues with flying performance.
sounds like what you actually want is an apache. a vastly superior CAS bird
@@WarpGhost92 the gun hasn't caused those issues for a very long time. It's what the GUN/PAC system fixed.
It literally, murdered more friends than foes. Its a shit plane.
You are correct, Attack Helicopters are the primary attack resource used by the US Army and Marines to kill tanks, not fixed wing aircraft.
I have a strange love for this aircraft. When most people talk about how much they love the A-10, they gush about its cannon and the psychological effects it has. My admiration for it comes from how quiet it is. Having spent more than a decade on air force base flightlines, I love how it barely roars when it takes off and almost doesn't even whisper when it lands. Whereas other aircraft like the F-15, F-16, F/A-18, F-22, B1B, KC-135, and so on that practically make you deaf when they take off and still roar when they land, I appreciate the A-10 even more.
Of course it’s quit it’s the Volvo of American aircraft slow but pretty tough.
Shunter. Hell let's dump the A10 and bring back the f4. Lol. LOITERING & INTIMIDATION that makes this weapon system effective.
simon literally has a video for a10 lovers and another for a10 haters
Yes I seen one at a air show this summer and was really surprised how quiet it was.
I was a stinger crewman, in field training exercises the a10 was both quiet and loitered around forever. It also found us, a dismounted 2 man team with a shoulder fired stinger. None of the other fast movers did, occasionally the helicopters did.
Here is an easy take from a Marine 0326 who was blessed to practice my craft in Afghanistan and Iraq repeatedly. It never mattered what fixed wing support we received, but the psychological impact the A10 had on enemy combatants was obvious. Drop a bomb and heads went down, fly the big brrrrt overhead and they laid down as and ran away. Is the A10 perfect? No. Does it stand up against 5th generation fighters, No. Does it have it's place on the battlefield once air superiority has been achieved? IMO, yes.
Here is the thing; I don't have to be at the sharp end of the spear anymore so I can appreciate the A10 as it was during my time, younger warfighters will appreciate their own aerial assets.
AMEN.
I was assigned to Wardak Province, Afghanistan in 2008/09 and operated out of FOB Airborne. The FOB was halfway up a mountain and the bad guys were on top of the mountain directly across the valley from us - about two kilometers away in a "straight line". They were pounding the crap out of the FOB using missiles and we had no weapons which could be effective against them (we later got 105 mm howitzers). Air support was called for. We watched two Belgian F-16s drop bombs and miss. Then two British Eurofighters dropped bombs and missed. A (one) A-10 dropped one 2000 pound bomb which did not miss. There were multiple explosions. An after action patrol found the launch site destroyed with about 25 casualties. The casualty count was approximate because - in addition to the bomb explosion itself (huge) - the supply of missiles was also detonated.
Yeah, the GAU-8 fires 30mm HEI, API, and Shit-your-pants-in-fear. If sheer terror is just as effective at stopping someone as death, then it's just as good in that moment.
@@barryfletcher7136 yep, use of the F-16 for CAS is dangerous. F-16s have hit the ground many times because of speed and handling issues when doing dives.
Is all about combined arms efforts. With appropriate electronic “artillery” support assets, the A-10 is the ideal slashing air cavalry assets which will break enemy artillery and tanks facing off each other, allowing coordinated ground assaults. The idea is of persistent sustained air cavalry attacks to silence enemy position permanently or long enough to allow the assault bounding. Can the F-35 be used to do that? The F-35 is more of a standoffish bomber and artillery itself than an air cavalry asset. The video’s author is comparing Apples and Oranges.
As a soldier on the ground in Afghanistan. I love this gift from above.
I hear you brother. Kandahar Province - 2007-2008
@@keithbuddrige5064 kandahar 2011 to 2012. Cop Johnson then ANCOP
Always heard the A10 was hated by troops on the ground. Mostly cause it has the highest friendly fire record.
@@iancrisp9027 more than every other aircraft combined. The british forbade it from flying in their areas because they kept getting killed by it.
@@iancrisp9027 That has everything to do with your Forward Air Controllers. Bad controllers kill grunts.
Coming from maintenance side as the crew chief I can’t speak much for OPS. I know as far for the A model A-10 she was lacking in many ways but we learned from previous mistakes and improved. Now C model definitely closed the gap and improved night operations and identifying friendly forces. Also got rid of that god awful pave penny pod lol. The gun I agree it’s not enough maybe for personnel or soft armor looking at mobile SAMs. But big thing for my side maintenance friendly love this ugly thing and I’ve worked every legacy fighter minus F-18E and F-14.
I'm not sure how much the C package cost but I heard somewhere it made the A10 stupidly expensive for what it was
@@matthewredman7814 2nd person I've seen comment "A-10C is very expensive". I'd love to know where that came from cause every cost per flight hour article lists it as the cheapest manned combat aircraft in the USAF. I'll say having worked on the C model they're not that expensive especially in man hours. The avionics are basic and same level as later block 16s and 15E models.
Now I know you come from the ground side of the a10. But you may perhaps have experience with other airplane guns. So my question / speculation would be if the a10 would have benefitted more with a smaller but more accurate gun, if it was not effective against tanks anyway?
More easy to maintain, more ammo perhaps or some more room for stuff that could help with its aim?
If you are not killing tanks, design it for those softer targets more I would think. O_o (me civ noob here, not trying to disrespect)
@@jerryandersson4873 all it would have done was allow for carrying either a larger ammo capacity of 20MM rounds or increased fuel load. 20MM would mean even less armor piercing capability. Pilots would like less time hitting the tanker during combat ops but 2hr loiter then refuel and so on is fairly standard for single seaters.
I'm not trying to pump up the image of todays's A-10, it certainly has flaws and short comings. But the video and a lot of these comments repeating Lazerpig points are maddening cause they're based almost entirely on data from the testing phase to first Gulf war. Ammo/bombs change, tactics change, things in general just improve over the amount of time it's been used for its CAS role. The guns accuracy also is nowhere near as questionable as many keep repeating. It's like people took an entertaining slide show as fact and ignore videos of it shooting on target or first hand accounts.
@@jerryandersson4873 the modern versions have a gun stabilization system by adjusting for the recoil (the plane wants to nose up when you fire), very accurate and a digital pip so the rounds land exactly where you think they should. It's very accurate.
I've been in the USAF as a pilot, however I've served with the mudhen (F-15E). It was always very amusing to me when people inflated the capability of the A-10 when in fact the F-111, F-16 and our beloved F-15E are the unsung heroes of close air support, air interdiction and precision strikes.
The F-35 and F-15EX will continue to be underdogs in popularity, although they will be the ones that come to the rescue when needed.
Yikes ok mister pilot, you do know that the F-111 has been out of service for years right?
@@CODYoungGunna Where did I say it still is in service? It was retired in the 90s. But if you had watched the video, or know something about the conflicts the A-10 was involved in, than you would know that the F-111 and A-10 served together. Which is why I (and Simon) mentioned it. As I called it an unsung hero.
@@CODYoungGunna The next time you attack someone, do so at least when you know what you are actually saying. And do so only when you fully understand what the other person says. You're welcome.
@@HolyNorthAmericanEmpire Ok less do this then not only has the A-10 out live your dear F-15, the USAF are waffling on the idea of getting the F-15EX and the F-35 has not lived up to expectations.
In the Gulf War, A-10s had a mission capable rate of 95.7%, flew 8,100 sorties and launched 90% of the AGM-65 Maverick missiles and this was with the older frames.
Their aren't many people who are going to say that the F-15, F-16, or F-111 does CAS better. Or are the unsung heros of CAS.
@@CODYoungGunna Imagine clowning yourself so hard 🤣
Dad is a vet of Iraq, round one. I'm round two. His company was getting held down by two T72s back in the day. Commander called in close air support, pair of A10s came JUST above the dunes and saved his ass (and the rest of the dudes he was with) So......A10 is a graceful, FORCEFUL angel to me. Cut those tanks in half.
No. Either it blew them with missiles or it didn't happen.
@@zaco-km3su it probably blew it up with hellfire.
This guy is just a salty European
Don't think the brits that got blown up by the A10 think the same way. Any help will always be an angel in your described scenario.
Did you watch the whole video.. A-10 relatively imprecise with dubious effect from 200 m. F-35 - destroys a target each and every time from 70 km away...
As a soldier whose life has been saved by the Warthog, I will say it is worth its reputation for me.
Marine here. I feel EXACTLY the same way. Love those hogs man.
you could have been saved by another aircraft just as well.
@@oledshwfgk3068 No, the slow speed and long loiter times of the A-10 combined with its survivability against ground fire make it better suited to CAS missions than any other aircraft in the American fleet.
@@brianeleighton it's also better suited to being shot down as opposed to other aircraft performing similar missions. it's not a bad plane, it's great, and it's cool, and it's fun, but it is overrated lmao
@@fowlerfreak7420 Yet, the A-10 has a remarkable ability to absorb hits that would shoot down other aircraft and still make it back to base.
I was a JFO, or the guy who called in close air support in Afghanistan... A10's are the best CAS weapon system hands down
It's kinda maddening seeing how many war nerds with no experience talk like ground troops fear calling it in cause the Brits had one blue-on-blue incident. Nvm I saw plenty of guys like you JTAC's and TACP's come thank our pilots and get tours of the jet while deployed.
@@XanderH4W6 yeah dude the Brits must have invented all the tests Simon listed here because he's secretly mad about that blue on blue incident you won't hush up about.
A-10 is a COIN aircraft but it wasn't build to be one.
So it is a failure and a happy success together.
It was build for soviet tanks in the Fulda Gap and you can't compare this to the requirements of the Afghanistan war.
@@XanderH4W6 I'm pretty sure he was in the military
@@Nukefandango that I won't shut up about? I'm only addressing it cause almost every comment thread on here uses "Brits hate it" as a meme excuse to say it's terrible. Also the tests he's referring too were from the late 70s and tactics/munitions change over 40yrs. Even the SOP for A-10s changed during OIF/OEF to be more effcetive in it's role.
My uncle worked as an engineer & my aunt was one of the nurses on staff in case of emergencies, and I've had a special place in my heart for this plane my whole life. As a kid, I went to 'Family Day' at Fairchild Republic in Farmingdale and saw the A-10 being built and the gun, bullets, and all the amazing parts. I remember a presentation/show of all the protection and redundancies in the plane. Being able to walk through the assembly line & see it in so many stages of assembly fascinated me.
I think the greatest advantage that an A10 brings to the battlefield is the morale boost they give the ground troops
Unless the ground troops are British or Canadian.
Unless they need it for close air support and are in the splash zone
Probably not worth the money if that's it's greatest advantage. It's be cheaper to hire mascots.
It's like the drummer boy from the revolutionary War. Great for morale but utterly useless in combat
I recon the best moral boost is the one that actually kills its targets XD
I wonder how often an A10 was used against a tank in it's history? I viewed it more as a close air support aircraft, suppressing ground targets and protecting friendly troops.
I have friends alive today because of this plane.
It was always designed as a tank buster to close the fulda gap. There are better and more accurate close air support platforms which may have saved more of your friends but when you’ve got a hammer you need to use every problem like like a nail.
If the grunts like it idk why everyone thinks it’s such a pos. And like he said the taliban ran when they realized it was attacking. I can guarantee that saved lives.
@@parkercarpy810 The thing is, most accounts I have seen suggest they very much disliked the A-10 to the point it was withdrawn from theatres upon demand/request by ground forces due to having the worst friendly fire rate of any US airframe.
The Taliban would run when any air support was in use tbf. While it saved some lives, any other plane would likely have also done that job just as well if not better.
Most Marines seemed to like my Cobras than A-10s
Yep. I've got friends alive from this truly amazing plane alive one day, and alive the next day when it came back to deliver more protection THE next day too. It's survivability is unmatched.
Simon and crew, stop taking $$$ from Lockheed Martin Guys on the ground love this aircraft, so piss off.
As someone whos served in the military, has been in combat twice, and saved by CAS from an A-10, I'd say it was money well spent.
In a quiet little dusty town somewhere in the modern wild west, was a group of folks that more or less performed a no-knock warrant on a global scale. Those folks feel a little different about the A-10. Definitely, a lot I don't miss, but one of the things I do is the raspy wake the hell ups from the flying bathtubs and the sense of warm embrace that usually accompanied their mating calls from the sky!
You mean saved by CAS (Close Air Support) BY an A-10?
Because that made it sound like an A-10 plane was attacking you. 🤔
And that’s all it could do and sometimes not very well.
But they did a test 40 years ago that didn't perform well and that is more important. The guy who does this channel is a super douche half of the time. He doesn't even try to look at the big picture. He figures out his opinion and then finds data to support it.
There's nothing quite as reassuring as when you're under siege on the ground and hear those Warthogs approaching... A-10 pilots never have to pay in my bar.
Actually it’s tue opposite cause of it’s danger close there’s a high chance of friendly fire
@@armymanaka360 It's obvious you've never been in combat. I speak from personal experience. When your position is about to be overrun by enemy combatants, an A-10 is most welcome. But you go one taking out his ass.
