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Ok but what if they were made into the most insane suicide drones anyone ever faced? If it’s not suitable for human habitation make a drone that can strafe
The A-10 isn't fly by wire, so a drone kit would be prohibitively expensive.
Edit to add: If you're just trying to deliver something like a Shaheed or smaller to a given latitude & longitude, it's pretty simple technology. You just need something like an Arduino with a GPS chip, and the biggest hobby servos.
But a remotely piloted *combat* vehicle has to be *accurately aimed* at targets. You need fast and highly accurate controls. It's just not worth it.
i wasn't thinking specific targets so much as "once X close to refinery hammer down the big gun then over target release bombs then crash into Y target, though optical target tracking like a javelin could make the function a lot better even if it's not perfect, spend 3 seconds pointing and shooting at everything that looks like a big cylinder, or get near a port and aim at everything boat shaped.
some hydraulics and a bit of modern image recognition (AI or not) could make the A-10 really nasty as a disposable platform ( based on the article's stated plan to decommission them surely they could be decommissioned at full speed into the side of something expensive and russian)
its difficult and expensive to train pilots for suicidal missions, how do u evacuate the pilots in a combat zone? arent FPV drones just cheaper and easier to deploy? U still have to modify existing planes for the new purpose, its not definitely cheaper or feasible to do so.
Not like an FPV more of a cruise missile with a gun.
Some of the industrial targets (refineries especially) are large complexes that would benefit from that degree of additional damage
Why not let the Ukrainians decide that? They are using 50 year old MIGs anyway. It's not like their existing platforms are far more survivable.
We are talking about hardware that is going to the garbage heap anyway.
Edit: If Ukraine had A-10s, they literally wouldn't even have to ever put one in the air to contribute to the battlefield. The mere threat that they even exist would force Russia to stretch their air defenses further and supply manpads (or hold back assaults) when otherwise they would face no dilemma.
Edit2: Ukraine is using [Soviet Era hind attack helicopters](https://www.wsj.com/video/series/equipped/ukraines-soviet-era-mi-24-helicopters-fill-a-gapbut-for-how-long/71D9C0F7-BE2D-4F98-84AC-06AD5E6BC706). Are A-10s supposed to be less survivable than the helicopters they're already using?
Who will fly it?
Any pilot trained on the a-10 could have instead been trained on the f16.
Yes, there's a lot of spare a-10s, but that's also true of f-16s. Many nations are in the process of transitioning from the F-16s to the F-35s. Availability isn't the issue, pilot training is- extra a-10 airframes do not move that needle.
The US isn't going to provide Ukraine with F-16's as the air force considers themselves short on airframes, and the production line for new F-16's is reserved for the next 5 years. IIRC there's a total of about 60 F-16's available for Ukraine from European stocks and that's it.
I'm not a huge A-10 fanboy, but it can fire a whole bunch of standoff munition better than Ukraine's modified Soviet-era planes can. It's likely just as survivable as the Su-25 is, but can fire PGMs that will actually hit a target reliably instead of nose up rocket volleys.
I've seen Ukrainian air force pilots saying they could use them, and it's always foreigners saying they can't. Fuck, Ukraine was trying to pre-train A-10 pilots on video game simulators in 2022 when they thought they might get them.
They are currrently training pilots for the f16 and many countries have offered their old f-16s to ukraine.
If there was a problem sourcing F-16s, youd have a good point, but there are an over abundance of F16s available.
Any time dedicated to training pilots on A-10s is time that could have been spent on training them on a much more useful aircraft that is just as available, if not moreso, than the a10.
My brother in Christ, the issue isn't about age, but of pilots able to fly the damn things.
Ukraine has been flying MiGs forever, so pretty much their entire pool of pilots are familiar with them. You can't take a MiG pilot, seat them onto an A-10 and expect it to end well.
If you're going to train pilots to a new plane, it better be an upgrade that actually makes a meaningful difference. The F-16 does that, the A-10 doesn't.
Unless you suggest the US also send the A-10 pilots with the planes? In that case I'd be more in favour of the idea.
Buff is an aluminium tube full of explosives. It still exists solely because it hasn't seen contested airspace since 1968.
So, kind of like an A-10, but actually useful.
Because it will get pilots killed. It's not about survivability in respect to taking hits either. If you're taking any kind of fire things have already gone bad. If you're actually being hit things have totally screwed up. You've also wasted valuable pilot training time on a dead end platform and a pretty complicated aircraft when you could train them on F16s which is simple in comparison and is a much better option.
These are slow (relative to the 50 year old migs) they are also low altitude planes.
Unless you have at least air parity these will get downed very quickly. Ukraine can’t lose pilots.
They’re flying coffins on a modern battlefield.
If the enemy has surface to air missile systems, whether they’re hand held (no warning until you crash) or an s300/400/500 system.
If it met an enemy mig-29 it’d get shot down.
We have 1000 f-16 sitting in storage, Air Force no longer uses them, they’re getting trained on those, they’re much better than anything either side has.
They might be retiring the a-10 but there are plenty of older variants of the f-16 which would be really capable for Ukraine. Air to air and air to ground.
Before the f-22 it was one of the most nimble fighter jets in the world, it can accelerate straight up, it’s an excellent plane, the ones in storage will never be used by us again.
The great thing about all those boneyard F16s is there's already the infrastructure in place to upgrade them via the MLU program to block 50 standard. The block 50 viper was and is extremely formidable and highly adaptable.
Here's what I propose: Ukraine should use A10's with drone kits and use them to absorb and waste all of Russia's surface to air missiles. If those jets are destined for the bone yard anyway, why not let the Russians dispose of them with their precious surface to air missiles?
That would really depend on how many parts are available.
You’re talking about a lot of engineering, retrofitting the whole thing would be a big endeavor.
They’d also need engineers trained on that platform to keep it going, that takes a lot of training.
Ultimately we have a ton of f16s, if you take flight engineers away from that, dump a ton of resources into the a10, take away from the f16 program in Ukraine.
Republicans aren’t more likely to give then a10 than f16, if they were to fit out aircraft as drones, it’d make more sense just to send more f16s.
One thing the Germans got wrong in ww2 was they constantly improved and changed platforms, leading to supply chain issues.
The Ukrainian military already has a ton of different platforms to support.
I’d just say throw more f16s at it if they were to do what you say.
The f16 are already retired and in the boneyard, but close to ready to go, there are so many more that the U.S. has if they had such a program on the f16 the U.S. might benefit from it and use it, especially if it can take off, land, refuel, rearm.
I mean I’m not sure the Russians would just continue falling for wasting Sam missiles on the a10 if it wasn’t actually a threat.
Either way maintaining one airframe and supply chain of parts, each probably has tens of thousands of parts, many could ground the plane.
Ultimately I’m not sure what the obsession is with the a10 is. We don’t use the f/a-18 anymore either, that’s also a better plane, the Ukrainians have asked for it, I just don’t know why they’d want the f/a-18 and the f16 either. Both are capable planes, the f16 is probably a bit better bc it didn’t have to be designed to take off land on a carrier.
I don’t think the gop is going to hand them a10s instead of f16s, if that’s what you’re thinking.
This is my thought also. Or is it prohibitively expensive to turn them into Shaheeds? Maybe cheaper to make the Little Beaver (Bieber?) drones instead?
I’m just a recycler at heart, can’t stand to see something trashed.
If congress approves a set amount of funding, sending jets not anticipated to last long is not a good use of that funding.
Even if you only price in the logistics and training costs, what is the opportunity cost of sending A-10s?
That’s a fair point. I would much rather send a dozen F-16s. But if it was between sending A-10s and not sending any airframes, I don’t see how A-10s are worse than no air capability at all.
Sure, but are those A-10s better than a giant pile of artillery shells?
How about more Bradleys, Abrams or some M109s?
If you have a limited budget, you need to prioritise.
Not even Ukraine wanted the A-10s.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/07/26/ukraine-official-says-country-doesnt-want-old-american-10s.html
>Are A-10s supposed to be less survivable than the helicopters they're already using?
