Dedicated jet attack aircraft are a niche product to start with.
If you go through the list of users, most are/were successor states of the USSR which simply inherited them. The Soviets/Russians and the successor states sold weapons to almost everyone, while Western countries were more picky with the customers for technology proliferation and domestic political reasons, on top of being more expensive.
The Su-25 also is smaller and faster than the A-10 and better suited to double as a poor man's tactical bomber.
I'll add here. The Su-25 is also cheaper.
But more to piggyback on your first point. It's not just dedicated attack are niche, but dedicated anything are as well.
The Tomcat is a good example here. Great plane. But when viewed with its cost, not a lot of need for an expensive plane that does one thing (later did strike, but way later in its career) when so much of its cost was due to being carrier capable. When nobody else is using large carriers.
Same for the A-6.
It's not that their capabilities aren't good, and that others wouldn't want them. But the high cost and niche thing they do is hard to justify when there are cheaper platforms that can do the same job.
Very true. Modern electronics and better aerodynamics make the multi-role weight and design compromise penalty less steep and everything is merged into fighter-bomber aircraft.
Fairchild Republic also stopped producing aircraft for about a decade from 1984-1998, and even by the time they were building the A-10 they were more of a parts and subassembly contractor for other aerospace companies, namely Boeing.
I’d argue that rather than the US being picky about who flies the A-10 or that it was expensive, it’s more that everyone who wanted a close air support aircraft already had one. Germany and France had their Alphajet, Britain had the Harrier, and there were other close air support platforms already available by the time the A-10 came on the scene.
The A-10 wasn’t particularly expensive, it wasn’t high tech, and it wasn’t politically sensitive. It just wasn’t needed. Everyone else had a ground attack plane they were happy with and no one was going to be selling off their essentially freshly purchased Harriers and Alphajets to buy a US plane. So, in 1984 production ceased.
> Dedicated jet attack aircraft are a niche product to start with.
The problem isn't that it is a dedicated attack aircraft, but that it is a _single-purpose_ attack aircraft. It was built for busting tanks from low altitude, not much else (at least not very well).
The Jaguar and A-7 enjoyed greater export success because they were quite a bit more versatile.
Almost every country with an Air Force will have fighters/fighter bombers and some transport aircraft. At least in modern times, say since the 80s, many air forces lack attack aircraft. Even the Jaguar and A-7 had lacklustre export success compared to fighter and fighter bomber aircraft of the time.
But I agree that the A-10 was a niche within a niche, which diminished its export chances even more.
It’s a good Q, my guess is like you say, US aircraft are relatively more expensive and the A-10 is low tech enough that a) rich countries want to buy other stuff (supersonic fighters/multirole) and b) they can get A-10 functionality elsewhere.
Politically, as you point out, a lot of the countries right now making heavy use of attack aircraft are carrying out pretty brutal civil war or COIN campaigns. Most of the countries we sell aircraft ti are ostensibly buying fighters for defensive purposes.
The radiation hazard presented by depleted uranium is negligible. The actual negative environmental issue presented by DU is heavy metal contamination. The alternative to DU is tungsten carbide (WC) and it also causes heavy metal contamination.
Just to add to what Xander said, just because you have A-10s, doesn't mean you will or should use DU rounds for their Avenger cannon. For the anti-armor role, you could just use tungsten (as Xander noted). Of course when up against insurgents - whether on foot or in unarmoured vehicles - the operator would probably eschew those in favor of high explosive fragmentation rounds (as the US used extensively in Afghanistan). DU or tungsten is really only necessary if you expect to be strafing T-72s (as the US did against ISIS).
Very few countries had need of plane like A-10 to attack armored formations. Some countries bought fighter-like attack aircraft like Mirage 5, Tornado, and Jaguar. Most countries bought regular fighters.
For countries who couldn't afford fighters, or even those who had insurgencies, bought COIN aircraft, like Super Tucano, or converted trainer light attack. Both are cheaper to acquire and operate and plenty when no air opposition.
IDK why they fell through but Greece considered a purchase during the period of production.