I think his point is that the A-10 was not as effective at what it was designed to do - destroy Soviet tanks in Europe. No doubt, as a close air support platform, it was highly effective but the targets were softer than a Soviet tanks column that would have included antiaircraft defenses. Never having been put to THAT test, this is pure speculation.
@@armymanaka360 I agree with MojoPup. In support of infantry, particularly in the mountains of Afghanistan, this is a very scary weapon. The problem isn't friendly fire. The problem is its speed and new shoulder fired anti aircraft missiles.
@@academicdeaneducation6671 It seemed to do pretty well against Saddam's tanks in Kuwait. I know I wouldn't want to be inside a tank that gets hit by those depleted rounds...jus sayin'
Its not lauded by the aviation enthusiasts... Its the ground pounders that love it.
I have 3 personal friends who still walk this world thanks to CAS from one of these airframes.
To be fair, the question here would be, would they have been saved just as easily by another airframe? And all the data points towards yes(and probably with less dead British soldiers as well)
They would have been helped just as well by another airframe, bud. Probably better.
@@aquila4460 It certainly could have. But because of the maintenance costs associated with these higher-performance aircraft, and their longer down-times per mission, it was cheaper and easier to use the A10 which was designed for close air support.
@@Amalgam67 It was designed to kill tanks. It's used for CAS because it's not as good at killing tanks as it was meant to be. For CAS you could argue a smaller and more accurate gun would be just as effective as the 30. Happy your friends got out of those situations but that's not a metric of design efficacy.
Air frame includes drones of all sizes.
Now replace the A10 funding with more Pikes, dronesSwitchblades
When you think about it, if 30 mm autocannons were good at killing tanks, we might put them on tanks? Or at least on tank-killing vehicles. But on the ground, 30 mm is used for lighter vehicles, infantry, shooting up buildings, that kind of stuff. Tanks tend to carry something around 120 mm for killing each other, and if you want to trick out something like a Stryker for an anti-tank role, you put TOW missiles on it.
Now, on the role it played in Afghanistan, air support against softer targets, the arguments seem weaker. Here you've got a rugged, reliable plane that can fly from dodgy airfields and bring an awful lot of stuff to the party. And of course the ground forces love it.
Nah, 30mm autocannons are best used for heavy suppressing fire or fighting APCs or IFVs. If one has to confront tanks, its lighter to utilize ATGMs/RPGs/Recoilless Rifle. Beside the penetration of GAU-8 is not much help even if its using Depleted Uranium rounds.
The effectiveness of the cannon is not in dispute when dealing with infantry, not its intended purpose. The cannon’s intended use is against tanks, when fielded the T80 and T72 were more or less immune to the 30mm. As a result of its main armament the early A10 was given no means of identification of friendly targets beyond a pair of binoculars. Aircraft with more complex optics like the F111 and F16 would use lantern thermal imaging pods allowing for PID of enemy targets.
This results in aircraft like the F111 and F16 being more effective for close air support (the F111 killing more tanks in the gulf war) while also having far fewer friendly fire accidents and lower aircraft losses.
Early A10s were ineffective at their intended role in comparison to more versatile aircraft, more vulnerable to enemy AA, and caused more friendly fire incidents than any other American aircraft.
In 2006 an American A10 strafed a Canadian company of Lavs, 16 ton armoured vehicles that the Taliban would never field. This should never happen
The psychological value of just the sound of the A-10's 30 mike mike opening up and the whistle of it's engines approaching, can not be overstated. During my 2 deployments in Iraq, i was only ever pinned down by direct fire once, and that sound was like auditory manna being dropped from heaven. I'm sure whatever the opposite of that is, the enemy was feeling.
Do you know if they r was specifically the A-10 or any aircraft that made the Taliban run?
I've heard the same from people I have met that served. When they got in a bad spot the sound of the incomming A10 brought immediate cheers and morale boost
I think that's the biggest difference with other aircraft. The A-10 is really all about close air support. Like an angel watching over the ground troops from above. And the psychological effects on both friendly and enemy troops can't be underestimated.
The 30mm gun hasn't been its primary weapon for nearly 2 decades. It mainly uses mavric missiles and guided bombs just like any other jet can do. It just does it while being super slow and shitty.
That's funny, everywhere on military oriented sites all I read is how ground troops love this machine. I did however, specialize in military history and people underestimate the morale boost to troops knowing they have proper support or believe in something.
Yeah. So imagine the moral drop troops would have when they believe this machine is good support but as soon as they go against a peer to peer enemy it gets shot down.
@@RK-cj4oc ok give me examples of your BS claims
@@CODYoungGunna what?
@@RK-cj4oc you said that the A-10 would be shot down in peer to peer combat. Im sure you have proof of that
You know to love it when it's there, but don't necessarily know to also hate it when it's absent because of its high cost and low reliability.
Watching this video back-to-back with your first Megaprojects video on the A-10 from 8 months ago was a surreal experience, since they present very different takes on the aircraft and its effectiveness in the combat zones/roles it's been used in.
I feel like this video could have benefitted from more direct juxtapositions with your previous statements about the aircraft, particularly because there are several cases (including the potential overstatement of A-10 kills that may have been misattributed from other aircraft/sources) where what you now call the "perception of the A-10's performance in the common zeitgeist" is ...basically what you said eight months ago in your original video about the aircraft.
There's no need for a formal retraction or recantation, but I would have appreciated a quickly bullet-point rundown of "here's what I said then, here's where I'm saying something different now, and here are the points that still stand from my first video on the topic" at/near the end.
As far as my personal opinions on the A-10? I'm not qualified to answer, but I think that in terms of aviation platforms designed for Cold War era combat doctrine, and with the upgrades it and its potential hardpoint loadouts have received over time, the A-10 is far more relevant to the modern battlefield than the fleet of nuclear-capable bombers built for the Strategic Air Command.
It's worth asking about potential replacements, but like the A-1 Skyraider before it - CAS seems like a role where prior generation aircraft do often seem to be good ENOUGH at the role to stick around long after their generational equivalents in other roles have been phased out.
you hit the nail on the head.!!!
I vaguely remember reading something that when the Army brought up the idea of retiring the A-10 infantry commanders protested it heavily. I believe they cited that even though the plane is decades old, it still does it's job perfectly.
Against what it faced in Afghanistan and maybe even Iraq but the story would be different vs more modern adversaries. The fact is the money might be better spent on more modern systems.
The A-10 is flown by the Air Force, the Army isn't allowed to fly fixed wing combat aircraft. What actually happened was the Air Force has wanted to retire the A-10 for decades. The Army said if the Air Force retired it, they should amend the rules regarding combat aircraft to allow the Army to operate it. In the end, ground combat veterans in Congress stepped in to stop the Air Force from retiring it.
The British specifically requested A-10s not be used for CAS near them because they caused far more friendly fire incidents than any other CAS airframe.
@@IkLms11 umm source
@@CODYoungGunna one of the most notable incidents was the 190th Fighter Squadron/Blues and Royals friendly fire incident
I can't speak to a lot of what was said in this video, but I do have first hand knowledge that the accuracy of the gun was much better than what was provided here. I pretty much grew up on the Smoky Hill ANG Range outside of Salina, KS. My dad started serving there when I was in grade school, and I joined the unit when I grew up. A large part of our job was maintaining the target area and the A-10 regularly put 30mm holes all over the target vehicles we put out as targets. Most of the targets weren't tanks, and the A-10's were shooting practice rounds instead of the depleted uranium rounds they would use on a battlefield. So I can't even speak to how well they would or wouldn't do against tank armor, but even their practice rounds were tear through any other heavy vehicle we could give them to shoot at. I can't think of a single strafing run that I watched where they just totally missed a target without scoring a single hit like this video would suggest.
They were quite ineffective against tanks. The gun was pretty much never used for tanks, more for psychological affect on enemy infantry, not armor.
The thing saved my life. I'll not bash it, I've seen what it does to massed enemies in light cover. Hint: it's not pretty and it sounds scary as hell for added effect.
Your opinion and those of your brothers in arms is what matters. I know there are thousands of ground forces that came home because of air support from the A10, including a close friend of mine. Nuance is very important indeed. Thank you for your time in service and glad you are here to give your perspective. God bless.
It didn't save you. The pilot flying it did save you. And he'd do that in other airplane as well - arguably better as per this video. Let's not antropomorphize things, it just detracts from the brave operators of these tools who do amazing things with good and bad gadgets alike.
@@miroslavhoudek7085 so a pilot flying a biplane would be able to save ground forces with armor like the A10 does? Lol
@@420funny6 for sure, actually much better than A10 without a pilot.
Thank you for your service and for this comment. Brought tears to my eyes. The only time a "thing" saved my life was my handgun, but I'd never thought about the concept of a "thing" saving my life. My gun was my tool that I had on me, had practiced with for years and operated myself. I just thought of it as a part of me. The thought of being certain that you are going to die, then, by some miracle a 3rd party "thing" showing up seemingly out of nowhere saving your life is quite thought provoking. I'd never bash it either.
As somebody who has served in Afghanistan I can vouch for the warthog it’s an absolute BRRRRT BRRRRT Beauty it’s been a soldiers best friend for years and has saved countless lives
Not as many as the unsung heroes, F-111, B-1B, B-52, etc.
They don't have the sexy (but useless) gun, but they can be on station for ten trillion years, and they all carry huge bomb loads.
@@IntrusiveThot420 can’t tell you how many time we called in the thunder it was a sight for sore eyes
@@IntrusiveThot420 B-52s are high level carpet bombers that will destroy an entire city just to kill a target. A-10s are surgical strike aircrafts and I’ve witnessed it’s accuracy first hand. This guy in the video is just biased and pushing his own opinions as to why the A-10 sucks. As I’ve already mentioned this video fails to mention that the original 30mm rounds were not technically made to penetrate armor and were not made from depleted uranium.
@@dawnsredemptiongaming5567 yeah, nobody can take away the morale effect of strafing enemy positions. But it killed more friendlies than any other allied jet too...
Either way, glad you survived the sandbox! I'm angling to work for a defense contractor on the next generation of air support so that y'all never have to worry about getting snuck up on ever again.
This video is literally blatant propaganda for Lockheed Martin and a commerical fo the F-35 which they so desperately want to replace the A-10 and it is NOT fitting to do so, they're still so pissed the USAF was basically forced by the DOD to allocate 800~ mil to replace all the A-10 wings to keep them in service rather than replace all those A-10s with what? 8 F-35s? It's a fucking joke, this is just more $$$ greed bullshit politics being pushed through social media. Megaprojects, I see you, fuck you!
Well you are focusing on one aspect of the aircraft. I can tell you as an infantrymen in the army we loved it. I has another rolls to which it is very well suited.
We loved it because it's a meme, my dude. That's the only reason why. It is massively overhyped.
"does it deserve this praise?" Nah. It doesn't.
Because it was built to do one thing…
For the nay Sayers... I just got one reply.... Thunder make it rain.
Isn't it interesting reading the hot takes from people that have neither worked hands on with the airframe nor needed to rely on it in combat.
I think one factor you may have overlooked is the cost of deployment. While the F-35 is definitely more accurate and versatile than an A-10, it costs at minimum $190,000 per trigger pull. Command isn't going to dispatch one of those for close air support for a small group or operation. Its likely the A-10 was cheaper to deploy for small operations, and thus earned more "respect" from the troops on the ground that needed support because when they called, the A-10 actually showed up.
Only on no threat environment.
In environment with some AA threats, A-10 become a liability as it is way less survivable compare to anything else Air force field in air support role.
The biggest example is the wars against Iraq, the US led Coalition had air supermacy, yet A-10 had way higher attrition rate than anything else. Turn out slow and low flying aircraft are way more vulnerable to outdated AA in Iraqi hands let alone modern AA
Then use a F-18 or a F-15
@@alpacaofthemountain8760
That was what happened, they withdrew A-10 from operation for the most part.
And lastly why DONT YOU INTERVIEW THE TROOPS THAT WERE IN DANGER CLOSE SITUATION NOT SOME OUTDATED REPORT BY A PANTYGON EGGHEAD BEFORE YOU TRASHTALK THE A 10
35 had a lot less loiter time as well.
Served in the Third Marine Aircraft Wing during Operation Iraqi freedom I. My squadron was an F/A-18 squadron operating out of Kuwait. On the base from which we operated there were f-16s, f-18s, harriers, and a-10s. The F-16s were tasked primarily with overwatch, where the other three types of combat aircraft operated mainly in the strike roll. If memory serves correctly, we had 60 f-18s in five USMC squadrons, One Marine and one British harrier squadron for around 40 aircraft, and forty Air National Guard A-10s. Each type of aircraft has a very distinct sound when it takes off, and the f-18s flume more than twice as many missions as the harriers and the a-10s combined.