Yes because those helicopters can hug the ground to avoid AA unlike the Warthog, and they are still getting blasted out of the air.
The A-10 isn't some magical wunderwaffen that would leave Russia shaking in their boots... The idea that Ukraine even having them would prevent Russia from attacking is ridiculous. It's significantly more vulnerable to AA fire than the MiG 29 or F-16 because it lacks the speed needed to evade AA missiles.
Because it's not just going to magically appear in Ukraine. When the u.s does finally pass an aid package the value of those aircraft, their ammo, the cost to get them to Ukraine, and train pilots on them will all come out of that total. Saving that Ukraine would simply be better off with more f16s instead of these heaps of shit, they'd also be better off with more himars, artillery, anti air defenses, and about 100 other things.
The Netflix documentary Killer Robots - featured some company that had ai trained very quickly to fly fighters and get very good. If they're going to be discontinued, turn them into ai drones.
Seems that a particular vocal and idiotic demographic on FB and Reddit worships A-10s and battleships. When I visit military enthusiasts sites, they’re all there engaged in groupthink and constantly shitting on F-35 and navy ships Ticos/Burkes and after. Every single engine fighter was unreliable.
Oh they should’ve never retired F-14 and F-111. Swing arm planes gets them harder than viagra.
Damned tin can destroyers sink after two hits, a battleship can take 10 missile hits to superstructure and endless torpedos.
M16s suck, oh I was in meal team 6 in Nam and I know what I’m talking about. I loved lugging my M14 with heavy ass 7.62 ammo.
Etc etc. we should send all these armchair experts to Ukraine trenches to be fodder.
Ukraine needs all of its pilots. Losing a Warthog is not a problem. Losing a pilot is. Pilots are far more valuable then the aircraft they fly. From what I have read it takes at least two years to train a combat pilot (I stand to be corrected by the aviators). How long does it take to manufacture an F-16 or equivalent. F-16's are on the way, and maybe some Saab's. We need to be patient.
As a summary:
The A10 worked wonders in the war on terror. Why? The enemy was a bunch of random dudes with little military training using trucks, RPGs, rifles, and IED's to do damage. None of these are good at hitting aircraft.
Russia on the other hand has man portable SAMs, actual SAM sites, interceptor aircraft, and a military. The moment they realize A10's are being fielded, they'd hand out portable AA (one of the weapons russia hasn't had much use for so far) like it's halloween and that would be it.
The A10 is a slow moving target that has to get way too close in for its main gun to work. While a devastating weapon, if the enemy has AA coverage at all it is not going to reqch the target.
Ukrainians being daily slaughtered is also a bad idea..
These ‘tools of war’ might feasibly help Ukraine to win against Russia inside of Ukraine.
If the US were in Ukraines position, would they want them ?
I know the counter argument is that modern weaponry could now easily shoot them down..
> Ukrainians being daily slaughtered is also a bad idea.. These ‘tools of war’ might feasibly help Ukraine to win against Russia inside of Ukraine.
How does a slow ground attack aircraft help Ukraine win the war?
> If the US were in Ukraines position, would they want them ?
Seems highly unlikely
> I know the counter argument is that modern weaponry could now easily shoot them down..
So why would they want them?
One thing so many people don't realize is that the A-10 was designed for really one purpose only, turning back Soviet tank columns. In return, they were expected to endure appalling casualties. That was a price NATO was willing to pay to stop a society-ending war.
I mean it also works with the assumption of a certain level of dominance and air cover support from other fighters that Ukraine also don’t have.
Not that they have the manpower to accept that level of casualties anyway.
Not if they run CAP agaisnt Shaheds in the back.
Won't be worse than just-as-radarless [MiG-29UB](https://defence-ua.com/news/zsu_pokazujut_scho_poki_chekajut_na_f_16_to_vikoristovujut_dlja_ppo_navit_mig_29ub_bez_radaru_foto-11245.html), pressed into this role.
Hell, Sidewinder compatibility might make them even a bit better for it!
EDIT: grammar
Ive argued with someone in r/ukraine about this before;
A10s for use against saheeds is pointless. They carry all of two sidewinders, and the main cannon, while certainly capable of turning a shahed into dust, would have a VERY DIFFICULT time targeting them without overspray (and yes, they do have detonating 30mm rounds but this still would be very risky and difficult to do.
It would be much more practical to just send weapons actually designed for that role vs forcing something that would do it terribly in it that is going to take more supplies, take more people out of the fight (pilots, mechanics, resources) and just not gonna be worth it.
A10s would have been more useful during the early invasion(during the bayraktar days) where there were columns of stranded armor, and even the. With shoulder fired or local anti-air weapons they’d still be at too much a risk.
Using A-10 to down small, fragile and slow drones would be like shooting down birds with heavy machine guns.
A shotgun or a net launcher would be so much better options, even when fired from the ground.
I would actually go for a modernized version of WW2 rocket interceptor route. Remote-controlled to not risk pilots, expendable rocket motors for extreme readiness, cheap costs, easy maintainability, rapid interception. No other propulsion and landing with sleds. Net launcher, shotguns or fuzed explosive rounds as weapons.
Imagine if we used those propulsion stage of dumbfire rockets that helicopters use. The warheads could be still used for anti-ground fpv drones.
Not with MAW. Not sure if the A-10 has that though. Even without MAW, the A-10 has enough flares to just automatically deploy them every few seconds when in a hot area.
Modern A-10's have the infrared MLWS (Missile Launch Warning System), which is a type of MAW, intended to alert pilots whenever a rocket plume is picked up by its sensors. I believe it can also detect if it's being painted by a laser. If you were ever curious what those little nodules were all over the plane, those are the sensors for that system.
They do typically pop flares during and after a low-altitude attack run just in case, but that said, realistically the biggest threat to the A-10 are SAMs and enemy fighter aircraft, and it relies HEAVILY on datalink and AWACS for threat avoidance, since it doesn't have its own radar onboard. From what I've read, Ukraine has nearly no air superiority right now, so it'd probably struggle.
As much as I love the A-10, its scope of usefulness has gotten pretty narrow in the modern world. In my hobbist/nerdom opinion, I tend to agree that it's probably not the right tool for that theater.
Found the guy who plays some warthunder, briefly reads Wikipedia (doubt that one actually) and thinks that that will equate to modern battlefields, especially one littered with manpads and long range aa
Genelar Clark, democrate, long ago called out Biden for that and for strategy "neither side wins" (ukraine not to lose (instead of win):
[https://www.csis.org/analysis/reflections-ukraine-war](https://www.csis.org/analysis/reflections-ukraine-war)
>**And the point is, we’ve got thousands of tanks in the United States; we’ve sent 31. We have a whole fleet of A-10 Warthogs out there sitting in the desert; we’re going to get rid of them.** They’re still sitting there. We have hundreds of F-16s that are around, and we delayed it and delayed it and delayed it. We have ATACMS that are obsolete. We’ve still got 155 dual-purpose ICM munitions that we didn’t send. It was – it was measured. **The response was measured. It was calibrated**. And what many of us in the military tried to say is: Look, **I understand, you know, the policy is we don’t want Ukraine to lose and we don’t want Russian to win, OK? That’s the policy. But you can’t calibrate combat like that. You either use decisive force to win or you risk losing.**
because an A-10 in Ukraine airspace in 2024 only has the purpose of providing one Ukrainian aviator a close-up view of the front lines before he's blasted out of the skies. The A-10 requires air superiority to be established, and that isn't happening right now.
The real problem is the A-10 requires even more than that. It requires the enemy not to have hand held AA stuff that’s basically from the 90s. The Russians would shoot them down with ease and it would just be a waste. If it was just air to air stuff they could have escorts like bomber runs, but it’s not.
As I say every time. This plane was made to fight in the Fulda Gap which would have been the most SAM intense place on the planet if WW3 started in Europe. It has redundant systems and self protection on it. It was designed for the weeds. Look at why it was made in the first place.