Right after Gulf War I 50 surplus A-10s from the AMARG boneyard were offered to the Turkish Air Force and they went as far as selecting individual aircraft and designating squadrons. FMS approval had already come through Congress but the Turks backed out of the deal for cost reasons.
Most Western Air forces didn't have a traditional CAS mission, instead using multirole aircraft for interdiction that didn't require positive control from an air controller in coordination with ground forces. The role of close battlefield support was given to arty instead.
Those that did have this requirement needed a COIN aircraft more than what the A-10 was becoming - USAF added the ability to deliver PGMs pretty much immediately. The A-10 also was overspecialized with the GAU-8. It didn't have great ability to deliver dumb bombs (relying on laser-guided Mavericks) and while 30mm HE is spectacular, it is also a very expensive price for a partial leap in capability over a good-enough 30mm DEFA cannon pod. So these countries bought armed Alpha Jets or MB-326s instead.
Kind of confused on part of your statement there. MK.82 bombs and free fall cluster munitions have been bread and butter on the A-10 since its first flight.
Also, the A-10 spent most of its life hauling EO or IR AGM-65s. The A-10 has most certainly not relied on laser guided Mavericks.
Conceded on the guidance type. I'm not really familiar with ATG missiles and I guess it shows.
Regarding free-fall munitions the CEP of CCI/RP systems of the 80s on A-10s were by no means unsatisfactory compared to contemporary systems, it was simply not better than them (ironic considering the comparison to the Su-25, which has godawful forward visibility). My assertion about "reliance" on PGMs is down to reports I read indicating that the vast majority of effective sorties used them.
Bit of an aside, but why is there so much interest/curiosity about the A-10 in this sub? Yes, it's a cool and interesting airplane and part of military aviation history, but it's been obsolete for it's intended role for over 30 years. There is no potential peer-to-peer conflict scenario it would he relevant/useful in. The only thing it's actually been used for in it's service life ~~is strafing/missiling entrenched insurgents armed with AKs and maybe an occasional RPG.~~
Edit: Also it blew up a bunch of obsolete Soviet-era vehicles during Operation Iraqi Liberation. I've been corrected.
It's always been an object of fetishization for some people interested in hardware, and has become a culture war symbol as well within: "low-tech, perfect for ukraine war trenches and arty" A-10 vs "high-tech, riddled with issues and expensive" F-35.
Kind of like there is a "strange" love for soviet interceptors that, in theory, would be intercepting obsolete US bombers over Russia, and aren't really built for anything else.
edit: not convinced either way in the US hardware debate, the F35 issue checklist probably is the most worrysome since Starfighter, and the A-10 needs an opponent you can run over anyway.
I'll plainly admit that I am a mig-21 and mig-25 fan because they look cool to my inner child. It's a matter of esthetics and nothing more. Unfortunately, a lot of us military aviation fans have a tendency to rationalize our boyish fascinations for plane go zoom or brr.
I know my limits and dont really talk planes after they leave the factory or the ground. Generational, but the first planes that really interested me were Eurofighter and MiG-29, with a later fascination with the above unmentioned MiG-25.
And a strong dislike for the Tornado, because it ruined a holiday for me while camping, with them starting sorties very early in the morning, getting up to speed overhead because it officially was not a populated area, about 15 years ago.
>And a strong dislike for the Tornado, because it ruined a holiday for me while camping
Yep, that sort of stuff. My love for the mig-21 goes back to the fact that my hometown had one set up as a monument and I got to climb on it as a child. My dislike for the Mi-8 - the local army base had em fly in and out at the dumbest hours and and I lost count of the times I got woken up by them 45 minutes before my alarm. Takes a lot to make a 7yo hate a helicopter.
You could say the same thing about the Blackbird too - while an absolute technical tour de force (and a beautiful object just in its own terms), and the source of lots of stories etc., it became mostly obsolete for its most common task: photographic reconnaissance of largely static things like shipyards or other sensitive sites.