I was assigned to Wardak Province, Afghanistan in 2008/09 and operated out of FOB Airborne. The FOB was halfway up a mountain and the bad guys were on top of the mountain directly across the valley from us - about two kilometers away in a "straight line". They were pounding the crap out of the FOB using missiles and we had no weapons which could be effective against them (we later got 105 mm howitzers). Air support was called for. We watched two Belgian F-16s drop bombs and miss. Then two British Eurofighters dropped bombs and missed. A (one) A-10 dropped one 2000 pound bomb which did not miss. There were multiple explosions. An after action patrol found the launch site destroyed with about 25 casualties. The casualty count was approximate because in addition to the bomb explosion itself (huge) the supply of missiles was also detonated.
I was there when we built that fob in 07. I’m one of the names on that wounded in action board in the old toc. They saved our ass in a firefight along the apple orchard on the road headed into the valley. They will forever be the best infantry air support in the world as far as I am concerned.
You missed to two most important factors. $/kill ratio and psychological effect both on enemy and friend. If the Taliban, as you put it, is taking cover, the mission is at least partially accomplished. Sending an F-35 with astronomical maintenance costs and better things to do equipped with a million dollar + guided missile to kill some ground troops might not be the solution. Especially since getting intelligence with a 1 sq. meter accuracy to an F35 is likely not possible in a timely manner and the fact that there are not that many F-35's for that kind of mission. To me, the solution seems simple. Increase the accuracy of the gun. The A-10 air-frame is outstanding. Not your top video.
Well someone took this badly 😂. I think you miss the point that almost any aircraft can do the job better.
@@hill160881 But any aircraft ISN’T doing the job better. It’s a surprisingly cheap, effective enough platform for hellfire missiles and psychological warfare. If the taliban are running for cover every time CAS is called, then their job is 90% effective. CAS doesn’t win wars, ground troops do. If the CAS can give the ground troops room to breathe then that’s a successful sortie.
And keep in mind, comparing a vehicle built in the 60’s against an aircraft whose service life started 7 years ago that costs 1,250% more is absurd. The F35 has some incredible aspects but is 1 F35 better at CAS than 12 A10’s? I don’t think so.
The A10 is VERY flawed, but what it lacks in quality it makes up for in quantity.
@@hill160881 If they can get out of the hangar and show up. The F-35 has poor reliability but the A-10 is almost always ready to go. Plus you can literally buy 4 A-10s for the price of one F-35. Each of those A-10s will be heavily loaded with missiles as well as armed with a cannon. Add this up you get continuous CAS coverage versus spotty CAS coverage.
This video doesn't do a very good analysis of this. Availability rates for aircraft is an enormously important stat that wasn't even factored into the critique of the A-10. I'm not saying the A-10 program (like all other military weapon systems) shouldn't be scrutinized but all key factors have to be considered when comparing one to another.
Bruh the taliban loved the a10 cause it never hit them and killed so many civvies they called it their greatest propaganda machine.
Any plane and the A10 can send in a missile 50 miles from target
I was in the USAF staioned at RAF Bentwaters (an A-10 Base) and and worked closely with both the Piolts and Aircraft. You are sadly mistaken as to the destructive capability of ths aircraft.
That time A-10's were retasked and flew night missions in the February of Desert Storm. Not because of them being ineffective, but rather they were EXCEPTIONALLY good at SCUD hunting. Low Speed and IR AGM-65's found and destroyed SCUDs in Western Iraq at a record pace (the F-111 was no slouch at it once A-10s found the targets). in hindsight a 25mm GAU may have been better with higher velocity and the ability to hold even more ammo. Also the video said Seven A-10s were lost, it was six out of 70 that took damage.
it didn't fly at night in DS, it hunted during the day and was absolutly great at it, but it didn't have much ability to fly at night and thus night hunting was left to the F-15E, Tornado and F-111
A10 has/had a role and that role put them in harm's way. I'm pretty sure troops on the ground appreciated them greatly.
Skyraider would do better.
Having had to have my ass saved by the A10 it is well worth it. A1 skyraider can be shot down to easily.
When there is a wide open air space with zero or little chance of enemy aircraft and enemy anti air capability....then yes, the A10 is awesome ha
@@nexpro6118 it was awesome in the Persian gulf War as well
@@danielstevens3869 yeah....we gained complete air control after 2 weeks lol
Remember that the mass majority of kills the A-10 achieved against armored targets was not made by the gun, but with Maverick Missiles; ordinance that could be carried by all sorts of other aircraft.
Except that bad guys shoot back, and the A10 was designed to take a pounding, and still complete mission and get home.
@@kf4hqf2 but imagine something better then surviving a hit: not getting hit because you fly fast hundreds of kilometres away
@@kf4hqf2 the durability of the a-10 was good, but it has been overstated.
and do you know what's better than being designed to take a hit? being designed not to be hit
@@kf4hqf2 As the video pointed out; the A-10 has the worst survivability record. Had to be moved AWAY from where the action because of losses and was only allowed to fly at night. So many other platforms that performed the role better.
@@kf4hqf2 would be better at its job if it was designed to avoid getting shot at in the first place, which is what most ground attack airplanes do.
As someone that was adjacent to A-10's in operations (I was in Armor Cav), nothing that I have seen in the first fifteen or so minutes of this is wrong. Yet the context is. The A-10 is not the attack asset you send out to kill large numbers of tanks, it is the one you send to kill the ones 1000 meters off of your friendly positions. That is where the low and slow works (along with time on station) and that has been a thing going all the way back to Korea. If I want to do tactical in even remotely contested air I want a fast mover. The A-10 is the bridge between an attack helo and something like an F-16. It is has very good survivability vs a multi-role and can move faster with more weapons then a helo. And that gun is like pulling a knife in a gun fight most of the time. The rest of the fights vs soft or light armor it is just way to spread the love. At best modern aircraft carry just a few smart munitions. With that gun and a little time..... Priceless.
Thank you.
Yup,
I was armored cavalry too.... , 3rd ID... and I instantly understood the . *_TONE_* . of this video to be fundamentally misunderstanding the role [and importance] of the A10
it is the . ONLY . aircraft that CAN do what it does, for _Soldiers_
*this is not a **_Best OF_** the Air Force, .... type of aircraft*
but it IS absolutely *BEST AT* exactly what it does.
... that's why it's still in service
Yes. Unfortunately, this is where most of Simon's videos have been heading recently. He starts with his erroneous assumptions and ridicules those that disagree with his arguments. All while ignoring the fact that he is blind to his own assumptions. He thinks he "knows better" . I am about to unsubscribe to all of his channels due to this trend.
It's survivability is a lot lower than you think. The entire aircraft is vulnerable to HMG and light AAA fire. It was designed to be cannon fodder while taking 2,3 or 4 tanks with it.
@@AutomationDnD the DOD is mothballing nearly all of them this year and funding for it has disappeared from the DAA in favor of better CAS platforms and improvements to the F-35
“Too much gun is a better problem to have than not enough gun.” Sergeant First Class Anthony Kelly
I've seen grown men and warriors cry when this beautiful beast has come over and smashed the enemy,in my opinion this and the apache r hands down the saviours of cas
You can see a bunch of grown men and internet warriors cry whenever it's fairly criticized. 😅
beautiful my ass, this thing is the ugliest plane ive ever seen
Even the Apache is getting replaced soon, likely within the next decade.
@@Red-Magic When are they ever going to learn if it isn't broke don't fix it.!!😉
@@carlbrown5150 When will people learn that technology marches on?
As a tank buster with just the gun, yes. But as a ground support platform like the old A2 Skyraider, there is nothing the US inventory that can carry as much ammo/weapons for the amount of loiter time it can do.
Well nothing short of say a B1.
Man it’s crazy to go back and watch that old John McCain testimony about the a10, when it gets brought up about the b1 doing CAS and McCain shuts it down.
Now we know it’s actually a FANTASTIC CAS platform since it can mount a Targeting Pod
@@ryansilcox1124 oh it is no doubt but look at cost per sortie hour on the B1 vs an A10. That's why the B1 doing CAS was shot down.
Ac 130?
What good is all that with the garbage optics on the aircraft. It's more likely to kill friendly troops than it is to provide accurate cas. It's a trash plane that needs to be replaced.
@@danield2685 well for a long while the AC130 couldn't carry guided munitions. A10 from the front outset can carry 11 maverick missiles. I think the same only plane that could carry close to that is the Strike Eagle.
Man, LazerPig is going to love this one.
That was 18 minutes of taking a very shallow look at a weapons platform that very much out performs close to anything else we have. I don't care if an F-35 can get there 3 times faster if it can only stay on station for 20 minutes and drop a single bomb. I'd rather have the jet that can stay on station for 3 hours and drop every manner of bomb, laser guided rocket, AGM-65, CBU, laser guided bombs, JDAMs, etc.
Yeah, the original concept touted the gun back in the 70s. Big deal. Weapon systems evolve over time. Hell, the F-16 was supposed to be an interceptor with just a couple of short range AIM-9s. Now it's a very competent multirole fighter with an insanely wide & varied arsenal, and a very diverse mission profile.
yeah, this was definitely a missed opportunity. The A10 is designed to loiter. It can stay on station for long periods of time, and it can carry 16,000 pounds of ordinance on 11 hardpoints. The F35 is great and all, but the main benefit to its survivability is its stealth, which is compromised by using anything outside of its internal bay, which has a limit of 5700 pounds of payload.
@@thantounderscore And the F35 is too expensive to expose
> drop every manner of Munition and stay on station for hours
So you want a B-1 bomber? Cuz honestly that just sounds better.
@@Eanki_ please tell me you're joking, because replacing the A-10 with something that has a turn radius measured in miles and can only drop bombs and costs 3x as much per flight hour is insanity. Congress tried to propose something like that and John McCain famously shot the idea down. Look it up.
@@DasPenguin85 Yes. I know McCain pulled the smartass stunt. Too bad smartass doesn't equal correct. The Bone is capable. The Viper even better. The A-10 is a bomb truck with smart munitions. The Viper can play bomb truck. So yes, there is a system that can take over if ever.
Everyone wants to judge but coming from boots on the ground and the A-10’s had our back and did a great job knocking out an entire enemy fire team size of Tallys. But everyone’s entitled to their opinion.
Pilots also love them too.
A10 goes Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpt.
It has the most friendly kills than all other American aircraft combined. An 80% of the a10s kill are from guide missils
I appreciate your service. And comment. I have watched hours of documentaries on this plane. I admit it is not the fastest and itis not the prettiest. But it has found its roll. Surely a blind man can see the difference in cost of weapons and ammo as well airframes between the 2 planes. The A10 cost around 17.5 million todays money and the F35 a real bargain for tax payers at 79 million each. That is now after all the RD was sorted. The first batch of F35's only costa coll 225 million each.
The warthog might not be as advanced but it still has a place into days close combat support. I have hear that the Taliban flee like roaches with the lights on everytime they here those GE turbo fans coming for them. I did not even watch his entire video. I want to see a F35 fly home missing half of a wing!
@@jvmiller1995 Well all morden a10 have been upgradet for around 100 million each so its not a cheap plane any more. Just saying. And the gun is redeamed accuracte with in a 75 feet radius and only hit 80% of its sheild “accuret”. The a10 is shit and Can only be use in battles Where No aa is precent
@@jvmiller1995 reasons why A10 is outdated.
1. lack of modern electronics. A10 pilots have to use binoculars in their cockpit to independently attack enemies.
2. low and slow will get you killed. See Ukrainian MANPADS.
3. they have to do #2 because of #1.
4, it would cost less to replace every A10s with an F35s than if they were to be upgraded to fix these issues. See @Magnus Munch 's comment about upgrades that have already happened.
You also wrongfully decontextualized the A-10's losses in Desert Storm. Some 70 of them were hit, some of them several times, yet only 7 were lost, after flying 8,500 sorties --- entirely a third of all Coalition sorties during the entire war, during which they were exposed to enemy fire more than all other Coalition combat aircraft combined. It's losses per-sortie flown are so low that statistically, they're even lower than the Coalition aircraft that fought in the war without any losses.
That's also worth comparing to the USAF's pre-Desert Storm projections that the entire combined fleet of 700 A-10s fighting in such an environment would suffer 7 losses every single day. The *actual* result ended up being 7 losses after two continuous months of fighting.
Furthermore, you claimed that 12 A-10s were shot-down in Desert Storm.
Incorrect.
The A-10s shot-down in Desert Storm were the following airframes;
31-JAN-1991, #80-0248 (A-10A): Shot-down by an Iraqi SA-13 Gopher SAM over Kuwait. Pilot ejected safely, but was captured.
16-FEB-1991, #78-0722 (A-10A): Shot-down by an Iraqi SA-13 Gopher SAM over Kuwait. Pilot was killed on impact. The pilot of #78-0722 had been circling the crash site of #80-0248, in an attempt to protect it's downed pilot.
16-FEB-1991, #79-0130 (A-10A): Shot-down by an Iraqi SA-13 Gopher SAM over Kuwait. Pilot ejected safely, but was captured.
19-FEB-1991, #76-0543 (A-10A): Shot-down by an Iraqi SAM over Kuwait. Pilot ejected safely, but was captured.
22-FEB-1991, #79-0181 (A-10A): Hit by an Iraqi SAM over Kuwait, and crash-landed upon RTB. Pilot ejected safely.