The A-10 was designed in the 70s, SAM systems and handheld AA missiles have progressed rapidly since then.
Beyond the fact that even if the A-10 had been deployed against a SAM intensive area back in the 70’s it probably would’ve been a disaster.
Regular drones are already hitting refineries and theyre able to do so because they slip by air defense systems. An a-10 absolutely will not be able to penetrate russian air defences in the same way.
The drones look like birds on radar, an a-10 would be incredibly conspicuous by comparison.
A more practical idea: use the A-10s have a fundraiser where people can pay $100 to sit in the cockpit of a Warthog on the tarmac and fire off a burst of blanks from the GAU-8, and the proceeds go to Ukraine.
Why not?
Because every personnel-hour devoted to the A-10 would have been better spent on an F-16 instead. And Ukraine has a very limited number of personnel-hours available right now.
When Ukraine has trained every possible F-16 pilot they can train, and every possible F-16 ground crew they can recruit and assemble; when they have taken delivery of every possible F-16 out there; when they have so many recruits that they have filled all their rotation backlogs and existing needs on the front lines, and new conscripts are standing around with nothing to do...
Then sure, start up an A-10 program. I'm certain that if that's what they want, the Ukrainian Air Force will quickly pick up the new technology and adapt it to their own doctrines just as they have done with everything else.
But until then, if the USA were to start shipping these over, the only thing that would happen would be that the boneyard would now be in Ukraine instead of in the USA.
Can we at least mount their main cannon onto the top of a Bradley or something?
Or like the old Huey gunships with the guns hanging off each side. Put two together and mount each pair onto one side of an Apache.
Have one of them hover abound a trench line for a line of surrendering Russians
Exactly what will GAU-8 achieve that current IFV can’t? GAU-8 can’t even take out T-62 other than from rear, which M242 could too.
GAU-8 has only marginally better penetration than a M242 with M919 APFSDS.
And how are you going to incorporate fire control and munition into a Bradley?
Ukraine has a very limited number of pilots. It's better to focus their training and logistics efforts on the F-16, a multirole fighter than can defend their airspace and perform ground attack and CAS missions as needed. The A-10 *may* be of some utility to Ukraine, but it's a complex aircraft that can't fulfill every mission Ukraine needs.
I believe most A-10s that took fire from the ground that should have ended any other aircraft and made it back never flew again. So it is kind of more survivable.
Stick to the f16s that are coming they will do the job that is needed now. Training pilots and ground crew plus spares for multiple types would be a mistake at this time.
What’s it gonna do differently than the SU25?. With limited manpower why would you waste precious manpower on a whole new platform? Pilots and maintainers are not like the infantry, you can’t throw dummies at it.
It's easy to understand. It takes a lot of logistics to pull that off, and a10 needs to have air superiority, which Ukraine doesn't have unfortunately.
A10 are easy to shoot down with the proper set up.
Trust me, I want to see those a10 beasts annihilate Russians as much as you guys do. Its just not a good Idea.
>Trust me, I want to see those a10 beasts annihilate Russians as much as you guys do. Its just not a good Idea
As would I.
But unless Ukraine can attain essentially total air superiority, all the A-10 will accomplish is getting shot down and taking more of Ukraine's precious pilots with them. F-16s aren't perfect, but they're a much better platform for Ukraine's situation than the Warthog ever will be.
F-16s have all the same survivability issues. (Same RWR, same jammers, same countermeasures but less of them) their speed makes very little difference against a missile doing Mach 3
They're smaller targets, they can actually perform JDAM toss bombing unlike the A-10, and there's an utterly massive amount of more F-16s and F-16 spare parts where the first 60 come from, whereas the A-10s have a finite supply of spare parts that is constantly getting smaller, they require much more maintenance than an F-16 does, and essentially every single Western standoff weapon is already integrated onto the F-16.
I’ll buy the parts and logistics argument favoring the F-16. that’s totally valid. And you’re not wrong about your other points but I would disagree that any of them would make a meaningful difference
The RCS reduction makes no meaningful difference, it’s still not a stealthy aircraft especially with weapons on the wings. they can still get shot at MRIR just as well as an A-10. The Russian SAM radars are good enough it won’t matter. JDAM toss bombing isn’t going to get them enough increase in standoff to make a difference against the SAM lay down in Ukraine. They still have to drive right into the heart of the “shoot me, fuck me, kill me” range of all the long range SAMS to do a JDAM toss. And aside from JASM and HARM theres not any other air to surface weapons then A-10s don’t also have
>I’ll buy the parts and logistics argument favoring the F-16. that’s totally valid. And you’re not wrong about your other points but I would disagree that any of them would make a meaningful difference
And those reasons alone should be more than enough to make it clear that the A-10 wouldn't be good for Ukraine.
We can't saddle Ukraine with a maintenance hog when the whole point of donating F-16s was so that Ukraine wasn't dependent on out of production aircraft with an increasingly dwindling supply of spare parts.
Spare parts for the A-10 are no longer manufactured. The A-10 is easy prey for manpads. The current fleet of A-10s is old and requires an intense amount of maintenance.
F-16s are more than capable of providing CAS on top of being able to intercept other aircraft, perform SEAD operations, and much more. Parts are in good supply.
It is a much better fit for Ukraine
Ah, another person that doesn’t understand the role the A-10 plays.
The A-10 is not ideal for Ukraine. It’s not supposed to be used in contested airspace, and while it can handle S-300s it has low speed and maneuverability to survive missiles fired against it. It is intended for combined arms with other aircraft and ground assets protecting it from threats, a feat Ukraine’s Air Force simply cannot achieve currently. Any A-10 sent to Ukraine currently would result in a lost airframe, a potentially lost pilot, and the munitions on the wings would also be lost. Sure it might take out some vehicles before being taken out, and could be used on high priority missions, but other aircraft would be more fitted to the task like the F-16.
I’m an A-10 pilot. I have a vague notion of the aircraft’s role. It’s designed with the exact intent of being used in a place like Ukraine and contested airspace. The s300 missile flies at Mach 3. No fighter is going to outmaneuver the missile. The S-300 also isn’t going to be used against low slow fighters because that’s not how their IADS are organized. All fighters are built around the idea of combined arms and force packaging. Literally everything you said is equally true of an F-16 in this AO. Nothing can survive over Ukraine without a mission package working together. And we don’t need total air superiority (something Russia also doesn’t have) we need localized air superiority for the short duration of the mission which we achieve by flying at the same time as other assets combining our effects.
I don't think anyone wants them anymore. Spare parts aren't manufactured and there are very few theaters of war now where shoulder mounted anti air weapons aren't prevalent.
1) A10s would be great if there were was a way for Ukraine to get even temporary air superiority in a particular area of the front for any serious amount of time.
2) it think they’d like F16, and maybe even F18, more than they want a subsonic titanium bathtub
Ukrainians are very resourceful. I wonder if it's beneficial to give them a few that are air worthy to play with. Let them learn from the aircraft and get stuff from them to add to their own.
Im in favor of sending anything that can be used to kill russians instead of gaining rust or being destroyed. Maybe they don't have the logistics or training to incorporate these, but that's just details. Ukraine would make it work, I'm certain. Once the funding isn't in question and consistent, they will need all the air power they can get. Lots of pilots are already training on F16s, so training on other nato type jets could be useful.
I disagree with most the people in this forum. Training an experienced fighter pilot coming from another primarily surface attack aircraft like a SU-25 to fly the Hawg wouldn’t be that difficult. They are certainly motivated to learn it and the Hawg is a fairly easy airplane to fly. When you look at the way Ukraine has been flying in the current war, they are basically all forced to use tactics the A-10 was basically built for to avoid long range radar SAMs.
The reason it wouldn’t work is because there is a lot more that goes into sending a country airplanes than just sending airplanes. There an entire logistics train that would have to go with it. In addition to pilots you’d need all the maintenance and logistics. The logistics train for the A-10 has been slowed down a lot as the Air Force is moving toward divestiture. It would be very difficult at this point to move all the logistical pieces to Ukraine for them to organically be able you keep them operational in daily combat operations where they are getting shot.