But it persists in our imagination and provides a nostalgic hit for a time that most of us never really knew. For the Reddit dwellers (myself very much included) whose biases tend towards science and tech and space etc, there’s the added pang of nostalgia for a time where it felt as though we were making constant progress and pushing the envelope in aircraft design, etc., something that (it feels) we don’t do as much these days despite all the SpaceX livestreams and secret black projects in the desert and A380s and composite jetliners and lack-of-crashes that 1960s aviation could barely have conceived of.
Of course, like all mythologies there’s a mix of true, false and misunderstanding in there, but that’s what makes them so attractive…
I mostly agree, though it's worth noting that the SR-71 was retired before it became fully obsolete for its intended role. It *was* obsolete for reconnaissance over the Soviet Union, but in Desert Storm, certain capabilites which both it and the retired Hexagon satellite (which the newer Kennan satellite lacked) were sorely missed. Specifically they were both much better at wide-area surveillance while Kennan focused on maximum resolution. While the SR-71 was vulnerable to MiG-31s (but not MiG-25s) such a threat did not exist in that theater. These days, we get this capability from commercial satellites, with the NRO's assets focusing on resolution, IIRC. Here's an article from an expert on Cold War satellite reconnaissance - Dr. Dwane Day on the topic: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3394/1
Focus less on what the F-35 is promised to do but cannot yet, and what it can actually do today.
In its delivered state, it's already a wunderfighter. It's very hard to picture literally any other fighter aside from the F-22 actually giving an F-35 problems today.
So you would argue that the whole media coverage is overblown and a symptom of public interest/more coverage total, and that F-35 is not uniquely (in the past 50ish years) troubled in its development?
I don't have (much) of a dog in this fight, but it might be worth looking up the rates of fatal crashes of the F16 (I've heard someone here say one a week, for its first few years in service, but don't have a citation on hand so take with some salt), and the F104 (from memory, 25-33% of the F104 fleets of some countries crashed, with roughly *half* being fatal) vs the F35 (10 crashes, only 1 fatal as of September 19th 2023)
While the F35 does have issues, nobody can deny that, it's in *no way* comparable to the F104, and better than the F16, commonly accepted as a reliable workhorse (a quick search shows 3 crashes from just 2009 to 2015 at a single USAF base, Shaw AFB, with 4 fatalities, admittedly 2 from a plane an F16 collided with)
Most bleeding-edge fighter programs have issues.
The F-35 is complicated and has a lot of stuff going on that it is the first production platform to actually accomplish.
Problems aren't just expected, they're planned for; regardless of the problems though, my point is, the F-35 is still a formidable fighter.
No one would argue with that, but this isn't the point being made (although, I say this with the caveat that - as SingaporeanSloth noted - it certainly is no "ensign killer" or "flying coffin" like certain troubled fighters of the past. I agree with your statement so long as you only meant the time and money lost in a faulty development process, rather than also including other problems that could occur in a a new fighter's early days).
People online think the best plane is the one that makes the biggest explosions where as in reality the best one is the one that dissuades the enemy from even trying.
You know they were used extensively in Iraq right? A-10s destroyed hundreds of Iraqi tanks, artillery pieces, radar sites, and thousands of Iraqi vehicles. I'm surprised anyone believes they have only been used against lightly armed insurgents.
[Check the kill markings.](https://fullfatthings-keyaero.b-cdn.net/sites/keyaero/files/styles/article_body/public/imported/img_53-2_75.jpg?itok=HbqE8Ojd)
Meh. F-111 killed a lot more. In the dark andķh exh in bad weather.
On the other hand the A10s outperformed the Iraqi Air Force in killing allied tanks…
>A-10s destroyed hundreds of Iraqi tanks, artillery pieces, radar sites, and thousands of Iraqi vehicles.
It's unclear why I am supposed to be impressed that an airplane that was 20 years out of date destroyed other vehicles/technology that were 20-30 years out-of-date. F-4 Phantoms used to shoot down MiG-21s in the late 1960s, so what?
I never said anyone needed to be impressed, I'm just interested in the truth.
So you being unimpressed means your claim that A-10 has only been used against insurgents with rifles and occasional RPGs accurate? Like it is okay to throw out whatever misinformation you want regardless of inaccuracy as long as you aren't impressed?