27-FEB-1991, #77-0197 (A-10A): Hit by an Iraqi SAM over Kuwait, and crashed upon RTB. Pilot was killed on impact.
Here's a site that lists all of them;
www.2951clss-gulfwar.com/loses.htm
That's *6 A-10s,* not 12, and that fact is public record.
You were wrong by a factor of 2. Whoever you got your information from duped you into spreading lies.
Did you even do any research for this video, or did you read off a list of talking points someone else handed to you?
Also, forcing the Taliban into cover made the A-10 a failure? Are you being serious? When enemy troops are forced to take cover, friendly troops have the upper hand.
Finally, regarding the F-35, you present a bunch of DoD/Lock-Mart talking points, but they're all unprovable.
He doesn't understand the value of forcing the enemy to take cover because he doesn't understand the nature of combat and fire and movement if he worked half as hard doing some damn research and understanding warfare as he did on his beard maybe his videos wouldn't be so f****** lame
US Government statistics on the post 9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had 80% of the CAS sorties being flown by aircraft OTHER than the A-10s. There were more A-10s that were constructional write-offs than just the six mentioned in that list lost to ground fire and SAMs. A lot of the ones which didn't get destroyed completely did take so much damage as to be stripped for parts and then buried in the desert. The original tooling for the A-10s has long since been destroyed and Boeing's re-winging program involved building new wings with new tooling to a different design than the original wings. Its common practice to strip the ones taken from service for spare parts to keep the others flying. Out of 716 built, 43 are on display, less than 300 have been re-winged and remain operational and the rest are writes off or in storage to canabalize for parts.
The fact that many of those seriously hit got their pilots home is a testimate to their brilliant design and quadriple flight control redundancy. This video is a troll
@@DeeEight _"US Government statistics on the post 9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had 80% of the CAS sorties being flown by aircraft OTHER than the A-10s. "_
That was a lie, and it was exposed. They only tracked sorties from 2006 to 2012 in that document, and the end date was conveniently just before the worst friendly fire incident in the entire Afghan War, in which a guided bomb dropped by a B-1 (the aircraft the USAF was pushing _ultra-hard_ to replace the A-10 in the CAS role at the time, and the narrative their document was created specifically to prop-up) killed and wounded a ton of ISAF troops.
The 2006 date is more significant, however, particularly given that half the Afghan War preceded it. You know what the USAF didn't mention about 2006? That was the date in which ISAF was finally able to re-pave the runways in Afghanistan (which had been literally falling apart since the 1980s), allowing all of the USAF's warplanes to operate from bases inside the country. Before that happened, there was only a single jet-powered combat aircraft that was able to operate from the runways inside Afghanistan, due to the innate FOD resistance and ruggedized landing gear no other US warplane had --- the A-10. This also meant that A-10s arrived to the scene of a battle minutes after take-off, while all the other aircraft were a half an hour or more from Afghan airspace by the time they arrived, usually arriving at the firefight with tired pilots, lots of fuel already burned, and inferior payloads and loiter time.
When those facts were brought to the attention of the press, the USAF stopped talking about the report.
_"There were more A-10s that were constructional write-offs than just the six mentioned in that list lost to ground fire and SAMs. A lot of the ones which didn't get destroyed completely did take so much damage as to be stripped for parts and then buried in the desert."_
No other Coalition warplanes suffering that much damage even made it back.
_"Out of 716 built, 43 are on display, less than 300 have been re-winged and remain operational and the rest are writes off or in storage to canabalize for parts."_
Half the A-10 fleet was retired in the early 1990s, and these airframes were never re-activated. Most have less than 10 years' worth of wear on them, and the survivors still have their original wings. The A-10s that were re-winged had all flown for more than 30 years.
@@markfrombriz It's WAY more than that. The A-10's control system isn't hydraulic with a cable-and-pully backup, but a cable-and-pully control system that's merely hydraulically boosted; as a result, it's relatively easy to control even after hydraulics have been lost. But much more important is that the control cables don't all thread through a single common pathway, like they do in most other aircraft. If an F-16, for example, takes a 30mm shell though it's control pathway, it'll sever not only all of the hydraulics, but both of the manual backup cables as well. The A-10 has multiple cable pathways, on opposite sides of the fuselage.
Another little-known fact about the A-10's hydraulics is that they operate the landing gear in the opposite way from most other aircraft. Pressurizing the landing gear _raises_ it rather than lowering it; if all pressure is lost, the landing gear falls into the lowered position and locks into place. At least two A-10s have safely landed after hydraulics failure, though a third one cashed on landing.
Contrast the A-10's ability to land safely with the "manual back-up" controls you see on most other warplanes. They don't give the pilot anywhere near enough control to attempt a landing, and were included in these aircraft to make them just barely controllable enough to fly to a safe area to eject behind friendly lines (though admittedly, that's a LOT more important than it seems; when F-105s lost their hydraulics over Southeast Asia, the stick slammed all the way forward, and the aircraft entered an irrecoverable high-speed nose dive, and many F-105 pilots found themselves dead or locked-up in the Hanoi Hilton as a result).
As far as I know, the A-10 is the only warplane in service today that has all of these attributes, though the Su-25 might have them as well.
This man’s research didn’t tell him (or maybe he ignored it) that even when the A-10 was scheduled to be decommissioned (I think in the early 2000’s) they hung on to it anyway, to this day, and probably indefinitely because of how successful it has been-and in such high demand by troops on the ground. This machine is a lifesaver for us and the sound alone strikes fear in its enemies. Long live the A-10.
The A-10 keeps surviving because of politics. It's literally politicians. If an A-10 base is to lose the A-10, that means a lot of constituents lose jobs and representatives lose re-election campaigns. That's literally it. It's an obsolete airframe that will be no match for modern day peer nation militaries. If we went to war with China (many say it's a "when" and not an "if") then the A-10 won't ever see the combat theater. My wing commander literally said that last week. The reason the A-10 has been so successful is because it hasn't had to face any competent surface to air or air to air defenses. What the A-10 has faced over the past 20 years is primitive technology but believe me, China knows exactly how to knock the A-10 out of the sky like swatting a mosquito. 5th gen aircraft have countermeasures that the A-10 doesn't have. My wing commander literally described the A-10 as being like a 38 year old overweight guy showing up to a 20 year high school reunion wearing his old football letter jacket. Yeah he was a superstar decades ago, but he keeps hanging on to those days as if nothing ever changes, yet everyone else moved on. He's an overweight balding guy hanging on to his glory days that were decades ago. That's exactly what people who keep praising the A-10 are doing. The A-10 needs to retire. It's served it's purpose. It will NOT be effective in a modern conflict. Continuing the A-10 based on it's service record would be like putting a fleet of B-17s in the air above China as well because of its effectiveness in WWII. Every airframe needs to retire at some point. And the A-10 is at that point. You don't want to have them all getting blown out of the sky with no more advanced replacement in the foreseeable future before you realize it's combat ineffective. The A-10 has only been as successful as it has been because we've been fighting a primitive "military" for the past 20 years and it hasn't seen any opposition in the air, or from the ground. It's done.
You really need to watch this video. ruclips.net/video/tFcXNpdKh4E/видео.html This is being played for pretty much every new aircraft maintenance person that joins the Air Force. Chinas technology is catching up to us. It doesn't explicitly mention the A-10 in the video, but the message is the same. That video is literally from the DoD and is being shown to every brand new Airman to hopefully help them see the reality of their futures in the Air Force. I joined 1 year after September 11th and I just hit 20 years in. My entire career has been spent fighting primates in the middle east. The future we may go toe to toe against a significantly stronger opponent. Plus, if you look on a map, you will see how close China and Afghanistan are. China has had a front row seat to observe how the United States military operates for the past 20 years. They've studies us. They know our moves. They know we have a culture of "yay the A-10 is the best thing ever" and they know what our plays are.
@@miked172 not at all. The Air Force just hasn't produced a good enough replacement and do not want to
The aircraft isn't the problem; the pilots on the other hand whose ability to distinguish a Warrior AFV from a BMP leaves rather a lot to be desired.
There's literally nothing you could tell me at this point that would change my opinion of the A-10, and other service members would say the same. I don't care about it's projected kill rate against Soviet tanks in a hypothetical Cold War gone hot, The Ukrainians and Iraqis have proven that battlefield tactics are more important than sterile tests.
Also, consider morale. Nothing says "Fuck yeah!" to the troops on the ground like the BRRRRRRRRRRTTTTT of an A-10 as it decimates a close air support target. There's a reason it's still in service after decades of trying to kill it.
It was literally held off because of congressional interference lmao. Same reason the U-2 and B-52 are still here despite being atrociously obsolete
After reading some of the other comments, I was reminded that it is not only the physical damage that a weapon can deliver but also the psychological damage. Think of the German MG 42. The sound of 1,200 rounds per minute made you want to keep your head down, but I doubt the physical damage was significantly greater than the M1919 Browning.
Psychological damage is heavily dependent on the weapon not being destroyed. A downed A-10 do not provide any benefit.
Newsflash: anyone that hears a Borwning is going to want to keep their head down too. It's a fucking gun lol. Psychological damage is just a bunch of unquantifiable mumbo jumbo. An aircraft that the enemy doesn't see or hear and blows them the hell up is more effective.
@@benjaminparent4115 only 6 have ever been downed!
@@CODYoungGunna And more werewritten off because of heavy damage after they landed, and they had a restricted airspace during Desert Storm because of that.
@@benjaminparent4115 that's false. Loss from a military standpoint means that the frame cannot fly and is not repairable. They USAF has reported 5 losses of A-10s during the Gulf War.
Perhaps the thing it is mostly know for, the sound made by that canon, is it's greatest asset, my grandfather was an artillery gun sergeant in North Africa WWII and despite the Stuka being one of the least effective, being slow, and poorly armed it was the most terrifying because of the scream it made when dive bombing, a shell fired from distance would be more effective but it came with no warning if you heard it explode then you'd survived, the Stuka was a constant source of terror and reduced morally a significant margin. A country's greatest assets, particularly in these close quarters battles, is its soldiers break them and every other part of the battle becomes easier.
Same with the Hawker Typhoon. If it could bring everything to bear on a target it was formidable. What it couldn't do was kill a Tiger unless it was very lucky. That didn't stop Tiger crews running when typhoons appeared - simply because of the reputation of the aircraft. Mind you - it must have been damn unpleasant being inside a Tiger when 4 20mm canon and rockets are thudding into it.
The JU-87 Stuka's scream was generated by sirens mounted on its wheel struts for the purpose of undermining morale of people on the ground.
The "Jericho Trumpet"
It has it's own little prop that spins in a dive
@@keithhealing1115 Unpleasant indeed for the Tiger crew, and they would be pretty neutered if that amount of firepower landing on and around it took out pieces of track, damaged the main barrel or machine guns. Certainly could be frustrating psychologically to get near the lines just to get shaken up and have to turn the big boy around again back to a repair area (after getting the tracks functional again).
@@ryanotte6737 Turning the Tiger round for repair was chapter two of the manual wasn't it? Straight after "1. Congratulations on your purchase - here's how to turn your new Tiger on."
It was designed to replace the A2 Skyraider CAS mission The A2 Platform was worn-out after Vietnam. A-10s aren't perfect but they aren't trash when doing their designed mission. The truth is in the middle
Yeah they are trash, look at the amount of friendly fire incidents involving the a10
more then any other us aircraft
@@spot6888 cuz they have way more CAS missions.. higher sortie # is gonna provide more chances of friendly fire..
@@spot6888 Close air support is risky especially when a position is being over run. This is were it was supposed to replace the SPADS the A-2. They weapons should have been chosen for this role, the Air Force should not have given into mission creep. The aircraft is a fine platform, the gun is the problem.
@@spot6888 not true when values are corrected per capita and for similar missions.
They aren't trash as long as the enemy doesn't have strong anti air.
I live near Hagerstown Regional Airport. Hagerstown Airport was home to Fairchild Republic. The A-10 was largely manufactured there. Unfortunately while the airport is growing and becoming busier every year, the factory lies abandoned and unused. However, there is a museum there (Hagerstown Aviation Museum) that is doing some great things!
Uhhh… you mean Farmingdale?
@Zachary Wellman No I mean Hagerstown Maryland. Farmingdale was their other location. But the A-10 was mostly assembled in Hagerstown.
Simon, nobody engages a main battle tank head on. One engages from the side, rear or from overhead.
You don't get the option to pick when dodging SAMs and AAA.
And it wasn't particularly effective from those attack vectors either, as raw data proves. It was a jet designed to kill tanks that is bad at killing tanks and can't survive air defense in peer or near-peer warfare. It's used as CAS but is less useful for that role than helicopters are.
You forgot the existance of the entire PGMs and AGM65series of weapons my guy
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD Specially when the Anti Air Defences in Russian doctrine supports armor from behind, theoritaclly barelly overlapping the tanks
According to LazerPig the A-10 killed more Iraqi tanks in ‘91 with missiles than the 30mm gun because the gun wasn’t up to the task and never had been.