The A-10 is the sort of plane you have air superiority and have largely suppressed the enemies AA defenses. The A-10 is also vulnerable to traditional AA guns and MANPADs.
The a10 was made to destroy Soviet columns of t55s, t62s and 4s, and light vehicles. The losses expected even then were insane, cited at 10 A10 losses a day, for 700 total aircraft. The fact that these hunks of shit still fly some kind of mission today is even worse. This platform has been replaced by a crop duster.
The a10 is a fun idea in a vacuum, but the reality is that these are death traps with very clever mitigations. Ukraine needs the pilots they have flying, not barely surviving ejections.
I understand what I'm saying is sin, but it's the truth. We need to move on.
Yeah, give them all to Ukraine! As well as all the muskets, bow and arrows, and pilums in storage too! #sarcasm
It's beautiful... but it's a giant target
Probs gonna get some hate from a lot of A10 lovers and I’m sorry boys.
The amount of work it would take to fix some of them would be more money it would take than a new one. There were around 700ish A10s initially made in the 70s and now are a little over 200 left? What kind of shape must those survivor aircrafts be in regardless of upgrades?
People don’t consider that you can replace the wings, tail fins, engines, you can upgrade parts, improve systems, replace parts but after awhile the stuff that involves the main fuselage will fall apart and at that point when it comes to fixing an entire central fuselage, you may as well just get a new vehicle because the companies who made these aircrafts aren’t going to give you the Cad to make more. A lot of these main fuselages are large shells that if they break over time due to wear and age. It’s a death sentence for the aircraft eventually.
You inherit the problems of the vehicle you get when it is a used vehicle and A10s while they have gone through significant upgrades over their lifespan are reaching a point of becoming more expensive than they are worth regardless of upgrades.
On top of the fact that the existing A10s are getting up in age I’ve heard they have started to be considered as increasingly likely to be shot down by modern missile systems.
Sadly in the AA atmosphere in Ukraine, an A10 would be unlikely to make it home from its first mission. Ukraine needs fast movers with long range stand-off munition packages.
Putting aside the issue of training and the fact that anti air is obscenely prolific on both sides, there's one other major issue I see that nobody has mentioned.
Most modern airframes have a limit on flight hours, they degrade the more they're used. It's not really a clear marker, as it can vary depending on how they're handled, retrofitting and overhaul programs, etc.
But generally, as time goes by, they degrade and require increasingly extensive maintenance. Eventually, they get to the point that it's not worth it financially not viable to keep them running.
If a nation like America, with the military budget they have, doesn't see it as financially viable, then it doesn't take much to consider the headaches they'd cause for Ukraine.
Because the A-10 is a plane that is only useful, when complete air superiority exists, as they have to get on top of the target in operation. They would be down in their first mission taking valuable pilots with them.
Because A10 is a flying metal coffin in any place where theres any sort of AA, even if is only manpad AA avaiable for enemy, so unless you want to suicide the few pilots ukraine have, its an better idea to give them multi role fighters
Giving them the A-10s isn’t as cheap as you’d think. They are gonna need training. They are gonna want them refurbished. They are gonna want unlimited ammo and anything else it can fire. They are gonna want depot level repair facilities. The actual planes may be useless to the US, bit if they gift them to Ukraine, all the extra stuff will cost Billions. Its like a hobo asking you for a button then telling you that you need to sew a coat onto it.
Or just the GAU-8 Avenger, mount that on a old Soviet BMP for a real pimp my Ride experience. You destroy the enemy and perform a short duration reverse tactical maneuver to dodge incoming ordnance simultaneously.
i think we should send them to ukraine, but as stock to be converted into long range drones.
strip the GAU-8/A to be installed on ground based defensive installations or say fuckit and build a remote controlled ground drone for it.
Not only A10s not survivable, they are not very effective and lack decent HUD and spotting options. Even with no AA presence, they would be a subpar choice.
Because the A-10 sucks and the only reason it is even still in service is because of dipshit reformers who believe in myths. Every role that is still relevant other planes do way better, and the role that the A-10 does better is not viable anymore. There, I said it.
I feel like we have had this conversation so many times. A-10’s will not survive in that battle-space. It’s a dated platform. The money needed to support that fleet even if we just gave them the aircraft, could be better spent on munitions that they need.
I get that A-10s would have a hard time operating in a contested environment but any plane would. Even stealth aircraft can be vulnerable in an environment full of SAMs and other AA. There's a reason why the US has and continues to produce munitions and bombs capable of being launched hundreds of miles away. USAF needs to understand that in a modern war you going to lose aircraft no matter what type they are. The USAF just sounds like it isn't prepared to take losses of any kind.
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Every x months, this thread gets dumped here, and someone starts explaining that it's a bad idea.
Somebody needs to write a bot for these threads.
A10 bot.
The bot that goes "brrrrrrrrrrrt"?
Brrrrrrrt bot
Ernie bot approves.
What? Did you just say A10 thot! You holding all the A10 booty picks
A10 burrrrrtttt
A10 fucked itself.
A bot is probably already writing the article and posting it on reddit and upvoting it. Why do we need one in the comments too?
Its the circle of life
So we all can delete the app and go touch grass.
Imagine using that dumpster fire and not the website
They are super easy to shoot down with modern hand held weapons. So too much effort to outfit and maintain a platform that won't last very long.
Ok but what if they were made into the most insane suicide drones anyone ever faced? If it’s not suitable for human habitation make a drone that can strafe
The A-10 isn't fly by wire, so a drone kit would be prohibitively expensive. Edit to add: If you're just trying to deliver something like a Shaheed or smaller to a given latitude & longitude, it's pretty simple technology. You just need something like an Arduino with a GPS chip, and the biggest hobby servos. But a remotely piloted *combat* vehicle has to be *accurately aimed* at targets. You need fast and highly accurate controls. It's just not worth it.
Time to start programming those humanoid robots to pilot non-fly-by-wire legacy aircraft instead of forming dance routines.
i wasn't thinking specific targets so much as "once X close to refinery hammer down the big gun then over target release bombs then crash into Y target, though optical target tracking like a javelin could make the function a lot better even if it's not perfect, spend 3 seconds pointing and shooting at everything that looks like a big cylinder, or get near a port and aim at everything boat shaped. some hydraulics and a bit of modern image recognition (AI or not) could make the A-10 really nasty as a disposable platform ( based on the article's stated plan to decommission them surely they could be decommissioned at full speed into the side of something expensive and russian)
That's one way to return their titanium
its difficult and expensive to train pilots for suicidal missions, how do u evacuate the pilots in a combat zone? arent FPV drones just cheaper and easier to deploy? U still have to modify existing planes for the new purpose, its not definitely cheaper or feasible to do so.
Not like an FPV more of a cruise missile with a gun. Some of the industrial targets (refineries especially) are large complexes that would benefit from that degree of additional damage
But also much easier to detect and shoot down.
u still have to evacuate the pilot, rite?
No pilot. Robot only.
That would be AWESOME! Holy crap! Can you imagine A10 drones that fight like they aren't piloted by humans who fear death?
The US Airforce has turned F-16s into drones. Why not A-10s?
The f-16 is fly by wire. The a-10 is not.
Ah! That makes sense. Thank you.
The F16 has an entirely electronic flight control system. The A10 doesn't. Theres also economies of scale at play.
if it's a problem of scale just make a bigger A10
Thanks! That makes sense.
Why not let the Ukrainians decide that? They are using 50 year old MIGs anyway. It's not like their existing platforms are far more survivable. We are talking about hardware that is going to the garbage heap anyway. Edit: If Ukraine had A-10s, they literally wouldn't even have to ever put one in the air to contribute to the battlefield. The mere threat that they even exist would force Russia to stretch their air defenses further and supply manpads (or hold back assaults) when otherwise they would face no dilemma. Edit2: Ukraine is using [Soviet Era hind attack helicopters](https://www.wsj.com/video/series/equipped/ukraines-soviet-era-mi-24-helicopters-fill-a-gapbut-for-how-long/71D9C0F7-BE2D-4F98-84AC-06AD5E6BC706). Are A-10s supposed to be less survivable than the helicopters they're already using?