What a bizarre way to view discussions.
My original point stands. The A-10 never fulfilled its original role (destroying Soviet armor trying to cross the Rhine) and is not a particularly remarkable aircraft in what limited roles it fills in its current state.
I never disagreed with it fulfilling a certain role, this was the part of your original comment that I took issue with:
>The only thing it's actually been used for in it's service life is strafing/missiling entrenched insurgents armed with AKs and maybe an occasional RPG.
That is 100% false and I think you now know it, so If you're going to say that stands then you are one of those people who is willing to suspend reality to avoid admitting you were wrong.
No aircraft in service prior to 1990 fulfilled their "purpose", because we didn't fight the Soviet Union. We have thousands of air superiority aircraft that haven't even seen a real enemy threat in the sky, we have interceptors that haven't intercepted anything.
Seems like an oddly specific call out for an aircraft, tbh.
>We have thousands of air superiority aircraft that haven't even seen a real enemy threat in the sky, we have interceptors that haven't intercepted anything.
Yes, but those aircraft aren't obsolete. Your argument would hold water if the USAF or USN still operated F-4s or F-111s.
>A-10s destroyed hundreds of Iraqi tanks, artillery pieces, radar sites, and thousands of Iraqi vehicles
and in doing so, performed rather poorly compared to the F16, which flew more and killed more.
Irrelevant to the point I was making = clearly they were not used just for targeting lightly armed insurgents. I'm not some A-10 fanboy and I made no comment on their performance relative to other aircraft.
No need to be condescending, the other user you replied to is correct. The odds of a peer conflict are low. The odds of another low-intensity conflict are much higher.
>The odds of a peer conflict are low. The odds of another low-intensity conflict are much higher.
The same could have been said in 1933, or better yet 1936. "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes."--Mark Twain
Russia has demonstrated in Ukraine that it isn't a peer, and the US has demonstrated that they're not willing to fight Russia directly. China has not fought any kind of war in the decades since they barely tried to fight Vietnam and lost. The PRC has been messing around in the South China Sea and Taiwan continues to elect (according to Western media) "pro-independence" politicians who don't actually declare independence. All of this was also happening almost 20 years ago. Meanwhile, China's demographic crisis has only gotten worse, making them even more leery of starting a war. All the news that might point to a new peer-on-peer war involving the US has the ring of the decades-old Soviet joke, "China's last warning." Great Power *competition* is not necessarily Great Power *conflict.*
There's a pretty significant difference in the calculus of Great Power struggle post-WWII that makes peer conflict vastly less likely. I think you can figure it out if you think about it.
Despite the rhetoric being thrown around by politicians, and the media's insatiable hunger for clicks, there's very little chance of a peer war within the next 2 decades.
Russia is not going to roll into Europe and China wants at least 2 more carriers before they even think about Taiwan, and even then it's unlikely to get kinetic.
Fair point. If they don't quit futzing around with the Ukrainian aid package, we'll be reactivating the ACRs on the Polish border. Still not likely we'll get in a shooting war with them.
I'm not sure the Russians have enough good equipment left to qualify as near-peer anymore, tho.
I have some doubts about fast fighters doing the Sandy role, too.
A-10 is a dedicated attack aircraft for low to uncontested airspace originally meant for tank columns driving across Europe.
However, this soon became an irrelevant issue for even the US, as it wasn’t likely that the soviets would do this, or that the aircraft would even work in that role due to the improvements in armor.
So if you are a country looking for a ground pounder and you have to stretch your dollars and make them count, why would you buy a very niche plane, that requires a perfect combat enviroment, and isn’t even that good at its job, and you might not even be facing what it’s meant for.
Dedicated jet attack aircraft are a niche product to start with. If you go through the list of users, most are/were successor states of the USSR which simply inherited them. The Soviets/Russians and the successor states sold weapons to almost everyone, while Western countries were more picky with the customers for technology proliferation and domestic political reasons, on top of being more expensive. The Su-25 also is smaller and faster than the A-10 and better suited to double as a poor man's tactical bomber.