It's really impressive how well this video represents how data can be misinterpreted. The worst part is that this whole video seems to be a bad faith argument. They compare the A-10 to an F-35, a plane that's 30 years newer, is vastly more expensive per unit and per hour flown, and they are comparing guns to missiles. You can't get a worse argument than that. They even disregard the fact that the A-10 is capable of bringing more missiles to the fight. I could go on for pages about how the information is incomplete or misrepresentative but I'm sure everyone else is doing the same.
I'm just dumbfounded that they thought this video was satisfactory enough to go out.
Isn't comparing guns to missiles kinda the entire point? Having an anti tank fighter that uses a gun instead of missiles or rockets was a bad idea to begin with.
"I'm just dumbfounded that they thought this video was satisfactory enough to go out." Could not agree more.
@@existentialselkath1264 but it doesn't use the gun instead of missiles or rockets. It's in addition to. The A10 has 11 hardpoints with a 16,000 pound capacity, capable and regularly armed with air to ground missiles (EX: AGM-65 Maverick), precision guided bombs (EX: the JDAM), and rockets including precision guided rockets like the Hydra 70mm/APKWS.
@@existentialselkath1264 the A-10 does use missiles. It can hold far more missiles than an F-35 and I believe it can hold more dedicated air to ground weapons than the F-35 but they didn't acknowledge that at all.
@@reimusklinsman5876 types of missiles, targeting systems, radar, stealth, the price of a retrofit for all the advanced weaponry, etc.
I don't know for sure, but it would surprise me if after all of that an A10 is a better value proposition than an f35
When you build an airplane in the role of an attack helicopter the A-10 is what you get. There is an important context to the A-10 that's often overlooked; this was built around the Army's parameters for an attack helicopter that the AirForce then improved on because the AirForce didn't want the Army to buy a helicopter that happened to have fixed wings speeds approaching that of airplanes. Every flaw and vulnerability an A-10 has is one that attack helicopters have, but the A-10 by comparison significantly mitigates many of those. For instance the AirForce will talk about all the ways the A-10 shouldn't be flown in contested air space as if that automatically makes using F-35A's or other combat jets the better choice in all missions, but the A-10 serves a critical role in the combined arms tactics necessary to the success on modern battlefields and that means in situations where the A-10 is meant to be used the Army and Marines are using their helicopters and Ospreys. Making it either a moot point as air superiority will have been established, or the AirForce is adverse to a risk the Army and Marines take on all the time and the AirForce is simply willing to trade lives of infantry.
The A-10 is a victim of being an attack fighter designed for close air support as the Army imagines that role but flown and rated by how the AirForce imagines ground attack. Part of it is that on some level the AirForce doesn't make enough of a distinction between ground attack and close air support, from the AirForce perspective they're synonymous. So the A-10 is always measured against higher and faster flying jets, not against the helicopters that maintain more of a persistent presence on the battlefield.
All the criticism of the A-10 are valid, but even if the A-10 were retired today, the Army and Marines would still need something like the A-10 to fill that gap. And while advances in rotor craft have been coming along in recent years, the most advanced attack helicopter can't do what an A-10 can. If the Army had a helicopter that could shoot from 200 miles away and perform like an F-35, they would still need something like an A-10 that can come in closer and remain on the battlefield for a protracted periods of time. Something that's hard for the AirForce to accept is that the survivability of the A-10 was so emphasized in design, is because to some degree the airplane needs to be expendable, even if the pilot isn't. But the notion of providing air support from a distance means you're removing the the airplane from the battlefield to remove that risk, and that frees the enemies energy and effort to focus on the ground forces these planes are suppose to support.
Not true. The USAF had the A-10, Army had the Cheyenne, and Marines had the Harrier. There was an argument that the airframes overlapped. The government agreed that each one was different enough and they could all be build. The USAF and Army agreed to not interfere on each other. The Cheyenne was plagued with problems and delays, Lockheed couldn't make it work.
Forget air superiority. You can still be shot down with air superiority - SAMs/MANPADS/AAA. Always a threat no matter how much superiority you have over enemy air forces.
Its called a Drone. Probable MALE sized.
And those are cheaper and more expendable still.
Boots might like more embedded smart weapons like Pike, drones ( suicide or not ) and laser-guided Mortar glide kits more, Those they can control themselves and are more readily available to local forces.
Hell, Pike could make an acceptable weapon for company-level infantry unit-controlled drones as well.
The thing as pointed out by this video and others, is that if you need an aircraft for CAS work... you don't need an A-10 to do it. As shown, the GAU-8 isn't really an anti-tank wonder, so you don't need an aicraft carrying a 30mm cannon for that task. Subsequently, if you need to take out soft-armored targets, then every other attack aircraft in the arsenal is more than capable of using their own weapons to do so, even their 20mm guns. If you need to take out tanks from the air, again you're not going to use the GAU-8 for that express purpose, and so you'll use surface-to-air guided missiles and bombs, which any other attack aircraft in the sky is capable of carrying. The A-10 is heavily armored, and can fly low and slow for CAS yes, but again its roles are already fulfilled by other aircraft either more economically, or more effectively such as subsonic attack aircraft (which can get there faster), helicopters (which can loiter longer), or drones (which are truly expendable and thus can fulfill "aggro" if you want to call it that).
Also, I'm pretty sure that the machine that's expected to take and absorb damage for the troops from the ground are... well, tanks. The doctrines of most air forces supposed that aircraft are not meant to take hits or attract ground fire, and instead their role in CAS is to hit the enemy hard enough that the enemy's combat capabilities are impaired or negated completely, not loiter around the battlefield attracting enemy fire. Otherwise you'd see stuff like AC-130's used more in CAS, an aircraft with superior firepower and loiter capability to the A-10, and yet the AC-130 is only deployed for very specific types of air support missions, typically when there's no anti-air capabilities expected such as when defending a base from attack.
The A-10 is basically a specialty aircraft that can't even excel in its one specialty when it needs to be, and the things it needs to do to excel in that specialty can be done by other types of aircraft better.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD air superiority means enemy planes bug out, which will make SAMs Huntley, and manpads cannot replace SAMs. Commies had great success with SAMs in Vietnam, so in Desert Storm the destroyed the extensive, capable SAM network. Only worry for the destroyers was small arms fire
Astute analysis well said - CAS is not AS
I served as an 11B in Afghanistan and Iraq. Seeing A-10's overhead always let me know we were safe.
Yea. It proved you were up against Bows and Arrows.
@@wonkothesane7000 or RPG's, AK's, IED's.
@@ssgus3682 👍
I served in special operations in the early late 80s the Airforce was looking to get rid of the A-10 by giving it to the Army as a close air support platform. I was a 2lt at the time having spent time as an enlisted operator. The transfer would be about 10 years out, but there was a search for Army guys who were experienced in combat arms branches. I fit the bill and was a graduate of the Joint Firepower Controller's Course. CAS was my thing. A handful of us were tested and a tentative list was developed. While waiting on flight training Desert Storm kicked off. I spent my time in the sand box having my ass saved several times by A-10s. After the war, we asked about the transition and the Airforce had changed its mind because the A-10 was the air hero of the war. The A-10 saved us multiple times in Afghanistan. I have a good friend who retired as an A-10 wing unit commander.
I will risk my life any day if the A-10 is on tap for CAS.
The Marine killer
I was a Marine Corps grunt. There isn't a fixed wing craft I'd rather have for air support than an A-10. When we called in air and got an A-10, it was relief.
@@HolyNorthAmericanEmpire yeah you definitely wasn't a pilot lol
Yep.... all air frames/weapons systems pairings are a compromise. I know Simon doesn't write these, he just reads them, and sure there are, as with all systems, the great and the not so great aspects. The A-10 is the number one fixed-wing close support plane, and you're in excellent and extensive company in praising them. The vast majority of those who hate it are the ones it's zeroing in on.
Are we talking about the aircraft that hasn’t been build since the 70s, has killed more of its own soldier then any other U.S aircraft combined, suffered the most losses out of any modern U.S aircraft and pilots are required to use binoculars to identify targets, since it is so outdated.
Simon: here’s a factual video about the A-10
Also Simon: gets the sound of the GAU-8 wrong
That was truly the worst part of this video.
Mald more A10 fanbois the mighty vark killed 3 times more tanks with less sorties. Who cares what the A10 gun sounds like? It’s hardly accurate and killed many US service men.
@@manofcultura less than the AH-64 or B-52
@@manofcultura Yep. Absolutely true-my DO was one of the guys who did the BDA assessment and he mentioned that happened repeatedly.
@@grumblesa10 sure
I am engineer who actually worked on a major system used in the F-35. Only a fool would look at the F-35 as a close air support aircraft.
In beast mode with the sensor suite that thing boasts? It would do the job as well as an F16 would. If you're involved in aerospace engineering, esp on a stealth aircraft, then you recognize how insanely easy the A10 would be to hit with a modern MANPAD. The thing's max speed is slower than the P51D mustang and it has two exposed turbofans in pods giving that heat signature straight exposure to IR sensors.
@@tonymorris4335 Actually, the A-10 is relatively hard to hit with an MPAD, when it is close to the ground. It may be slow, but it will come, kill, and be gone before you can even get a lock. The JSF simply cannot survive at low levels, is too fragile, with the radar resitant paint easily damaged, and would also be needed for other missions, making it less available for close in air support.
@@nunya3163 SAMP/T and Aster says hi, this is not a remotely challenging target.
@@tonymorris4335 it's actually the opposite with the engines, they are positioned forward so the vertical stabs mask them from the side. They are also specifically non afterburning to reduce heat output.
Staying real low seems to be the favorit tactic in Ukraine. Slow speed might make it easier to hug the ground. Dont know
Seems like the ammo, however expensive it is compared to other fun types, is still a hell of a lot cheaper than a million dollar missile
The ammount you need for killing one tank is still more expensive
You can load unguided rocket pods under wings and cover area with much more destruction power while the price is lower.
@@Estuardomendez13 Not really, depleted uranium is pretty much dirt cheap. Shooting it at someone is actually saving us money on storage and disposal of what would normally be nuclear waste. The A-10s gun is outdated as a tank killer, but tanks themselves are becoming more scarce in favor of things like the BMP-2 or the bradley.
@@EldrichtKnight yeah but they still have to use hydras cause the gun is so inacurate the british refuse air support from a 10 in fear of freindly fire it doesnt matter if your weapon is cheaper if it is useless
That is if the A-10 can hit the target. As for expense, Washinton doesn't care. It loves to spend our money.
I know this is an old vid but Today A-10s are flying nightly from Polish air fields with training provided by the US Air Guard. All A10's are flown by weekend warriors as part of the deal to keep them in service. The Gun is not the primary weapon. The primary weapons are Mavric missles and guided bombs. Other than that you did pretty good.
The GAU/8 is the main wepon of the A10. It is literally built around the gun. The A10 has to use its missile and bombs to reliably hit anything. The gun is so inaccurate that the A10 has the most friendly fire kills of any military aircraft. And for how much I dont want to use wikipedia as a scorce I'll do so in this case.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II
the vid is about a month old. We're rewriting history because Leftism.
All of these are weapons that could be out onto an aircraft that's not a gigantic target for manpads lol
@@Sixshotz1337exactly. All things you can deploy on far faster, less vulnerable jets with better avionics and situational awareness.
@@Sixshotz1337 I don't think you know how manpads work
Air Force keeps wanting to get rid of it. But every time the Army says they will take it for ground support. The Air force keeps it.
I think its more that Congress has a soft spot for it and won't let them get rid of it despite them saying they need something better to replace it for years now.
The Army aren’t prepared to pay for it.
The Army is barred from operating armed fixed wing aircraft, so transferring the A-10 to the Army is a non-starter.
@@davida3244 The MC-12/UAV/RPA community has entered the chat.
That bit about the Army wanting to adopt it isn't true. Go ahead and look it up.
It certainly does deserve its reputation and comparing it with the F-35 is not a very fair comparison as there is half a century difference in design.
As for the high loses in combat, this can only be expected as the A-10 operates low and slow which makes it both vulnerable and lethal to enemy ground forces.
Later advances in technology have given its cannon a wide range of different projectile rounds for penetrating armour or taking out soft targets with each round acting similar to a hand grenade so pin point accuracy is not really required.
As for the pilots who fly these aircraft, they deserve the highest respect as they know the risk factor is stacked against them due to the nature of their missions. It requires the pilot to get their hands dirty by taking the aircraft into harms way to complete the mission and wreak havoc on the enemy!
@@osric729 ...... I totally agree........ I am a big fan of Simon's work and I really do appreciate the effort he and his team puts in....... but this one I think is based more on opinions rather than facts.
In Nam, we had the A1 Sky Raider out of NKP. Avgas, single radial engine, single flight controls. What could go wrong with that when you are subjected to ground fire. I felt sorry for them, but did appreciate their help.