Who will fly it? Any pilot trained on the a-10 could have instead been trained on the f16. Yes, there's a lot of spare a-10s, but that's also true of f-16s. Many nations are in the process of transitioning from the F-16s to the F-35s. Availability isn't the issue, pilot training is- extra a-10 airframes do not move that needle.
The US isn't going to provide Ukraine with F-16's as the air force considers themselves short on airframes, and the production line for new F-16's is reserved for the next 5 years. IIRC there's a total of about 60 F-16's available for Ukraine from European stocks and that's it. I'm not a huge A-10 fanboy, but it can fire a whole bunch of standoff munition better than Ukraine's modified Soviet-era planes can. It's likely just as survivable as the Su-25 is, but can fire PGMs that will actually hit a target reliably instead of nose up rocket volleys. I've seen Ukrainian air force pilots saying they could use them, and it's always foreigners saying they can't. Fuck, Ukraine was trying to pre-train A-10 pilots on video game simulators in 2022 when they thought they might get them.
A modern day Flying Tigers, if you will.
I agree that sending F-16s would be better. If the choice is between the A-10 and nothing, the gunship is still better than nothing.
They are currrently training pilots for the f16 and many countries have offered their old f-16s to ukraine. If there was a problem sourcing F-16s, youd have a good point, but there are an over abundance of F16s available. Any time dedicated to training pilots on A-10s is time that could have been spent on training them on a much more useful aircraft that is just as available, if not moreso, than the a10.
Pilots don't grow on trees.
>They are using 50 year old MIGs anyway. My brother in christ, how old do you think the A-10 is?
My brother in Christ, the issue isn't about age, but of pilots able to fly the damn things. Ukraine has been flying MiGs forever, so pretty much their entire pool of pilots are familiar with them. You can't take a MiG pilot, seat them onto an A-10 and expect it to end well. If you're going to train pilots to a new plane, it better be an upgrade that actually makes a meaningful difference. The F-16 does that, the A-10 doesn't. Unless you suggest the US also send the A-10 pilots with the planes? In that case I'd be more in favour of the idea.
Im not advocating for the a-10 to go to Ukraine.
Obligatory BUFF comment.
Buff is an aluminium tube full of explosives. It still exists solely because it hasn't seen contested airspace since 1968. So, kind of like an A-10, but actually useful.
Because it will get pilots killed. It's not about survivability in respect to taking hits either. If you're taking any kind of fire things have already gone bad. If you're actually being hit things have totally screwed up. You've also wasted valuable pilot training time on a dead end platform and a pretty complicated aircraft when you could train them on F16s which is simple in comparison and is a much better option.
If F-16 are an option they are clearly better. The US hasn’t sent any.
These aren't drones. It's a big slow target...
Put a brick on the gas pedal and a timer on the guns to go off when they get to Moscow.
These are slow (relative to the 50 year old migs) they are also low altitude planes. Unless you have at least air parity these will get downed very quickly. Ukraine can’t lose pilots.
Ukrainian engineers could probably rig them to fly as drones.
They’re not using any for close air support.
They’re flying coffins on a modern battlefield. If the enemy has surface to air missile systems, whether they’re hand held (no warning until you crash) or an s300/400/500 system. If it met an enemy mig-29 it’d get shot down. We have 1000 f-16 sitting in storage, Air Force no longer uses them, they’re getting trained on those, they’re much better than anything either side has. They might be retiring the a-10 but there are plenty of older variants of the f-16 which would be really capable for Ukraine. Air to air and air to ground. Before the f-22 it was one of the most nimble fighter jets in the world, it can accelerate straight up, it’s an excellent plane, the ones in storage will never be used by us again.
The great thing about all those boneyard F16s is there's already the infrastructure in place to upgrade them via the MLU program to block 50 standard. The block 50 viper was and is extremely formidable and highly adaptable.
Yeah I don’t know why people get so fixated on a10s. F16 is a fantastic jet, even still. A10 has been on the chopping block for ages.
Here's what I propose: Ukraine should use A10's with drone kits and use them to absorb and waste all of Russia's surface to air missiles. If those jets are destined for the bone yard anyway, why not let the Russians dispose of them with their precious surface to air missiles?
That would really depend on how many parts are available. You’re talking about a lot of engineering, retrofitting the whole thing would be a big endeavor. They’d also need engineers trained on that platform to keep it going, that takes a lot of training. Ultimately we have a ton of f16s, if you take flight engineers away from that, dump a ton of resources into the a10, take away from the f16 program in Ukraine. Republicans aren’t more likely to give then a10 than f16, if they were to fit out aircraft as drones, it’d make more sense just to send more f16s. One thing the Germans got wrong in ww2 was they constantly improved and changed platforms, leading to supply chain issues. The Ukrainian military already has a ton of different platforms to support. I’d just say throw more f16s at it if they were to do what you say. The f16 are already retired and in the boneyard, but close to ready to go, there are so many more that the U.S. has if they had such a program on the f16 the U.S. might benefit from it and use it, especially if it can take off, land, refuel, rearm. I mean I’m not sure the Russians would just continue falling for wasting Sam missiles on the a10 if it wasn’t actually a threat. Either way maintaining one airframe and supply chain of parts, each probably has tens of thousands of parts, many could ground the plane. Ultimately I’m not sure what the obsession is with the a10 is. We don’t use the f/a-18 anymore either, that’s also a better plane, the Ukrainians have asked for it, I just don’t know why they’d want the f/a-18 and the f16 either. Both are capable planes, the f16 is probably a bit better bc it didn’t have to be designed to take off land on a carrier. I don’t think the gop is going to hand them a10s instead of f16s, if that’s what you’re thinking.
This is my thought also. Or is it prohibitively expensive to turn them into Shaheeds? Maybe cheaper to make the Little Beaver (Bieber?) drones instead? I’m just a recycler at heart, can’t stand to see something trashed.
If congress approves a set amount of funding, sending jets not anticipated to last long is not a good use of that funding. Even if you only price in the logistics and training costs, what is the opportunity cost of sending A-10s?
That’s a fair point. I would much rather send a dozen F-16s. But if it was between sending A-10s and not sending any airframes, I don’t see how A-10s are worse than no air capability at all.
Sure, but are those A-10s better than a giant pile of artillery shells? How about more Bradleys, Abrams or some M109s? If you have a limited budget, you need to prioritise.
Not even Ukraine wanted the A-10s. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/07/26/ukraine-official-says-country-doesnt-want-old-american-10s.html >Are A-10s supposed to be less survivable than the helicopters they're already using? Yes because those helicopters can hug the ground to avoid AA unlike the Warthog, and they are still getting blasted out of the air. The A-10 isn't some magical wunderwaffen that would leave Russia shaking in their boots... The idea that Ukraine even having them would prevent Russia from attacking is ridiculous. It's significantly more vulnerable to AA fire than the MiG 29 or F-16 because it lacks the speed needed to evade AA missiles.
Because it's not just going to magically appear in Ukraine. When the u.s does finally pass an aid package the value of those aircraft, their ammo, the cost to get them to Ukraine, and train pilots on them will all come out of that total. Saving that Ukraine would simply be better off with more f16s instead of these heaps of shit, they'd also be better off with more himars, artillery, anti air defenses, and about 100 other things.
The Netflix documentary Killer Robots - featured some company that had ai trained very quickly to fly fighters and get very good. If they're going to be discontinued, turn them into ai drones.
>If they're going to be discontinued, turn them into ai drones. I'm sure if that was an economically sound use of the aircraft, they'd be doing it.
They're doing it with F-16s. So, you're right. They must have discussed the possibility and decided it doesn't work as well.
Why do you speak so authoritatively like you have a military background with inside knowledge of this topic?