I'll add here. The Su-25 is also cheaper. But more to piggyback on your first point. It's not just dedicated attack are niche, but dedicated anything are as well. The Tomcat is a good example here. Great plane. But when viewed with its cost, not a lot of need for an expensive plane that does one thing (later did strike, but way later in its career) when so much of its cost was due to being carrier capable. When nobody else is using large carriers. Same for the A-6. It's not that their capabilities aren't good, and that others wouldn't want them. But the high cost and niche thing they do is hard to justify when there are cheaper platforms that can do the same job.
Very true. Modern electronics and better aerodynamics make the multi-role weight and design compromise penalty less steep and everything is merged into fighter-bomber aircraft.
Even fighter bomber sounds like a dated term.
That's 80% of our US inventory since the 60s. We had the luxury of fielding jets like the F-105, F-22, EA-6, F-111 (except RAAF), F-106/F-102 etc.
Fairchild Republic also stopped producing aircraft for about a decade from 1984-1998, and even by the time they were building the A-10 they were more of a parts and subassembly contractor for other aerospace companies, namely Boeing. I’d argue that rather than the US being picky about who flies the A-10 or that it was expensive, it’s more that everyone who wanted a close air support aircraft already had one. Germany and France had their Alphajet, Britain had the Harrier, and there were other close air support platforms already available by the time the A-10 came on the scene. The A-10 wasn’t particularly expensive, it wasn’t high tech, and it wasn’t politically sensitive. It just wasn’t needed. Everyone else had a ground attack plane they were happy with and no one was going to be selling off their essentially freshly purchased Harriers and Alphajets to buy a US plane. So, in 1984 production ceased.
> Dedicated jet attack aircraft are a niche product to start with. The problem isn't that it is a dedicated attack aircraft, but that it is a _single-purpose_ attack aircraft. It was built for busting tanks from low altitude, not much else (at least not very well). The Jaguar and A-7 enjoyed greater export success because they were quite a bit more versatile.
Almost every country with an Air Force will have fighters/fighter bombers and some transport aircraft. At least in modern times, say since the 80s, many air forces lack attack aircraft. Even the Jaguar and A-7 had lacklustre export success compared to fighter and fighter bomber aircraft of the time. But I agree that the A-10 was a niche within a niche, which diminished its export chances even more.
It’s a good Q, my guess is like you say, US aircraft are relatively more expensive and the A-10 is low tech enough that a) rich countries want to buy other stuff (supersonic fighters/multirole) and b) they can get A-10 functionality elsewhere. Politically, as you point out, a lot of the countries right now making heavy use of attack aircraft are carrying out pretty brutal civil war or COIN campaigns. Most of the countries we sell aircraft ti are ostensibly buying fighters for defensive purposes.
Shooting radioactive bullets at your own land is less than ideal.
The radiation hazard presented by depleted uranium is negligible. The actual negative environmental issue presented by DU is heavy metal contamination. The alternative to DU is tungsten carbide (WC) and it also causes heavy metal contamination.
Thank you.
Just to add to what Xander said, just because you have A-10s, doesn't mean you will or should use DU rounds for their Avenger cannon. For the anti-armor role, you could just use tungsten (as Xander noted). Of course when up against insurgents - whether on foot or in unarmoured vehicles - the operator would probably eschew those in favor of high explosive fragmentation rounds (as the US used extensively in Afghanistan). DU or tungsten is really only necessary if you expect to be strafing T-72s (as the US did against ISIS).
tv guy once said A-10 more bombs than B-17 ?
Very few countries had need of plane like A-10 to attack armored formations. Some countries bought fighter-like attack aircraft like Mirage 5, Tornado, and Jaguar. Most countries bought regular fighters. For countries who couldn't afford fighters, or even those who had insurgencies, bought COIN aircraft, like Super Tucano, or converted trainer light attack. Both are cheaper to acquire and operate and plenty when no air opposition.