Like the A-10, the A-1 carried a large payload and could loiter. I kinda miss the A-1.
there is a story about when talk of scrapping the A-10 was on the table, the US Army said they would take over the A-10 fleet cause they obviously thought it was a handy CAS aircraft. USAF got offended that Army would want fixed wing aircraft so decided to keep it. I always wondered if US Army played on USAF desire to keep fixed wing combat aircraft out of Army hands.
In the 80s the Air Force WANTED the army to take it.
Go USMC. I never understood why US Army doesn't do its own FW CAS. It really works well for the Marines 👍
As a former us army vet on the ground in the Middle East……the shock value and morale boost is worth the money
idk, im a big fan of hitting. the shock and awe of an a10 burst is offset by the shock of an apache's 30mm actually getting to you
@@ravener96 Thing about a cannon that sprays like a shotgun is that shotgun tend to find their targets. Having a low hit ratio per burst doesn't matter as long as every burst hits.
@@Deepingmind it matters when you dont have infinite ammo. an apache pumping out five-round bursts can be suppressing and killing the enemy for hours. the A10 has just a few seconds of fire, meaning you only get a couple of passes.
There's a reason trigger control exists lol
I'm an old AGE guy, USAF post 9/11 volunteer, SSgt (fmr). I was lucky enough to serve with the A-10 at Osan AB, South Korea. The hype IS REAL when it comes to the A-10. They don't get "hard broke" from anything. They're practically flying tanks. You're not gonna win a dog fight in this thing, but it does what it's supposed to and does it well.
In the video he says they got shot down more than other aircraft during the Iraq war.
Exactly.
@@coolcoolercoolest212 That's te risk you take when you're providing close air support with a plane that had countermeasures and avionics from 1979. It was the Air Force's bastard child and they ignored updating it for as long as they could.
@@coolcoolercoolest212 Which it did. What he failed to mention is that is also has the highest rate of friendly fire of any American aircraft ever built
@@No_Ideas_Man umm no that's the AH-64
Cheap to fly, large payload and can use rough runways. Still has a role to play.
It's not cheap to fly and helicopters don't need a runway at all.
Helicopters are better because they have a chin turret that can always be aiming at the enemy, the A-10 can only aim at the enemy briefly when diving on a target then take a couple minutes circling around to do the same thing. Helicopters are also way better for shooting rockets, and rockets are what made dive attacks obsolete in the first place.
The A-10 cannot carry a larger NUMBER of weapons, just heavier weapons, weapons that are too heavy, if you drop a 1000lbs or 2000lbs bomb on enemy troops position when the enemy troops are less than 300m from your friendly forces you'll decimate your friendly forces due to the huge fragmentation radius.
Not against anyone with air defense .
Cheap to build, too. No 2-seat version so the pilots first flight is solo. No Weight-on-Wheels switch, so the weapons could be inadvertently fired while taxiing. No relief tube, so pilots ferrying across an ocean wore diapers.
@@Treblaine Attack Helios are the Army's dominant and they aren't better than the A-10
Super Tucano and Air Tractor even cheaper to fly and can fly off dirt roads. No need for a cannon.
1. I’m a Desert Shield/ Storm veteran. The day of the ground war, the A-10’s saved our asses, and most importantly, our lives. We also had AH-64’s doing air support while we went into Kuwait City.
2. I really need to learn the metric system if I’m going to listen to your videos 😂
You mean the empty city of Kuwait City because the Iraqi army had pulled out weeks before?
If I had a dollar....
We had a10s on station multiple times during my deployment, and they are a fearsome weapons platform. There's nothing like it, and the only thing more effective to have hang around in an AO is a pair of apaches.
CAS won’t always be in uncontested airspace, and even in uncontested airspace a crop duster could do the A-10’s job better.
@@anon69_q lmao, no
@@anon69_q Nonsense of the highest order.
@@watcherofwatchers the f16 already can do cas better than the a10 ffs
We will se how it is when it goes up against a formidable opponent. Without full control of the airspace the A-10 like any other slow ground support aircraft would be easy targets.
I am not saying it's a lousy aircraft as it's not. You just can't prove how good something really is until you put it against the best resistance.
As a former tank officer the A10 is a badass machine and there is nothing bad about it.
Except that it doesn't do anything a helicopter or drone can do.
@@CharliMorganMusic a helicopter or drone could not maintain flight and fire the gatling gun the a10 has. A helicopter could take out 1-4 tanks with its missile payload. A drone can take out 1 tank if it is the right drone. But an a10 is the only aircraft that could destroy an entire row of 10 armored vehicles without breaking a sweat.
as a former Infantry man, I would say it is my favorite close air support aircraft.
As a fellow former infantryman I'd say it's my least favorite. Give me an Apache Longbow or an F-16 or a B-52 any day over an A-10.
@@MrSpudz2 Because the bombs are landing close to the target. The "Close" in CAS doesn't refer to the proximity from the target to the aircraft, it refers to the proximity of friendly forces. The newer generations of the B-52 are capable of precisely delivering PGMs onto the heads of targets, even if those targets are within close proximity to friendly forces. B-52s were one of the best CAS platforms we had in Afghanistan.
@@MrSpudz2 GBUs and Hellfires
@@gingerlicious3500 you aren't military. Stop lying
@@CODYoungGunna Sorry dude, afraid I was. Not everyone in the military shares your worship of the A-10.
It's an old design now. We could probably make something better for the close infantry support role today, but that would be a big defense spending fight.
Too late, the Sky Warden already exists.
Yes, it’s an old design. BUT, whenever it’s head goes up on the block with congress, it always get taken down, by numerous generals, and by the very military it supports. More often than not, the troops loudly reverse the path.
I get the idea of this video was to provide a counter opinion to the more widely accepted opinion that the A-10 is awesome. But why didn't you approach this from the very real and realistic argument that the airforce is constantly making, that the A-10s mission is obsolete in the developing AA proliferation environment and the F-35's stealth and altitude advantages actually serve the war fighter better then the A-10. You barely spent any time on the F-35 comparison and most of the critiques of the A-10 you posed are flawed perspectives in so many ways.
This whole video comes across as someone who just cherry picked reports and news articles, not from someone who talked to people who actually spent real time with the airframe either in real life or even in a sim. As evidence to this you kept referencing how the A-10's gun was always used against armor from the sides or rear and not the front. Well DUH! What A-10 pilot would attack a tank from the front when they are literally in an airplane that can circle around and line up a rear or side aspect strafe! If attack from the front was the only option then they would use a maverick or a laser guided rocket or any other precision munitions! News flash the A-10 carries a ton of munitions!
Like I said I know this was part of the thinking critically double header you did with the F-35 but, unlike the F-35 video this one was just approached from the wrong angle. There is a very real argument to get rid of the A-10 and you missed it completely. (For the record I like the A-10 and F-35 both should be in service in my opinion.)
The "A-10s mission is obsolete"
Seeing Russians invade Ukraine in 2022, by driving miles of armored vehicles on roads, is the literal textbook scenario that created the demand, the purpose, and task of the A-10. Despite all of the advancements in weapon systems and aircraft, the most effective, efficient, and lethal weapon against armored columns, is still the A-10 Warthog.
I can only imagine the screams of the A-10 pilots as they watched lines of tanks on the news, bottlenecked on roads, as they are sitting ducks. That was the very purpose of the A-10's existence, and the scenario that the pilots were trained to engage in.
By this logic all helicopters are obsolete…
@@gregpaul882 well remember helios are the domain of the army, plus the airforces thought process on the a-10 is complex and shouldnt be over simplified by blanket statements. There's a real arguement that if you sent in 8 f-35s into ukraine right now they would do more for the war effort then 8 a-10s or any other combination of fighters. Anyone who is claiming an a-10 would simply mow down the Russian armor without being under threat it self is probably over simplifying the situation. The su-25s the Ukrainians own have not faired that well and that is the closest plane to the a-10 in the world.
Of course in a sanitized air space give me 8 a-10s all day probably going to out perform the helios in most mission types too
The way I figure it, the GAU was there to bat clean-up after the A-10 had used it's primary weapon payload. This comparison by L. Simon Hubbard places the GAU in a primary role, which was never the case. WARTHOG!!!
I kept waiting for him to discuss the real tank killer.. the Maverick. As you say the GAU is for cleanup, the Maverick was the vast majority of it's kills in 91.. add to that rockets for infantry or smoke rockets to mark for follow on fast movers.. and it's a different plane. The intended 1980's role for the A-10 wasn't to go straffing tanks in a hostile air zone, it was supposed to carry a max loadout of Maverick missles for the tanks, and rockets+gun for BMP's and the like.. it was understood the air defenses had to be worked down before sending in the hawgs.. the survivability portion was meant to withstand UP TO 23mm cannon fire, not SAMs. This video felt a lot like saying a Corvette is over-rated because it's gas mileage is bad.
For almost all aircraft, any built-in weapon system (like the gun) is considered 'primary' while any externally attached weapon (like missiles, hanging under the wings) is considered 'secondary'. It's just an odd quirk of technical-writing; doesn't mean anything in real-world practice.
@@AaronCMounts technical jargon is irrelevant to the fact that your primary weapon system is the one youre using first... no fast mover is primarily using the gun...
@@robertwink9989 "the survivability portion was meant to withstand UP TO 23mm cannon fire, not SAMs." You right, it was outdated the moment it was designed.
if the gun wasnt the main weapon, why carry it. its unreasonably heavy and with pretty poor performance. for the mass of the gun you could carry a bunch of extra missiles, which would serve you better.
I've seen the a-10 in action. The enemy is not reloading when they here it they run. And a second one would be right behind it
and here i was thinking all the apache gun cams showing them blasting dudes from kilometers away with pinpoint accuracy was the pinacle of CAS, of course you need to miss a bunch and make them run, much better
@@ravener96 but that's not what AH-64s are doing
and they do hear it as it's going so slow...if they were fired at by an F16 doing 500 kts then they would not run and hide...they would be dead. The A-10 is kinda cool...but it sucks as a warplane. I have read that report. 10 tanks in the desert with no cover, not moving and obviously no air defence with the pilot taking 16 minutes to line up and shoot at each tank....and NONE destroyed. Yes they were damaged - but in any realistic situation that A-10 would have been shot down 10 times before getting a single kill. The A-10 should have been retired in 1971.
@@Pukin-Dog so what happened when the F-16 runs out of missiles and the enemy is still there?
Unless it's not a terrorist shit outfit and then they just grab the MANPADS and fire off a few shots.
Thanks
Man, if only the A-10 could carry weapons other than it's 30mm cannon.....
Exactly...so what is the F 35 carrying to hit within 1 metre from 72km away? And why exactly cant the hog carry it... lovely big gaps in specificity in this video you could fly a B 52 through
@@carldavies4776 The B52 would actually be a better CAS platform than the F35…
@@romainlerallut1409 with current munitions your absolutely correct
@@carldavies4776 But both platforms (and their proponents) miss the point that a part of CAS is simply deterrence. A visible/audible A-10 orbiting above is a signal that maybe the enemy should keep their heads down rather than attack. In other words : "The Whole Point of the Doomsday Machine is Lost if You Keep it a Secret!"
@@romainlerallut1409 absolutely agree
From someone that has had the A-10 for CAS “Grab you’re nuts, and bow your head, cause if she hits you, you’re meeting god”
Lets see:
Comparing an autocannon to a missile in terms of accuracy: check
Comparing an aircraft designed in the 70s to one made in the 00s: check
yup, looks like a fair comparison to me
But is this exactly what the "A-10 go BRRRRT" crowd does. The F-35 will get through, and hit the target with precision munitions when the A-10 will be unable to do so. And BTW, more CAS in Iraq and Afghanistan was done with B-52s and B-1s dropping precision guided munitions. So how fair is it to compare a 70s design to a 50s design?
@@jslaon allow me to attempt to clear things up
1) well thought out reply. Hard to find on yt these days
2) i have no horse in this race
3) My point in comparing the GAU to guided munitions was more a dig at the concept itself. Of course it’s not going to be as accurate, it was never designed to be. The technology that can hit a dresser sized target from 50 miles away is of course going to be better at that job than a few hundred lumps of metal
4) comparing a system to its, it could be said, direct replacement will usually not end well in the older things favor.
Didnt know that about the bombers in those conflicts though. Learn something new every day.
@@MenacingBird I 100% agree with you, but the absurdity of the A-10 discussion I think is what the writers are really pointing out here. It's a crazy discussion these days.
@@MenacingBird Yeah, the bomber thing is pretty cool. We are doing a lot with "bomb trucks" people just don't hear about. When a BUFF drops a JDAM from 35K it is just an explosion and troops in contact are no longer in contact. A-10s making gun runs makes for great video for sure. In Desert Storm the Iraqis were more afraid of B-52s overhead than A-10s. They could see the formations way up there (couldn't touch them), and had to sit and wait a couple of minutes to see if they had just unloaded on them or if they were on their way to ruin someone else's day.
I think it's somewhere in the middle. I also think a third option to why the numbers were inflated could be to instill fear in the enemy. These were public numbers so it could act as a deterrent.
A old Corvette is very sought after even though it doesn't drive well or go that fast. It's how it makes people feel, be it the driver or the spectators.