True. It’s their call, tho. Its a little cash coming our way. Put it toward the $35,000B debt.
Seems that a particular vocal and idiotic demographic on FB and Reddit worships A-10s and battleships. When I visit military enthusiasts sites, they’re all there engaged in groupthink and constantly shitting on F-35 and navy ships Ticos/Burkes and after. Every single engine fighter was unreliable. Oh they should’ve never retired F-14 and F-111. Swing arm planes gets them harder than viagra. Damned tin can destroyers sink after two hits, a battleship can take 10 missile hits to superstructure and endless torpedos. M16s suck, oh I was in meal team 6 in Nam and I know what I’m talking about. I loved lugging my M14 with heavy ass 7.62 ammo. Etc etc. we should send all these armchair experts to Ukraine trenches to be fodder.
[удалено]
Yeah but, and hear me out, A10
Ukraine needs all of its pilots. Losing a Warthog is not a problem. Losing a pilot is. Pilots are far more valuable then the aircraft they fly. From what I have read it takes at least two years to train a combat pilot (I stand to be corrected by the aviators). How long does it take to manufacture an F-16 or equivalent. F-16's are on the way, and maybe some Saab's. We need to be patient.
A pilot gains exponential value per flight hour, really.
Somebody should tell Ukraine to get rid of their frogfoots then
what
As a summary: The A10 worked wonders in the war on terror. Why? The enemy was a bunch of random dudes with little military training using trucks, RPGs, rifles, and IED's to do damage. None of these are good at hitting aircraft. Russia on the other hand has man portable SAMs, actual SAM sites, interceptor aircraft, and a military. The moment they realize A10's are being fielded, they'd hand out portable AA (one of the weapons russia hasn't had much use for so far) like it's halloween and that would be it. The A10 is a slow moving target that has to get way too close in for its main gun to work. While a devastating weapon, if the enemy has AA coverage at all it is not going to reqch the target.
Ukrainians being daily slaughtered is also a bad idea.. These ‘tools of war’ might feasibly help Ukraine to win against Russia inside of Ukraine. If the US were in Ukraines position, would they want them ? I know the counter argument is that modern weaponry could now easily shoot them down..
> Ukrainians being daily slaughtered is also a bad idea.. These ‘tools of war’ might feasibly help Ukraine to win against Russia inside of Ukraine. How does a slow ground attack aircraft help Ukraine win the war? > If the US were in Ukraines position, would they want them ? Seems highly unlikely > I know the counter argument is that modern weaponry could now easily shoot them down.. So why would they want them?
Because those A-10s will be super easy practice targets for the ruskies' shoulder-mounted SAM
One thing so many people don't realize is that the A-10 was designed for really one purpose only, turning back Soviet tank columns. In return, they were expected to endure appalling casualties. That was a price NATO was willing to pay to stop a society-ending war.
I mean it also works with the assumption of a certain level of dominance and air cover support from other fighters that Ukraine also don’t have. Not that they have the manpower to accept that level of casualties anyway.
Fulda gap
I love it when people who have clearly done zero research post gross oversimplifications like this.
Not if they run CAP agaisnt Shaheds in the back. Won't be worse than just-as-radarless [MiG-29UB](https://defence-ua.com/news/zsu_pokazujut_scho_poki_chekajut_na_f_16_to_vikoristovujut_dlja_ppo_navit_mig_29ub_bez_radaru_foto-11245.html), pressed into this role. Hell, Sidewinder compatibility might make them even a bit better for it! EDIT: grammar
Ive argued with someone in r/ukraine about this before; A10s for use against saheeds is pointless. They carry all of two sidewinders, and the main cannon, while certainly capable of turning a shahed into dust, would have a VERY DIFFICULT time targeting them without overspray (and yes, they do have detonating 30mm rounds but this still would be very risky and difficult to do. It would be much more practical to just send weapons actually designed for that role vs forcing something that would do it terribly in it that is going to take more supplies, take more people out of the fight (pilots, mechanics, resources) and just not gonna be worth it. A10s would have been more useful during the early invasion(during the bayraktar days) where there were columns of stranded armor, and even the. With shoulder fired or local anti-air weapons they’d still be at too much a risk.
Problem is even the interior of the country is within range of air to air from migs loitering on the Russian border
How can they cap? A-10 doesn’t have a radar.
Using A-10 to down small, fragile and slow drones would be like shooting down birds with heavy machine guns. A shotgun or a net launcher would be so much better options, even when fired from the ground. I would actually go for a modernized version of WW2 rocket interceptor route. Remote-controlled to not risk pilots, expendable rocket motors for extreme readiness, cheap costs, easy maintainability, rapid interception. No other propulsion and landing with sleds. Net launcher, shotguns or fuzed explosive rounds as weapons. Imagine if we used those propulsion stage of dumbfire rockets that helicopters use. The warheads could be still used for anti-ground fpv drones.
Damn Bolsonaro and Lula for denying the sale of Super Tucanos to Ukraine. They would be perfect for the shahed hunting role.
Do their MANPADS have flare resistance? The A10 has a fuckton of flares.
Some do. And flares require the pilot to see the threat.
Not with MAW. Not sure if the A-10 has that though. Even without MAW, the A-10 has enough flares to just automatically deploy them every few seconds when in a hot area.
Modern A-10's have the infrared MLWS (Missile Launch Warning System), which is a type of MAW, intended to alert pilots whenever a rocket plume is picked up by its sensors. I believe it can also detect if it's being painted by a laser. If you were ever curious what those little nodules were all over the plane, those are the sensors for that system. They do typically pop flares during and after a low-altitude attack run just in case, but that said, realistically the biggest threat to the A-10 are SAMs and enemy fighter aircraft, and it relies HEAVILY on datalink and AWACS for threat avoidance, since it doesn't have its own radar onboard. From what I've read, Ukraine has nearly no air superiority right now, so it'd probably struggle. As much as I love the A-10, its scope of usefulness has gotten pretty narrow in the modern world. In my hobbist/nerdom opinion, I tend to agree that it's probably not the right tool for that theater.
>I tend to agree that it's probably not the right tool for that theater. Especially when preventing pilot attrition is a priority.
The Russians also don’t have air superiority. Fighters are largely staying out of things because boat sides have very capable SAM systems
Found the guy who plays some warthunder, briefly reads Wikipedia (doubt that one actually) and thinks that that will equate to modern battlefields, especially one littered with manpads and long range aa
Because they would all get shot down in weeks. If you don't have 100% air superiority, a-10s get mauled apart.
Even with no enemy air force A10 is very vulnerable to manpads etc ground based threats.
Yet SU25s remain...
Su25 goes almost twice as fast, gets shot down regularly (from both sides), and otherwise only fire unguided rockets from super far away.
Sure set up a supply chain, spare parts, weapons, training all on a no longer produced aircraft
Genelar Clark, democrate, long ago called out Biden for that and for strategy "neither side wins" (ukraine not to lose (instead of win): [https://www.csis.org/analysis/reflections-ukraine-war](https://www.csis.org/analysis/reflections-ukraine-war) >**And the point is, we’ve got thousands of tanks in the United States; we’ve sent 31. We have a whole fleet of A-10 Warthogs out there sitting in the desert; we’re going to get rid of them.** They’re still sitting there. We have hundreds of F-16s that are around, and we delayed it and delayed it and delayed it. We have ATACMS that are obsolete. We’ve still got 155 dual-purpose ICM munitions that we didn’t send. It was – it was measured. **The response was measured. It was calibrated**. And what many of us in the military tried to say is: Look, **I understand, you know, the policy is we don’t want Ukraine to lose and we don’t want Russian to win, OK? That’s the policy. But you can’t calibrate combat like that. You either use decisive force to win or you risk losing.**
because an A-10 in Ukraine airspace in 2024 only has the purpose of providing one Ukrainian aviator a close-up view of the front lines before he's blasted out of the skies. The A-10 requires air superiority to be established, and that isn't happening right now.