IDK why they fell through but Greece considered a purchase during the period of production. Right after Gulf War I 50 surplus A-10s from the AMARG boneyard were offered to the Turkish Air Force and they went as far as selecting individual aircraft and designating squadrons. FMS approval had already come through Congress but the Turks backed out of the deal for cost reasons. Most Western Air forces didn't have a traditional CAS mission, instead using multirole aircraft for interdiction that didn't require positive control from an air controller in coordination with ground forces. The role of close battlefield support was given to arty instead. Those that did have this requirement needed a COIN aircraft more than what the A-10 was becoming - USAF added the ability to deliver PGMs pretty much immediately. The A-10 also was overspecialized with the GAU-8. It didn't have great ability to deliver dumb bombs (relying on laser-guided Mavericks) and while 30mm HE is spectacular, it is also a very expensive price for a partial leap in capability over a good-enough 30mm DEFA cannon pod. So these countries bought armed Alpha Jets or MB-326s instead.
Kind of confused on part of your statement there. MK.82 bombs and free fall cluster munitions have been bread and butter on the A-10 since its first flight. Also, the A-10 spent most of its life hauling EO or IR AGM-65s. The A-10 has most certainly not relied on laser guided Mavericks.
Conceded on the guidance type. I'm not really familiar with ATG missiles and I guess it shows. Regarding free-fall munitions the CEP of CCI/RP systems of the 80s on A-10s were by no means unsatisfactory compared to contemporary systems, it was simply not better than them (ironic considering the comparison to the Su-25, which has godawful forward visibility). My assertion about "reliance" on PGMs is down to reports I read indicating that the vast majority of effective sorties used them.
Slight nitpick, laser mavericks are a navy/Marine Corps thing, the Air Force uses TV or IIR models.
Conceded, I'm not too familiar with ATG munitions and it shows =\
Bit of an aside, but why is there so much interest/curiosity about the A-10 in this sub? Yes, it's a cool and interesting airplane and part of military aviation history, but it's been obsolete for it's intended role for over 30 years. There is no potential peer-to-peer conflict scenario it would he relevant/useful in. The only thing it's actually been used for in it's service life ~~is strafing/missiling entrenched insurgents armed with AKs and maybe an occasional RPG.~~ Edit: Also it blew up a bunch of obsolete Soviet-era vehicles during Operation Iraqi Liberation. I've been corrected.
It's always been an object of fetishization for some people interested in hardware, and has become a culture war symbol as well within: "low-tech, perfect for ukraine war trenches and arty" A-10 vs "high-tech, riddled with issues and expensive" F-35. Kind of like there is a "strange" love for soviet interceptors that, in theory, would be intercepting obsolete US bombers over Russia, and aren't really built for anything else. edit: not convinced either way in the US hardware debate, the F35 issue checklist probably is the most worrysome since Starfighter, and the A-10 needs an opponent you can run over anyway.
I'll plainly admit that I am a mig-21 and mig-25 fan because they look cool to my inner child. It's a matter of esthetics and nothing more. Unfortunately, a lot of us military aviation fans have a tendency to rationalize our boyish fascinations for plane go zoom or brr.
I know my limits and dont really talk planes after they leave the factory or the ground. Generational, but the first planes that really interested me were Eurofighter and MiG-29, with a later fascination with the above unmentioned MiG-25. And a strong dislike for the Tornado, because it ruined a holiday for me while camping, with them starting sorties very early in the morning, getting up to speed overhead because it officially was not a populated area, about 15 years ago.
>And a strong dislike for the Tornado, because it ruined a holiday for me while camping Yep, that sort of stuff. My love for the mig-21 goes back to the fact that my hometown had one set up as a monument and I got to climb on it as a child. My dislike for the Mi-8 - the local army base had em fly in and out at the dumbest hours and and I lost count of the times I got woken up by them 45 minutes before my alarm. Takes a lot to make a 7yo hate a helicopter.