The gun was the only thing addressed by the video. I thought the Warthog could also carry an enormous amount of additional ordinance.
If your daring enough, it can take off with 7x 2,000 lb bombs + a full wing-load of fuel and ammo for the gun.
Beyond that... yea.. the outer pylons can carry 2 Sidewinders a piece or single rocket-pods/single-500lb bombs, the two further in from the wingtips can carry bombs/rockets or the targeting/jamming pods, next set inward are the ones that can carry up to 3 Mavericks each, Next pair in can carry bombs/rockets, and the 3 under the belly can carry bombs, or the center one can carry a extended range fueltank.
That ordinance can be carried and delivered by other aircraft just as or more easily. Take away the gun and there's nothing unique that the A-10 offers.
@@thelastholdout Those ' other aircraft' dont fly slow enough, or low enough, to really benefit infantry. Nor can they 'loiter' with that same load for nearly as long.
When your looking at the A-10, its not the 'weapons' it can carry you look at, but the 'role' of that plane and how well it can do aspects that are part of that role.
It doesnt matter if your -1 radar signature strike aircraft capable of mach 20 can deliver a bomb on a target just as easily as an A-10 if it cant sit there and wait to see if the guys on the ground need a 2nd run or not as it runs out of gas in 3 minutes, or turns into confetti if some yahoo with a AK peppers its wing.
=)
@@Gwydion_Wolf apparently you didn't pay attention to the part of the video where it mentions that the A-10 is just as vulnerable to ground fire at low altitudes as the other aircraft you're criticizing.
@@thelastholdout Its not made of adamantium.... (well except for the bathtub the pilot sits in, thats the closest it gets :D ).
but what it does have is redundancies in damn near every single system.
Redundancies that those other fighters don't have.
The A-10 isnt some mystical aricraft that deflects AAA fire or waves as SAM's fly past, but unlike other aircraft, a 'glancing blow' isnt enough to take the entire plane down. The Designers of it KNEW it would get shot, KNEW it would get hit.. so they built it to 'take' those hits. An F-18 isnt 'made' with the idea of it getting hit.
I have loved your collection of channels for a while now but this episode really spikes my respect. I am an aviation devotee to the core. I worked on the B-2 bomber production run, carry an A&P license, and worked at Edwards AFB for several years. To me, the love of the A-10 is in the purity of the design. Weather the ultimate result was successful or not, you can't deny the single-minded purpose of this machine. The idea of a aircraft today that still uses mechanical flight controls but has redundancy in it is impressive. To see how the large, high mounted turbofans minimize potential FOD or ground fire damage, or even the dual vertical stabilizers form more redundancy if part of the tail becomes damaged. Not to mention the fact that a majority of the fuselage is there to house that massive gun. God, it is just damn cool to think about! I'll admit it.
Like if you got a policeman to be honest and real for a short moment, they would all admit that when they're performing a car chase, with the lights going and the siren blasting, it's exciting. There's just certain things that us guys think are cool and the A-10 is on a very short list of such machines. I'd put the SR-71 in a similar category. In today's world, there is no justification for flying a Blackbird anymore. The cost is immense. But the cool-factor will always get a thumbs-up from me!
So, to have the guts to put together a video like this gets my respect. Because I know of all the primitive parts of our brains that resist looking at the truth and facts surrounding the matter. I also appreciate your ability in investigations to be able to cut through the surface-level info a cursory web search would bring. And ultimately I appreciate the mention that this is a highly complex subject that needs to be thought of that way.
And, to that end, my own thoughts on the viability of the A-10 and it's continued use is that as some have said here in the comments, there is a psychological affect using this aircraft can have on ground forces. I also see the lack of tank-busting ability as was the original intention not so problematic as redirecting this aircraft towards close air support a better application of it's assets since the pinpoint accuracy needed to knock out a tank is not required when you're simply trying to lay down a bit of cover fire so your troops can make their moves in relative safety.
Don't get me wrong, a big part of me wants to see this plane succeed no matter what the facts / truth says. My hats off to you for being the better man!
wrote: "So, to have the guts to put together a video like this gets my respect."
-- I wish they would research subject a little better, perhaps ask themself a question - why, aircraft that Congress and ASAF tried to get rid off so many times, since early, eh, 1980s(pretty much its introduction) still get financed to at least year 2035? Is the pilot in F-35 comfortable to come down to verify that there are no friendly troops around before dropping munition from 72km away, or perhaps do a strafing run, because friendly troops are too close to comfort to be splashed by 250-500lb bomb. After all its a CAS, and not a bombing mission. It a similar situation of why fighters have a long range missiles, and also 20-25mm canon(just in case), ever since "hey day" of F-8 vs canon less F-4, and just as canon less MiG-21.
@@RussianThunderrr Congress isn't trying to get rid of them, it is overriding the will of the people that actually have to use them because they create too many jobs in their district. The key group keeping these things funded is the Arizona congressional delegation because of Davis Monthan AFB near Tucson and the Utah delegation trying to protect all of the maintenance work at Hill AFB.
@@fewetoo wow you dipped deep into the conspiracy theories lol
@@CODYoungGunna What a poor ignorant rube... Since RUclips does not allow outside links in comments...
"Arizona's U.S. representatives and senators are again rallying in support of the A-10 "Warthog."
Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., introduced a bill this week calling on the House of Representatives to continue funding the Air Force program.
The bill has already received support from Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.; Rep. Tom O’Halleran, D-Ariz.; and Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., sponsored a Senate version of the legislation.
“The A-10 Warthog is a vital fixture of Southern Arizona and the bedrock of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, which employs hundreds of airmen and contributes millions of dollars to our local economy,” Kirkpatrick said in a written statement.
Arizona's Tucson-based 2nd Congressional District, which Kirkpatrick represents, "is home to the largest contingent of the A-10 fleet, and preserving this aircraft is one of my top priorities," she said.
@@fewetoo dumbass civilians. The A-10 doesn't directly fund anything, it's the Air Force base that brings an additional 10,000 plus service members and their family to the south side of Tucson that help fund pump money into that city. You could replace the A-10 with literally any other frame in the Air Force and these congress members would be saying the same exact about that frame! If you don't know what you are talking about then don't talk about it! Thank it from someone who was stationed at DM for 5 years of their life! All these congressmembers are doing is mentioning the flagship frame of the base!
The gun needs to be upgraded to fire slower and more accurate with fragmentation rounds. As a surface attack aircraft it actually does it very well with the recent cockpit and sensor upgrades. When air dominance is achieved, A-10 is the most cost effective air support vehicle there is. That's probably why it's still in service.
From the UK, May the Queen find her Peace, God save the King.
They’re pushing in an even cheaper CAS alternative in low AD-threat environments. It’s called the Sky Warden, and it’s a literal cropduster.
*there is currently in the US inventory.
A gripen is cheaper to operate and arguably more useful and those small turboprops used in counterinsurgency should be even cheaper, if not more effective due to longer loiter times.
@@user-pq4by2rq9y not to mention the drones.
It does fire frag rounds, they carry a mix of HE, AP and API in the ammo tub.
In DCS at least, the A-10 has adjustment in fire rate
I can tell you as a Marine Corps grunt that when you call in air, there isn't another fixed wing craft you would rather have than an A-10.
AC-130?!?
Bullshit. I've never heard a Marine say they want USAF CAS. A10s are Marine killers.
BIG FACTS
So you rather have the A-10 over a gunship that can drop 105mm and 30mm right on top of a target point .. I'd take the Ghostrider any day.
@@spyrule OMG! The first time I saw the C-130 in action was in Iraq. We called in a strike while on patrol. That was amazing! But, with air attached directly to me, I'd still rather have the A-10
One huge factor this video did not mention at all: the A-10 anti-tank missile armament. The cannon is much better used against support vehicles.Just as the fighter-bomber aircraft, the A-10 can engage targets with guided missiles and, in contrast to fighters, does not have to worry about air-to-air ordinance taking missile spots.
then simply dont put A/A missiles on the fighter. You would also have to have a dedicated combat air patrol CAP airplane to protect the a10.
Your arguement perfectly shows why the A10 is redundant, just a fighter bomber with air to ground missiles can do the a10s job better and more accurately, while actually being able to defend itself from enemy fighters and better dodge sams
The A-10 is only useful when you have total air superiority. It can't hold its own against anything else in the air. Even AA missiles and artillery pose a huge risk for them. They're rated against 20mm AAA fire, which is why the Soviets moved to 23mm, which chews through the titanium tub.
F-16 & F-18 can carry just as many Mavericks as the A-10.
@@TalesOfWar Dude, AAA have very limited range, and the missiles can be launched from standoff ranges of those. So do MANPADS, by the way. Given the operating cost, there is some benefit to having A10s in environments with low anti-air threat, such as Afghanistan and Iraq - I don't think those will be the last wars of this sort. However, A-10 could be definitely replaced by an even cheaper turboprop aircraft.
It's been an absolute bargain compared to most weapon systems.
Not if you put in the cost of the losses it would have its just not capable of flying in enemy territory with as little as a flakpanzer on it
When there is a wide open air space with zero or little chance of enemy aircraft and enemy anti air capability....then yes, the A10 is awesome ha
@@nexpro6118 that’s why it’s just a close air support of ground forces plane.
How many terrorists in the middles east have anti air, that can’t be countered with flares or gets destroyed, before you go in with ground units.
@@nexpro6118 Which is why it's done so well in the low intensity conflicts we've been fighting for the last 20 years.
Remember this is a Simon Whistler production so if the topic is anything American, he's going to $hit on it.
Wow! That was actually hurtful. I am an A10 guy and hearing all of this made me fall into a fetal position and cry, "No No it's not true". You're saying that squirrels drop acorns on my roof with more accuracy. What's next, the USS Reagan is powered by oars.?
Ask any infantryman pinned down by the Taliban, or ISIS, and they will tell you the A-10 “bbbrrrrtttt” sounds like a saving angel.
The video seemed to ignore the 16,000 lbs of mixed ordinance the A-10 carries including 10 Maverick air to ground missiles., as well as the fact the gun is useful for more than tanks.. close air support isn't just about shooting tanks.
Usual cherry picking that this channel does. Very poor vids. This will be the last I bother to watch. Not only are they always poor quality, but jam packed with adverts...
100% agree the A10 could carry much more missiles/bombs then any other jet. It's main mission was to support ground troops and that it did. Saved a lot of soldiers. Here, they only discuss the "gun". That's not fair and being a bit bias.
@@yvesgysel9834 the A-10 conducted only 3% of all CAS missions during WoT. Seeing that the A-10 cant do much else and we had permissive airspace during the whole war, its time to admit the the A-10 is taking up too much space in the USAF inventory for a mission set that other airframes do more amd more effectively. squadrons equipped with A-10s would be better served flying F-16s, especially Air National Guard Squadrons, who's job is to defend domestic airspace
I also like how they're pushing in a literal cropduster aircraft to take over the loitering CAS role of the A-10
It isn't filling that role. It is more or less filling the role of supporting SoF operations in small scale engagements where a limited size operation may require independent air support outside the availability and/or without the footprint of high-end air assets. For something based on a crop duster, it can carry a lot of kit and tech.
@@sir_vix Not to mention you can disassemble it quickly and ship it aboard a C-141, or even something smaller.
@@Amalgam67 who flies c-141's any more like nobody does
@torakazu yes for non-peer targets like in the GWOT the Super Tucano is almost as effective for a tiny fraction of the procurement and operation cost. And against a near-peer force it's just as much a liability as the A-10.
The A-10 got lucky, it's been serving for almost 30 years almost exclusively against forces that were already completely outdated by the standards of the end of the Cold War. Now Russia and China, two military exporting powers with the ability to field modern combat air defense (effectively or otherwise) are resurgent and trying to reestablish military supremacy. The A-10 cannot fight in those wars during the stages when the USAF needs to provide widespread CAS. Realigning the strategy to provide similar CAS vs lightly armed terrorist cells at a fraction of the cost is a smart move that lets the USAF redirect funding to modern replacements for its aging 4th generation air fleet.
@@thecactusman17 what CAS frame can preform in the environment that you described
Hello Simon, I won't dump on your quite interesting analysis, but there is still the fact that this machine, which, by all rights should be relegated to the status of museum ornament, is STILL in service, with many people advocating for the building of new ones to replace the old and exhausted ones, or for engineering a modern version of it, all this because there simply are no other aircraft that are suitable for low altitude, low speed, precision ground attack, and especially none that could handle half the punishment these babies are made to take. Now, I have no idea if that role is still really needed in an age when we can aim a missile within a couple meters of the intended target point from hundreds of kilometers away, but some still seem to think so.
The Air Force won’t build new ones, and have wanted to be rid of them for a while due to how vulnerable they are to any modern conventional military.
@@nukclear2741 yet the army wants them...weirf
@Terry Hampton sponsored by lockheed Martin
@@CODYoungGunna Not really, it's a ground support plane, of course the groundhogs love it when the flying pigs feel it's beneath them.
