Air Force Follows Navy Playbook for A-10

You probably know that the Air Force has attempted to kill the A-10 Warthog, the best close air support aircraft ever built, for many years now but has been repeatedly thwarted by Congress.
 
The Navy faced a similar situation with the Ticonderoga class cruisers.  They attempted to early retire them, multiple times, only to be thwarted by Congress.  The Navy’s solution was to agree to a blatantly bogus “modernization” program which, in reality, was a way to remove funding for the cruisers while they literally rotted pier side until the Navy could claim that they could no longer be economically upgraded.
 
Like the Navy, the Air Force has, yet again, been prevented by Congress from retiring the A-10 but, ignoring the intent of Congress, has settled on the tactic of simply no longer funding the operation, maintenance, and support of the A-10.  As Redstate website reports,
 

… by the end of this year, the A-10 will be without depot support, without a training pipeline, without weapons-school instruction, and without operational-test capacity.[1]

With no funding for support, the aircraft  will rapidly fall into unflyable status.  The Air Force will have, technically, kept the A-10 but will have achieved practical retirement.
 
Congress should fire every Air Force general and withhold all Air Force funding until A-10 support is restored.
 
The military seems to feel it is above the will of Congress.  It is past time for Congress to re-exert its authority.
 
 
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[1]Redstate website, “Act Now: Fund A-10 Warthog or Lose Combat Power Forever”,  Ward Clark, 24-Jun-2026,
https://redstate.com/wardclark/2026/06/24/act-now-fund-a-10-warthog-or-lose-combat-power-forever-n2203670

Rolling In Hot

Breaking Defense website has a report on a Close Air Support (CAS) summit sponsored by the Air Force (1).  There were a few nuggets of information that reveal just how little interest the AF has in CAS.

"Carlisle [ed. Gen. Hawk Carlisle, head of Air Force Air Combat Command] told us “gaps” were spotted in training and to, some degree, in future equipment.

The biggest gap in Close Air Support right now, Carlisle told reporters, is the training CAS pilots currently have to operate in what the Air Force nicely calls “contested environments” — places where the enemy has a decent chance of shooting you down."

"Pilots have operated in uncontested environments over the last 13 years and haven’t had time to train for high-end operations, the general said."

The biggest gap in AF CAS is training for contested environments!?  Isn’t that kind of what CAS is all about – providing direct air support to ground forces at the front edge of the battlefield in what is, almost by definition, a contested environment?  That the AF is not providing that training pretty well indicates their level of commitment, or lack thereof, to CAS.  However, beating up on the AF about their lack of commitment to CAS, which has been a poorly kept secret for many years, is not the point of this post.  We’ll move on.

"... the three versions of the F-35 will, Carlisle noted, be the main CAS weapons operating in hot environments."

The F-35 is not even remotely an optimal platform for CAS.  That’s not even a debatable point and, again, that’s not the point of this post. 

Instead, for the sake of discussion, let’s accept the use of the F-35 in the CAS role.  What I want to look at is the F-35’s ability to provide gun support in CAS. 

What we currently have, in the A-10, is the GAU-8 30 mm Avenger rotary gun which carries and fires up to 1350 rounds of depleted uranium armor piercing shells at a rate of 3900 rounds per minute.  The gun is installed at a slight downward angle to assist in strafing runs.  Contrast that to the F-35’s gun system, the 25 mm, four barrel, 3300 round per minute, rotary GAU-22/A.

The A-10 projectiles weigh 13.3-14.0 oz, depending on type.  The F-35 projectiles weigh 6.5-7.5 oz.

The A-10 carries up to 1350 rounds compared to the F-35A which carries 182 rounds.  The F-35B/C do not have an internal gun.  They carry the gun in an external pod with a capacity of 220 rounds.  Of course, the external pod impacts the aircraft’s stealth.

So, we see that the A-10 has a larger gun with around 5 times the ammo capacity, firing depleted uranium shells that are twice the weight, from a gun that is mounted and optimized for ground attack, compared to the F-35 whose gun is, literally, an afterthought add-on for the Marines and Navy.  Anyone claiming that the F-35 is capable of performing the CAS role is playing loose with the facts.  The F-35 is capable of performing the gun support portion of the CAS role only in the sense that it has a gun that can be pointed at the ground.  In no other way is it capable or effective.  A man shooting a handgun from a glider can be claimed to perform CAS, too, I guess.

Of course, there is much, much more to CAS than just the ability to fire a gun at the ground.  There is also much more to it than just the characteristics of the CAS platform.  Training is paramount.  The understanding of ground force strategy and tactics, the understanding of where, when, and how to best support ground forces, the ability to effectively interface with ground controllers, knowledge of the local terrain, understanding of enemy forces and their movement, and so on are as important or more so than the weapon characteristics of a given platform.  There are also many more CAS weapons than just a gun and we won’t examine those today.

Today’s post simply points out the inadequacy of the F-35 gun system when used for CAS when compared to the A-10.  Combine that with the AF’s acknowledged lack of training and it’s obvious that anyone claiming the F-35 will adequately fill the CAS role is kidding themselves and their audience.