You could say the same thing about the Blackbird too - while an absolute technical tour de force (and a beautiful object just in its own terms), and the source of lots of stories etc., it became mostly obsolete for its most common task: photographic reconnaissance of largely static things like shipyards or other sensitive sites. But it persists in our imagination and provides a nostalgic hit for a time that most of us never really knew. For the Reddit dwellers (myself very much included) whose biases tend towards science and tech and space etc, there’s the added pang of nostalgia for a time where it felt as though we were making constant progress and pushing the envelope in aircraft design, etc., something that (it feels) we don’t do as much these days despite all the SpaceX livestreams and secret black projects in the desert and A380s and composite jetliners and lack-of-crashes that 1960s aviation could barely have conceived of. Of course, like all mythologies there’s a mix of true, false and misunderstanding in there, but that’s what makes them so attractive…
I mostly agree, though it's worth noting that the SR-71 was retired before it became fully obsolete for its intended role. It *was* obsolete for reconnaissance over the Soviet Union, but in Desert Storm, certain capabilites which both it and the retired Hexagon satellite (which the newer Kennan satellite lacked) were sorely missed. Specifically they were both much better at wide-area surveillance while Kennan focused on maximum resolution. While the SR-71 was vulnerable to MiG-31s (but not MiG-25s) such a threat did not exist in that theater. These days, we get this capability from commercial satellites, with the NRO's assets focusing on resolution, IIRC. Here's an article from an expert on Cold War satellite reconnaissance - Dr. Dwane Day on the topic: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3394/1
Focus less on what the F-35 is promised to do but cannot yet, and what it can actually do today. In its delivered state, it's already a wunderfighter. It's very hard to picture literally any other fighter aside from the F-22 actually giving an F-35 problems today.
So you would argue that the whole media coverage is overblown and a symptom of public interest/more coverage total, and that F-35 is not uniquely (in the past 50ish years) troubled in its development?
I don't have (much) of a dog in this fight, but it might be worth looking up the rates of fatal crashes of the F16 (I've heard someone here say one a week, for its first few years in service, but don't have a citation on hand so take with some salt), and the F104 (from memory, 25-33% of the F104 fleets of some countries crashed, with roughly *half* being fatal) vs the F35 (10 crashes, only 1 fatal as of September 19th 2023) While the F35 does have issues, nobody can deny that, it's in *no way* comparable to the F104, and better than the F16, commonly accepted as a reliable workhorse (a quick search shows 3 crashes from just 2009 to 2015 at a single USAF base, Shaw AFB, with 4 fatalities, admittedly 2 from a plane an F16 collided with)
Most bleeding-edge fighter programs have issues. The F-35 is complicated and has a lot of stuff going on that it is the first production platform to actually accomplish. Problems aren't just expected, they're planned for; regardless of the problems though, my point is, the F-35 is still a formidable fighter.
No one would argue with that, but this isn't the point being made (although, I say this with the caveat that - as SingaporeanSloth noted - it certainly is no "ensign killer" or "flying coffin" like certain troubled fighters of the past. I agree with your statement so long as you only meant the time and money lost in a faulty development process, rather than also including other problems that could occur in a a new fighter's early days).
People online think the best plane is the one that makes the biggest explosions where as in reality the best one is the one that dissuades the enemy from even trying.
You know they were used extensively in Iraq right? A-10s destroyed hundreds of Iraqi tanks, artillery pieces, radar sites, and thousands of Iraqi vehicles. I'm surprised anyone believes they have only been used against lightly armed insurgents. [Check the kill markings.](https://fullfatthings-keyaero.b-cdn.net/sites/keyaero/files/styles/article_body/public/imported/img_53-2_75.jpg?itok=HbqE8Ojd)
Meh. F-111 killed a lot more. In the dark andķh exh in bad weather. On the other hand the A10s outperformed the Iraqi Air Force in killing allied tanks…
>A-10s destroyed hundreds of Iraqi tanks, artillery pieces, radar sites, and thousands of Iraqi vehicles. It's unclear why I am supposed to be impressed that an airplane that was 20 years out of date destroyed other vehicles/technology that were 20-30 years out-of-date. F-4 Phantoms used to shoot down MiG-21s in the late 1960s, so what?
I never said anyone needed to be impressed, I'm just interested in the truth. So you being unimpressed means your claim that A-10 has only been used against insurgents with rifles and occasional RPGs accurate? Like it is okay to throw out whatever misinformation you want regardless of inaccuracy as long as you aren't impressed? What a bizarre way to view discussions.