@@Svartalf14 i was being sarcastic lol
Normally I like his videos, but I was a USAF crew chief & worked on these planes. He implies that USAF brass had a conspiracy about the A10. Nothing could be further from the truth. USAF brass kept trying to can the plane. It was saved MULTIPLE times by the ARMY & MARINES who asked for it to stay. Yes other planes had good rates, but they didn't linger in the kill zones as A10 do, the tests for the plane weren't done with the ammo that it ended up using. I've SEEN the plane with that gun shoot through MODERN tank armor FROM THE FRONT MYSELF! I've also talked to chiefs who had combat A10 duty and been told 1st hand accounts of survivability. I think it's the difference between academic knowledge & practical.
Now that you've done an apples to oranges comparison of the A-10 to the F-35, do an apples-to-apples comparing the A-10 to its exact predecessor, the A-1 Skyraider.
Or any other plane made in the same decade.
Now for a internal combustion engine aircraft, made in 1944, that Douglas was a bad ass unit.
when you take 40 seconds out of an 18 minute video to make a stupid comment. also it isnt really apples to oranges the F35 is a multirole air craft. 😂
That’s irrelevant when people try to say we need to keep it. It’s clear it should be retired. It might have been the right airplane at a time, but that time has past.
@@TheMotorGuyDirect 👆🏽
Maybe I missed something, but I've always thought that the A-10 was intended to provide close air support against Infantry ground Soldiers and light armored vehicles, not tanks and bunkers. From everything I've read, it does this admirably. While it would be nice to have a fast-moving aircraft available, the A-10 can loiter in the area for extended periods, much better than helicopters.
CAS is the primary role, but the 30mm is mainly for engaging tanks (from the sides, back, and top. Nobody expected it to get through the glacis,) or at least that task is what inspired the use of a 30mm and to a lesser extent the whole project.
The A-10 was intended for combat on the European theater. It was to be used against massive Soviet bloc tank columns attacking through places like the Fulda Gap.
@@Dragondoc4 A task for which it was unsuited, as it's gun couldn't pierce the armor of anything more advanced than a T-55. By the time the Soviets were pushing T-55's through the Gap the A-10s would have all been dead already.
@@Dragondoc4 This is the correct answer!
Remember the pictures of those mile long Russian vehicle lines on the roads in Ukraine?
Imagine what just one A-10 could do strafing that.
Now imagine what a squad of A-10s would do!
Yeah! And that is why they built the damn thing.
@@Grubnar about Jack shit tbh.
Ukraine doesn’t want a-10s anyways, because they provide zero help in the air war.
It's probably overrated by enthusiasts, but I'd imagine it would still have a lot of value against legacy Soviet era equipment and tactics. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has given us a belated demo of what the Cold War turning (conventionally) hot would've looked like, using almost the exact armour of the era (with a light smattering of more modern and ultimately ineffectual equipment). The A-10 might not be instantly devastating against T-72s but they'd only make a small proportion of armour in the field. More modern and specialised weapons (e.g. missiles or newer planes) could focus on these while the A-10 could tackle the T-62s and supporting IFVs, BMPs, Grad launchers, supply trucks etc using far cheaper weaponry.
true, those supply columns wouldn't survive one run.
The widespread misconception here is that the "Tank Killer" name tag for the A-10 warthog has something to do with the guns that go BRRRT. The guns are for clearing paths and removing large swaths of enemy combatants from the gene pool. The A-10 kills tanks with it's primary weapon the maverick missiles. It does cleanup with the guns as a cheaper way than wasting it's more expensive and limited supply of missiles. This allows it to stay in the field of operation longer.
Assuming you have airsuperiority and russians as they tend to do, have AAA sistems switch off 😂
@@sariukx Well obviously. I mean, we ARE assuming our troops loaded their guns before trying to shoot right? Since A-10 generally fly close to the tree tops AAA systems generally would be ineffective. I would worry more about SAM.
A-10's are not the end-all weapon. No platform is except the one we never want to have to use. Any campaign has several components that must work together, and that includes air superiority. A good field commander would seldom put troops on the ground unless he had already achieved this. ( Something the Russians have apparently failed to learn ).
Russia fields over 3000 T-80's, but I doubt they have enough fuel to field even close to that many for an extended period of time. A-10's would give the supply columns a tough time, but Russia does have many SAM's in the column so there would certainly be lots of losses.
I was under the impression that the A10 served a roll closer to attach helicopters more so than planes with the f desalination.
Shhh we don't say that because it hurts his argument.
It was supposed to be a tank killer, not a helicopter killer. Turns out it was terrible at doing that with its 30mm gun.
I think I'm a bit late, but..:
No arguments made here about the recon capabilities. An f35 (or whatever) can launch from a much greter distance, sure. But who's gona get the intel, what to shoot and where? If ground troops can't paint the target, A10 can. F35 can't.
@@bsz6328 I mean the f35 can to be fair but it's not going to have a lot of staying power and really isn't utilized to its best potential doing so.
@@casematecardinal does it? Helis are better at surviving modern battlefields than this shitbox
However on the the ground, and you hear A10 CAS over comms, you suddenly get a warm and fuzzy feeling. Ask me how I know 😂
How do you know?
Weird way to admit you have PTSD
@@ev17dan Not trauma if its warm and fuzzy
Every time they try to get rid of it the army says 'show us something that can replace it' and then it stays. Not overrated. As a grunt on the ground doing the real work of war the A10 is incredibly valuable not only for what it does but for the morale and confidence of the people it supports.
Yep I've heard enough stories from Marines that were hitching a ride on our ship who talked about how the loitering A-10 flights, after lighting up the battlefield with their truck load of hardpoint ordinance took out insurgent hiding in buildings and light to medium targets with the GAU passes until they were relieved by the next flight of fully loaded A-10s, all within tens of meters from them. It was to the point where they didn't even realize the AHs were around for DCAS, the A-10s were just saving them left and right from being over run. The F/A-18 would hit targets and then it would be radio silence until the next group cam in, no loitering for immediate support, the F-35 would fall in the same camp.
it might be over hipped but when your the infantry man and your taking fire from the ridge then a A-10 strafes the ridge with that GAU-8 its your best friend.
not if your british or canadian
@@pickle2636 "why do I hear boss music?"-Bri'ish in Iraq
@@pickle2636 True,my best friend is now disabled thanks to the American pilot who shot up his A432 during the Gulf war,one minute a bodybuilding Fusilier,next minute a guy on wheels :(
Ok. But there are other weapons platforms that can fill that same role and perform that strafing/ordinance deployment
Here is what you need to know. A-10 is exceptional for what it brings to the Army and sometimes Marines and it's loss/damage rates are acceptable within that lens. Under the lens of the Airforce it is not a winner. A single A-10 has, more times than one can count, saved countless ground forces lives as, much like the JU-87 Stuka of EARLY WWII, the A-10 has a disproportionate phycological and morale impact on the battlefield. Those who have lived under the A-10's protection or have defecated themselves when they see one in the sky knowing they will be targeted know the A-10 is the undisputed champion of CAS. I would have taken 1 A-10 over 2 F-15/16 all day. The only thing I preferred over A-10 was AC-130 gunship in orbit.
I think a good comparison is made, whilst neglecting to recognize that A10 and F35 reflect different eras in modern warfare and in many ways the F35 has learnt from the very operational conflict experience (much of it on the back of the A10's workload) that highlight the A10's 'accepted' innate vulnerability. Its armour derives from its role: low & slow close air-support. It was designed to be down & dirty, mixing with the confusion on heavily defended ground, where attrition rates would always be high; a reality accepted at that time. Talking about 1m accuracy from 70km range is all very well, but at what cost per unit? 70s Cold War tactics always envisaged high attrition rates, even for more sophisticated western weapon systems. Such is the nature of developing warfare tactics. As a comparison, the zero loss rate of Harrier FRS aircraft in the Falklands conflict is rightly lauded. However, when quoting that click-bait statistic, few draw attention to the Harrier GRs lost over land in the same airspace and time frame
I'm convinced this guy loves to hear the sound of his own voice.
And I am yet to see anything where he, as he states, isn’t against the grain
particularly when he's trying to BRRRRT!, lol.....
Straight garbage video.. he misses the whole point of the A-10.. his accent almost sounds fake..
You're on his youtube channel...
@@jameslearing970 for the subject, not to hear him getting off on the sound of his own voice. Won’t be returning!
Ooooohhh, where to start?
In the first place, Simon gives you all sorts of facts about the tests of the aircraft when it first was tested, and tells you that it was poor at what it did. He leaves out why it was built in the first place, and why the program was cancelled when it was. In a word, both things happened for one reason: politics! The Air Force never wanted the plane in the first place: they're dedicated to flying high and dropping bombs on the other country's factories, destroying their infrastructure, and of course shooting down the enemy interceptors that try to stop them. The A-10 doesn't do that, so of course the Air Force didn't want it, and essentially tried their best to avoid ever buying any. They were thwarted by a particular Congressman who was the chairman of one of the appropriation committees. I can't remember the guy's name, but Hedrick Smith's book "The Power Game" explained the political side of this very well, back in the day. Essentially, if the Air Force wanted to buy any aircraft or have a budget one year, they had to agree to build something in this pacifist Congressman's district (you can guess his party if you wish). The plane was accordingly built, and the year he died and was replaced on the committee, the Air Force cancelled any further orders of the plane. Simon thinks they were protecting it during the Gulf War; in actuality the Air Force has been trying to mothball them for decades.
He's right that the F-35 is the Air Force's substitute, and that they're trying to convince people that it's better. One of the tricks here is something he's glossed over, not notice, or ignored. The Air Force designates an aircraft by a letter and then a number. C-17 designates a cargo plane, therefore, and B-52 a bomber. The A-10 is an attack plane, as was the A-1 before it. The F-35, you'll note, doesn't have an A designation. That's because it's a *fighter* rather than an attack plane. Now the Air Force would probably argue that a fighter *can* attack ground targets, and they'd be right. Fighter aircraft have been atttacking troops on the ground for more than a century. The trick is that when you have an aircraft and you try and have it be "multi-role" as the Air Force is currently doing, you're essentially trying to have your cake, eat it too, give it to friends, feed your cat with it, and use it for roofing material, all at once. It'll be sorta good at all of it...yeah. It's sort of like trying to say the El Camino can replace an old F-150. Sure, it's a pickup...but really?
Do I think the A-10 is the be-all-end-all of aircraft design? Of course not, it's a what, 40+ year-old design? The Air Force should be trying to build a replacement for it, something dedicated to flying air support for ground troops. They won't do that, of course, because while Tom Cruise has been in two sexy movies (admittedly flying Navy aircraft) no one has ever made a movie about sexy ground support aircraft.
As an aside, look back at the successful air campaigns of the past. All of the successful campaigns in WW2 involved ground support pretty much exclusively. You could argue that some of the early Luftwaffe terror attacks--Rotterdam springs to mind--did work, but do we really want to build a branch of our armed forces around the premise of killing civilians? *All* of the strategic campaigns that we conducted were failures at their intended objectives, with the possible exception of the Japanese in 1945, and we had to nuke them--twice--before they gave in. All of the really successful air campaigns of the war, from the Blitzkrieg victories 1939-41 through our dash across Frrance into Germany 1944-5, all of them were largely successful due to tactical air support. The only benefit the American strategic bombing campaign accrued was in shooting down large numbers of Luftwaffe interceptors, which had to be withdrawn from front-line combat (mostly in the Soviet Union) to try and stop our bombers. All of our wars since have been characterized by a propensity of the Air Force to try and strategically bomb the enemy into submission, and it's always failed, with Viet Nam heading the list of failures. So of course the Air Force wants that sexy fighter, the F-35.
As for the F-35 itself, I haven't watched the video, and won't because I don't want to waste my time. It's no doubt a very good fighter aircraft, and in the absence of any dedicated air support aircraft (which has been the Air Force's goal all along) it's probably not terrible at that. It's also deliberately hilariously expensive, because they sourced the parts for the damn thing from (so I read) 47 of the 50 states. That means cancelling the damn thing will be done over the dead bodies of 94 Senators, which of course was the point. The cost could have been substantially reduced if they'd sourced the parts from fewer places, but that would have meant that it would be easier to cancel. It was recently reported that they'd suspended delivery of the aircraft after it was discovered that one of those suppliers, American of course, was getting the alloys for part of the aircraft from...you guessed it, drum roll...China! This isn't the first time this has happened, and since the plane consists of parts that are made everywhere, it's doubtful it'll be the last.
One final note: Simon notes correctly that the F-35 is faster than the A-10. That can be good, and it can be bad. Fast, highflying aircraft can destroy targets they can see, tanks perhaps, but enemy soldiers? Pretty hard to see at those high speeds. Does that mean the A-10 is vulnerable? Jeez, it turns out it can be shot down, what a shock! An aircraft that can "loiter" over a battlefiend, contact friendly ground forces and be directed to targets, is very valuable. I'm sure the F-35 can do some of this, and the Air Force will no doubt insist it's better at it than the A-10...but of course no one wants to ask the Army. Their answer might be different.