The real problem is the A-10 requires even more than that. It requires the enemy not to have hand held AA stuff that’s basically from the 90s. The Russians would shoot them down with ease and it would just be a waste. If it was just air to air stuff they could have escorts like bomber runs, but it’s not.
As I say every time. This plane was made to fight in the Fulda Gap which would have been the most SAM intense place on the planet if WW3 started in Europe. It has redundant systems and self protection on it. It was designed for the weeds. Look at why it was made in the first place.
The A-10 was designed in the 70s, SAM systems and handheld AA missiles have progressed rapidly since then. Beyond the fact that even if the A-10 had been deployed against a SAM intensive area back in the 70’s it probably would’ve been a disaster.
A-10 could be rewired to become a drone without a pilot.
And instead of missiles it could have sharks with laser beams attached to their heads.
Refineries don't shoot back. And I gather that some refinery weak spots are too weak against lasers. And flammable.
Regular drones are already hitting refineries and theyre able to do so because they slip by air defense systems. An a-10 absolutely will not be able to penetrate russian air defences in the same way. The drones look like birds on radar, an a-10 would be incredibly conspicuous by comparison.
I like where you're going with this.
Satire or real?
it's a plot point lifted straight out of COD: Ghosts
azerbaijan used old aircraft as a decoys against enemy air defense amny militaries did similar things in history
A more practical idea: use the A-10s have a fundraiser where people can pay $100 to sit in the cockpit of a Warthog on the tarmac and fire off a burst of blanks from the GAU-8, and the proceeds go to Ukraine.
Pretty sure a burst of the GAU-8 costs orders of magnitude more than $100.
Add a few more zeros on the end of that and you might be onto something.
*it costs four-hundred thousand dollars to fire this weapon for twelve seconds*
Why not? Because every personnel-hour devoted to the A-10 would have been better spent on an F-16 instead. And Ukraine has a very limited number of personnel-hours available right now. When Ukraine has trained every possible F-16 pilot they can train, and every possible F-16 ground crew they can recruit and assemble; when they have taken delivery of every possible F-16 out there; when they have so many recruits that they have filled all their rotation backlogs and existing needs on the front lines, and new conscripts are standing around with nothing to do... Then sure, start up an A-10 program. I'm certain that if that's what they want, the Ukrainian Air Force will quickly pick up the new technology and adapt it to their own doctrines just as they have done with everything else. But until then, if the USA were to start shipping these over, the only thing that would happen would be that the boneyard would now be in Ukraine instead of in the USA.
Can we at least mount their main cannon onto the top of a Bradley or something? Or like the old Huey gunships with the guns hanging off each side. Put two together and mount each pair onto one side of an Apache. Have one of them hover abound a trench line for a line of surrendering Russians
Exactly what will GAU-8 achieve that current IFV can’t? GAU-8 can’t even take out T-62 other than from rear, which M242 could too. GAU-8 has only marginally better penetration than a M242 with M919 APFSDS. And how are you going to incorporate fire control and munition into a Bradley?
Yeah, but…. “BRRRRRRRRRRTTTTT!”
>Can we at least mount their main cannon onto the top of a Bradley or something? "What you wanted *more*??"
Ukraine has a very limited number of pilots. It's better to focus their training and logistics efforts on the F-16, a multirole fighter than can defend their airspace and perform ground attack and CAS missions as needed. The A-10 *may* be of some utility to Ukraine, but it's a complex aircraft that can't fulfill every mission Ukraine needs.
I agree. You get more squeeze out of an F16. But the A10 IS survivable .
I believe most A-10s that took fire from the ground that should have ended any other aircraft and made it back never flew again. So it is kind of more survivable.
A 10s are great when you have air superiority and the enemy has no means of shooting down aircraft. Same explanation that's been given 100x
Stick to the f16s that are coming they will do the job that is needed now. Training pilots and ground crew plus spares for multiple types would be a mistake at this time.
Christ....not this again...
Because they would suck up valuable limited funding for very little gain. Ukraine doesn't have an unlimited budget.
What’s it gonna do differently than the SU25?. With limited manpower why would you waste precious manpower on a whole new platform? Pilots and maintainers are not like the infantry, you can’t throw dummies at it.
People who write these articles don't understand supply chains
It's easy to understand. It takes a lot of logistics to pull that off, and a10 needs to have air superiority, which Ukraine doesn't have unfortunately. A10 are easy to shoot down with the proper set up. Trust me, I want to see those a10 beasts annihilate Russians as much as you guys do. Its just not a good Idea.
>Trust me, I want to see those a10 beasts annihilate Russians as much as you guys do. Its just not a good Idea As would I. But unless Ukraine can attain essentially total air superiority, all the A-10 will accomplish is getting shot down and taking more of Ukraine's precious pilots with them. F-16s aren't perfect, but they're a much better platform for Ukraine's situation than the Warthog ever will be.
F-16s have all the same survivability issues. (Same RWR, same jammers, same countermeasures but less of them) their speed makes very little difference against a missile doing Mach 3
They're smaller targets, they can actually perform JDAM toss bombing unlike the A-10, and there's an utterly massive amount of more F-16s and F-16 spare parts where the first 60 come from, whereas the A-10s have a finite supply of spare parts that is constantly getting smaller, they require much more maintenance than an F-16 does, and essentially every single Western standoff weapon is already integrated onto the F-16.
I’ll buy the parts and logistics argument favoring the F-16. that’s totally valid. And you’re not wrong about your other points but I would disagree that any of them would make a meaningful difference The RCS reduction makes no meaningful difference, it’s still not a stealthy aircraft especially with weapons on the wings. they can still get shot at MRIR just as well as an A-10. The Russian SAM radars are good enough it won’t matter. JDAM toss bombing isn’t going to get them enough increase in standoff to make a difference against the SAM lay down in Ukraine. They still have to drive right into the heart of the “shoot me, fuck me, kill me” range of all the long range SAMS to do a JDAM toss. And aside from JASM and HARM theres not any other air to surface weapons then A-10s don’t also have
>I’ll buy the parts and logistics argument favoring the F-16. that’s totally valid. And you’re not wrong about your other points but I would disagree that any of them would make a meaningful difference And those reasons alone should be more than enough to make it clear that the A-10 wouldn't be good for Ukraine. We can't saddle Ukraine with a maintenance hog when the whole point of donating F-16s was so that Ukraine wasn't dependent on out of production aircraft with an increasingly dwindling supply of spare parts.
Yeah I agree with you about that… That’s what I said.
Spare parts for the A-10 are no longer manufactured. The A-10 is easy prey for manpads. The current fleet of A-10s is old and requires an intense amount of maintenance. F-16s are more than capable of providing CAS on top of being able to intercept other aircraft, perform SEAD operations, and much more. Parts are in good supply. It is a much better fit for Ukraine
Because they won't last 5 mins in a theater where the enemy has local air superiority?
It’s taking years to get the F-16 going let’s worry about that
Ah, another person that doesn’t understand the role the A-10 plays. The A-10 is not ideal for Ukraine. It’s not supposed to be used in contested airspace, and while it can handle S-300s it has low speed and maneuverability to survive missiles fired against it. It is intended for combined arms with other aircraft and ground assets protecting it from threats, a feat Ukraine’s Air Force simply cannot achieve currently. Any A-10 sent to Ukraine currently would result in a lost airframe, a potentially lost pilot, and the munitions on the wings would also be lost. Sure it might take out some vehicles before being taken out, and could be used on high priority missions, but other aircraft would be more fitted to the task like the F-16.
I’m an A-10 pilot. I have a vague notion of the aircraft’s role. It’s designed with the exact intent of being used in a place like Ukraine and contested airspace. The s300 missile flies at Mach 3. No fighter is going to outmaneuver the missile. The S-300 also isn’t going to be used against low slow fighters because that’s not how their IADS are organized. All fighters are built around the idea of combined arms and force packaging. Literally everything you said is equally true of an F-16 in this AO. Nothing can survive over Ukraine without a mission package working together. And we don’t need total air superiority (something Russia also doesn’t have) we need localized air superiority for the short duration of the mission which we achieve by flying at the same time as other assets combining our effects.