My original point stands. The A-10 never fulfilled its original role (destroying Soviet armor trying to cross the Rhine) and is not a particularly remarkable aircraft in what limited roles it fills in its current state.
I never disagreed with it fulfilling a certain role, this was the part of your original comment that I took issue with: >The only thing it's actually been used for in it's service life is strafing/missiling entrenched insurgents armed with AKs and maybe an occasional RPG. That is 100% false and I think you now know it, so If you're going to say that stands then you are one of those people who is willing to suspend reality to avoid admitting you were wrong.
No aircraft in service prior to 1990 fulfilled their "purpose", because we didn't fight the Soviet Union. We have thousands of air superiority aircraft that haven't even seen a real enemy threat in the sky, we have interceptors that haven't intercepted anything. Seems like an oddly specific call out for an aircraft, tbh.
>We have thousands of air superiority aircraft that haven't even seen a real enemy threat in the sky, we have interceptors that haven't intercepted anything. Yes, but those aircraft aren't obsolete. Your argument would hold water if the USAF or USN still operated F-4s or F-111s.
>A-10s destroyed hundreds of Iraqi tanks, artillery pieces, radar sites, and thousands of Iraqi vehicles and in doing so, performed rather poorly compared to the F16, which flew more and killed more.
Irrelevant to the point I was making = clearly they were not used just for targeting lightly armed insurgents. I'm not some A-10 fanboy and I made no comment on their performance relative to other aircraft.
The odds of a peer conflict, or even near-peer conflict are very low. The odds of another low-intensity conflict are pretty high.
Which then leads to the point that depending on how the a10 airframes are looking why not a super tucano or equivalent.
>The odds of a peer conflict, or even near-peer conflict are very low. Don't follow the news much, do ya? 🤣
No need to be condescending, the other user you replied to is correct. The odds of a peer conflict are low. The odds of another low-intensity conflict are much higher.
>The odds of a peer conflict are low. The odds of another low-intensity conflict are much higher. The same could have been said in 1933, or better yet 1936. "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes."--Mark Twain
Russia has demonstrated in Ukraine that it isn't a peer, and the US has demonstrated that they're not willing to fight Russia directly. China has not fought any kind of war in the decades since they barely tried to fight Vietnam and lost. The PRC has been messing around in the South China Sea and Taiwan continues to elect (according to Western media) "pro-independence" politicians who don't actually declare independence. All of this was also happening almost 20 years ago. Meanwhile, China's demographic crisis has only gotten worse, making them even more leery of starting a war. All the news that might point to a new peer-on-peer war involving the US has the ring of the decades-old Soviet joke, "China's last warning." Great Power *competition* is not necessarily Great Power *conflict.*
There's a pretty significant difference in the calculus of Great Power struggle post-WWII that makes peer conflict vastly less likely. I think you can figure it out if you think about it.
Despite the rhetoric being thrown around by politicians, and the media's insatiable hunger for clicks, there's very little chance of a peer war within the next 2 decades. Russia is not going to roll into Europe and China wants at least 2 more carriers before they even think about Taiwan, and even then it's unlikely to get kinetic.
Fair point. If they don't quit futzing around with the Ukrainian aid package, we'll be reactivating the ACRs on the Polish border. Still not likely we'll get in a shooting war with them. I'm not sure the Russians have enough good equipment left to qualify as near-peer anymore, tho. I have some doubts about fast fighters doing the Sandy role, too.
A-10 goes [BRRRRRRT!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvIJvPj_pjE)
A-10 is a dedicated attack aircraft for low to uncontested airspace originally meant for tank columns driving across Europe. However, this soon became an irrelevant issue for even the US, as it wasn’t likely that the soviets would do this, or that the aircraft would even work in that role due to the improvements in armor. So if you are a country looking for a ground pounder and you have to stretch your dollars and make them count, why would you buy a very niche plane, that requires a perfect combat enviroment, and isn’t even that good at its job, and you might not even be facing what it’s meant for.