A-X all over again - USAF pushes for A-10 replacement
 

Air Force Moving Forward With A-10 Replacement Option

WASHINGTON — The Air Force is moving forward with a key step in developing a dedicated close-air support plane to replace the A-10 Warthog, a top general said Thursday.

“My requirements guys are in the process of building a draft requirements document for a follow-on CAS airplane,” Lt. Gen. Mike Holmes, the deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements, said. “It’s interesting work that at some point we’ll be able to talk with you a little bit more.”

Defining the requirement is the first concrete step toward developing potentially developing a replacement A-10 for the close-air support mission, often dubbed A-X. The Air Force has been studying the idea of a procuring single-role A-X for at least a year now, hosting a joint-service summit in March, 2015, to work out options for the close-air support, or CAS, mission.

Why not just build more A10s or is that too simplistic?

Not enough bucks for the contractors or jobs for senior officers. A full on development cycle provides plenty of both. The cynic in me does wonder if the new A-X project is a way of calming waters as the A10 is divested and then, as if by magic, the money runs out, the A-X is scrapped and we're back to F-35s doing CAS.......

Evalu8ter...

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-RP

Well, the USAF has form on this. C-27J anyone? How could anyone trust their word after that?

The original A-X that spawned the A-10 was also a spoiler for the AH-56 Cheyanne. Unfortunately for the USAF, by the time the AH-56 was cancelled, the A-X had too much momentum to kill. There's a good paper on that, somewhere.

"the USAF had become increasingly vocal in its opposition to the Army's acquisition of an aircraft as capable as the Cheyenne, and continued to push for the cancellation of the AH-56 project."

Err, surely the A-10 is the best CAS aircraft ever built! OK, some new avionics might help. Link 16 and a Lightnng III Pod would be nice! Integration of new ECW and Brite Cloud etc would complete the upgrade. What else would you need? So just do a new upgrade rebuild and job done.

Brimstone?

I wonder whether it would need the full spec big gun?

Dave, more bang and that bang is awesome.

As for best ever built, there certainly seems a case for 'get the design right keep it going"

C47, C130, P3, B52, KC135, F4, Harriet, Canberra, F16

Ultimately of course technology will make them obsolete and replaceable but if they continue to be effective and serviceable . . . .

Litening 5. A couple of Brimstone three-packs. A gun with potential for upgrade to guided rounds. Important bits protected by Dyneema plastic armor. DIRCM that can handle future imaging IR MANPADS. Persistence, MUM-T and easy support in the field.

Speed, ability to survive in contested airspace, anything else...?

Alfred,
All fair points for the type of the war the USAF wants to fight, but utterly unlike the wars we've spent the last 20 years fighting. For near peer wars surely providing a favourable air situation for the likes of the A10 to operate in is why we've spunked Billions on Gen 4.5 and Gen 5 fighters? If you're arguing that they can't then why have we bothered?

For some roles speed is a disadvantage - payload/loiter and the ability to take lumps and stay in the fight is more important.

Apart from the fact there were a godly proportion of troops in contact that weren't supported by the A-10 because it was too far away and couldn't make it on time.

The A-10 worked in small, well defined areas; in Afghanistan, despite the "brrrrt" love, it wasn't the best or most useful CAS aircraft. By most accounts, the B-1 was much much better.

ATG,
Swings and roundabouts. Bone and A10 both CAS platforms of choice in daylight - AC130 for pre-planned stuff at night. On the missions I planned and flew those were always the top 3 asks; we'd only take FJ if we had a small Vul because timing the mission around them scampering to the tanker was always an issue. Note that all 3 types above have endurance to burn offering persistence. Sometimes getting there at the speed of heat was all important to achieve a BoT at a critical time to support a TIC, but more often it was hanging around as the ground situation developed that was more important - especially for the pre-planned stuff I did. The problem is F-35 will not have endurance and the Bone is likely to be replaced by the mini-B2 and I can't see that being used for CAS in quite the same way. Maybe the answer is to write a proper requirements set that trades a bit of payload and endurance for a bit more speed?

The bigger question is whether or not it will have a pilot.

I think the answer might not be "A-10, brrrt", but that isn't the cool or popular (politically correct) answer....

ATG,
Maybe so - but it's also not "F-35 can't go there it's too vulnerable to a golden BB" or "Sorry - Bingo fuel and/or Winchester".

I hope the USAF will set out a proper Requirements process and see it through - not just use it as a fig leaf to divest a dedicated and combat proven CAS aircraft....

Here's the thing, sometimes popular is correct, what's the chances of really getting a Spectre? Honestly? Outside of "special" tasking....next to sweet FA, so it's down to luck of the stack then, and guess what, the JTAC will take whatever is offered when the **** is going down and the patrol commander want effect 20 minutes ago. No mention of AH, what a surprise. Bone never came close to the top of any wish list I was involved in, why? I refer you back to the JTAC.
I love the effect from the A10, I couldn't care less about the airframe, but it delivered, like it or not, it DELIVERED! The guys and gals that flew it were specialists in that field. Maybe we should ask them what the next ugly, mud moving POS that worked should be.....they may have a clue or two.
Clearly Apache is the greatest air intercepting CAS space craft ever!

Re Brrt....

"Brrt" was a result of the need to Kill an armored vehicle with one burst, without a ranging sensor. Hence a lot of rounds were sent downrange into a tight pattern (function of rate) that hopefully centered on the target. But add to this a lot of bursts/mission (there was a lot of armor expected through the Fulda Gap) and consider that every shot required all 1350 rounds in the system to move, and the whole shooting match (so to speak) started to get heavy.

I suspect today that you'd use l@ser, radar (possibly lidar), and possibly guided rounds to increase P-Hit, and go for a shorter burst and more modest rate.

If the replacement for the A-10 is a rebuilt A-10, then the new version will need new engines as well as avionics. The TF-34 is a 50+ year old design that is getting hard to support. There are a lot of modern engines in the TF-34/10,000 lb thrust class, including the latest version of the CF-34 which was derived from the TF-34. But methinks that the requirements folks will come up with requirements that the A-10 simply cannot meet. And maybe there's a new weapon in the works (a directed energy weapon maybe?) around which the new aircraft can be designed, much as the A-10 was designed around the GAU-8.


On a side note, with the current re-wing program already in place, the A-10 fleet will be flyable till 2028. That's "only" 12 years away. In today's environment, 12 years will be barely enough to develop, test, and field a replacement aircraft. Doing requirements definition today may already be too late.

ATG - using a part of the Deterent Triad to support guys in the front-line against an AK-47 armed guerilla is ridiculous

An A-10 replacement needs to be exactly that - something relatively simple that we can buy in large numbers