 (1) Breaking Defense, "Close Air Support Summit Sparks Nod To Textron’s Scorpion", Colin Clark,  March 09, 2015,

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/03/close-air-support-summit-sparks-nod-to-textrons-scorpion/

A-10 Scrapping Justification Exposed

This is a Navy blog but I just can’t pass on the following Air Force item especially since it indirectly impacts Marine and Navy CAS.

DoD Buzz website quotes Air Force Gen. Mark Welsh as saying that scrapping the A-10 will save $4.2B over five years (1).  This apparently is the Air Force's justification for letting the A-10 go.  Of course, the real justification is preserving the Air Force’s buy of F-35’s.  Be that as it may …

Let’s check that cost savings number out, shall we?  Since the purpose behind letting the A-10 go is to preserve the F-35 purchase, let’s do the math and see how many additional F-35’s we can purchase (or save from cuts) for $4.2B.

At the moment, a reasonable cost for an F-35A is $150M.  I know there are some of you who believe that the F-35 will eventually cost $9.95 each once we reach super-serial production buoyed by an upswell of foreign buyers.  Well, a check of the actual budget requests shows a much higher cost.  Will the cost come down someday?  Perhaps, but we’ll deal in the here and now.

So,    $4.2B / $150M = 28

There you have it.  Scrapping 300 A-10’s will buy (or save from cuts) 28 F-35’s.

That’s probably worth repeating.  Scrapping 300 A-10’s will gain us 28 F-35’s.

Does that seem like a worthwhile trade?

And I thought the Navy was screwed up!  I’m going to have to write the Navy a letter of apology.

Note:  For you absolute diehard JSF fanboys, if you won’t accept real costs, go ahead and make up any number you want and run the arithmetic.  It doesn’t change the conclusion.

(1) http://www.dodbuzz.com/2014/04/23/welsh-defends-plan-to-scrap-a-10-as-logical/

Marine CAS

The Marines are counting on the F-35B as their new close air support (CAS) aircraft.  Heck, let’s be honest, they’ve bet all-in and by all indications this is the hill they’re willing to die on to get it.  OK, that’s fair.  The Marines need CAS they can count on, in their view, as opposed to CAS that’s only available when the Navy or Air Force has the time or feels like it.  I get that.  But, is the F-35B really a great CAS platform?  It’s a single engine, unarmored airframe that has a very limited weapons load (2-1000 lab JDAM) in stealth mode (internal weapons only) and a modest weapons load (15,000 lb according to the LM website spec list)  with external hardpoints.  As best I can determine, the aircraft has only 4 external hardpoints plus 2 internal for a total of 6 hardpoints.  While the weapons weight capacity is adequate the number of hardpoints is quite limited and restricts the aircraft’s flexibility and number of combat drops per sortie.  Note that the external weapons load is a theoretical maximum and would be difficult to achieve in practice if the aircraft were used in its short take off and vertical landing modes.  Also, a full weapons load would severely reduce the combat radius.

The Marines want to purchase 350 F-35Bs to replace their current Hornets and Harriers.

Wiki reports that the Air Force looked at the F-35B to replace the A-10 but opted not to due to the F-35’s inability to generate enough sorties.  Wiki further reports that the Marines plan to operate the F-35B from “unimproved surfaces at austere bases”.  However, they go on to note that this will require “special, high-temperature concrete designed to handle the [exhaust] heat”.  It’s not really an unimproved surface then, is it?  The exhaust heat issue is severe and has even required the America class to have special, more heat-resistant decks installed.  F-35B shipboard testing has cause heat damage to the test ship’s deck.  I guess this invalidates the popular notion of operating the F-35B from remote roads, fields, or “unimproved” airstrips – they’ll all melt or catch fire.



Marine CAS?



As noted, as a CAS platform, the F-35B has limited weapons flexibility and capacity.  Further, the plane has only one engine and no armor – not good characteristics for an aircraft intended to fly low and slow over the battlefield and if it’s not going to fly low and slow then it’s not really suited for CAS.  Add in the presumed lack of loiter time and this is not an ideal CAS platform. 

Now, here’s the interesting part.  The Air Force wants to get rid of their A-10s.  The Marines ought to give serious thought to acquiring the A-10s.  To be fair, I’m not the first person to come up with this thought.  Regardless, the A-10 is the finest CAS platform we have.  It has a weapons load of 16,000 lb on 11 hardpoints plus the Avenger cannon.  The aircraft has a 250 mile combat radius with a nearly 2 hour loiter time.  Decades of actual combat have proven the worth of the A-10 as a CAS platform and it’s the one that the men on the ground call for by name.  It’s rugged beyond belief.  If the Marines are serious about CAS for their ground force, they’ll drop the F-35B and jump on the A-10s.  I don’t know what the current inventory of A-10s is but over 700 have been built.  This option makes overwhelming sense.  If they want some F-35s for some other purpose that I don’t really understand, then fine, buy a handful.  For now, though, the A-10 is the undisputed master of CAS and it’s apparently free for the taking.  That’s a tactical and budgetary win for the Corps.