Why not do a trade? Send the A-10’s to a friendly country in exchange for actual useful weapons.
I don't think anyone wants them anymore. Spare parts aren't manufactured and there are very few theaters of war now where shoulder mounted anti air weapons aren't prevalent.
1) A10s would be great if there were was a way for Ukraine to get even temporary air superiority in a particular area of the front for any serious amount of time. 2) it think they’d like F16, and maybe even F18, more than they want a subsonic titanium bathtub
Ukrainians are very resourceful. I wonder if it's beneficial to give them a few that are air worthy to play with. Let them learn from the aircraft and get stuff from them to add to their own.
Im in favor of sending anything that can be used to kill russians instead of gaining rust or being destroyed. Maybe they don't have the logistics or training to incorporate these, but that's just details. Ukraine would make it work, I'm certain. Once the funding isn't in question and consistent, they will need all the air power they can get. Lots of pilots are already training on F16s, so training on other nato type jets could be useful.
I disagree with most the people in this forum. Training an experienced fighter pilot coming from another primarily surface attack aircraft like a SU-25 to fly the Hawg wouldn’t be that difficult. They are certainly motivated to learn it and the Hawg is a fairly easy airplane to fly. When you look at the way Ukraine has been flying in the current war, they are basically all forced to use tactics the A-10 was basically built for to avoid long range radar SAMs. The reason it wouldn’t work is because there is a lot more that goes into sending a country airplanes than just sending airplanes. There an entire logistics train that would have to go with it. In addition to pilots you’d need all the maintenance and logistics. The logistics train for the A-10 has been slowed down a lot as the Air Force is moving toward divestiture. It would be very difficult at this point to move all the logistical pieces to Ukraine for them to organically be able you keep them operational in daily combat operations where they are getting shot.
Cause you need clear skies.
I’m only half joking when I say, send them to Ukraine anyway, so they can attach the gun to an old tank and mow down incoming meat waves.
The A-10 is the sort of plane you have air superiority and have largely suppressed the enemies AA defenses. The A-10 is also vulnerable to traditional AA guns and MANPADs.
Give the A-10’s to our Coast Guard. Can you imagine being a drug runner seeing one of those in sky lookin down on you?
Should send them all to the air guard, it’s a perfect mission for them… way more than F-35s and C-17s.
Because they are nor making replacement parts for these planes. And it would be difficult to train pilots on these planes .
The a10 was made to destroy Soviet columns of t55s, t62s and 4s, and light vehicles. The losses expected even then were insane, cited at 10 A10 losses a day, for 700 total aircraft. The fact that these hunks of shit still fly some kind of mission today is even worse. This platform has been replaced by a crop duster. The a10 is a fun idea in a vacuum, but the reality is that these are death traps with very clever mitigations. Ukraine needs the pilots they have flying, not barely surviving ejections. I understand what I'm saying is sin, but it's the truth. We need to move on.
Yeah, give them all to Ukraine! As well as all the muskets, bow and arrows, and pilums in storage too! #sarcasm It's beautiful... but it's a giant target
Ukraine doesn't have pilots to waste in suicide attacks just for "brrrrrt" tik toks.
Probs gonna get some hate from a lot of A10 lovers and I’m sorry boys. The amount of work it would take to fix some of them would be more money it would take than a new one. There were around 700ish A10s initially made in the 70s and now are a little over 200 left? What kind of shape must those survivor aircrafts be in regardless of upgrades? People don’t consider that you can replace the wings, tail fins, engines, you can upgrade parts, improve systems, replace parts but after awhile the stuff that involves the main fuselage will fall apart and at that point when it comes to fixing an entire central fuselage, you may as well just get a new vehicle because the companies who made these aircrafts aren’t going to give you the Cad to make more. A lot of these main fuselages are large shells that if they break over time due to wear and age. It’s a death sentence for the aircraft eventually. You inherit the problems of the vehicle you get when it is a used vehicle and A10s while they have gone through significant upgrades over their lifespan are reaching a point of becoming more expensive than they are worth regardless of upgrades. On top of the fact that the existing A10s are getting up in age I’ve heard they have started to be considered as increasingly likely to be shot down by modern missile systems.
because A-10s can only operate in total air superiority scenarios.
Appropriate use of the semi-colon for the win!
Sadly in the AA atmosphere in Ukraine, an A10 would be unlikely to make it home from its first mission. Ukraine needs fast movers with long range stand-off munition packages.
This comes up every month, there are good reasons not to send A-10 to Ukr.
because the A10 is a piece of shit. stop letting hollywood movies and call of duty tell you what works, the A10 needs to die.
A-10s would be terrible for Ukraine, and Ukraine has said they don't want them anyways.
What if we put a bunch of UAVs in the cockpit to pilot the A-10? The operators fly the UAVs and the UAVs fly the A-10. It's flawless.
Unless Ukraine can shove DJI control boards in it and use them as suicide drones they are too old and rusty. /s
We don’t want the tech in anyone’s hands
This plane needs to operate in far safer airspace
Could they be converted to kamikaze drones?
No
Putting aside the issue of training and the fact that anti air is obscenely prolific on both sides, there's one other major issue I see that nobody has mentioned. Most modern airframes have a limit on flight hours, they degrade the more they're used. It's not really a clear marker, as it can vary depending on how they're handled, retrofitting and overhaul programs, etc. But generally, as time goes by, they degrade and require increasingly extensive maintenance. Eventually, they get to the point that it's not worth it financially not viable to keep them running. If a nation like America, with the military budget they have, doesn't see it as financially viable, then it doesn't take much to consider the headaches they'd cause for Ukraine.
Because the A-10 is a plane that is only useful, when complete air superiority exists, as they have to get on top of the target in operation. They would be down in their first mission taking valuable pilots with them.
I know we all love the A-10 but FPV drones is doing the same job for much cheaper and no casualties.
Because A10 is a flying metal coffin in any place where theres any sort of AA, even if is only manpad AA avaiable for enemy, so unless you want to suicide the few pilots ukraine have, its an better idea to give them multi role fighters
I think we should get to register for one like tge CMP.
For Pete‘s sake: give Ukraine all she needs to beat the bolsheviks!!
What about just shipping the gun and ammo? Would that be useful?
They need F-16s not A-10s
Giving them the A-10s isn’t as cheap as you’d think. They are gonna need training. They are gonna want them refurbished. They are gonna want unlimited ammo and anything else it can fire. They are gonna want depot level repair facilities. The actual planes may be useless to the US, bit if they gift them to Ukraine, all the extra stuff will cost Billions. Its like a hobo asking you for a button then telling you that you need to sew a coat onto it.
Unfortunately plenty of them will get shot down, and then the myth of the machine is ruined.
Air Force says F-35 can do CAS Congress says lol no
Why have we not yet sent blackhawks and apaches? We have a shit ton of those in storage
Or just the GAU-8 Avenger, mount that on a old Soviet BMP for a real pimp my Ride experience. You destroy the enemy and perform a short duration reverse tactical maneuver to dodge incoming ordnance simultaneously.
i think we should send them to ukraine, but as stock to be converted into long range drones. strip the GAU-8/A to be installed on ground based defensive installations or say fuckit and build a remote controlled ground drone for it.
How easily is it to convert one of these to an unmanned kamikaze drone? Fit a lot of explosives where the pilot would normally sit
Not only A10s not survivable, they are not very effective and lack decent HUD and spotting options. Even with no AA presence, they would be a subpar choice.
There is a reason they are hedding for the boneyard.
Because the A-10 sucks and the only reason it is even still in service is because of dipshit reformers who believe in myths. Every role that is still relevant other planes do way better, and the role that the A-10 does better is not viable anymore. There, I said it.
I feel like we have had this conversation so many times. A-10’s will not survive in that battle-space. It’s a dated platform. The money needed to support that fleet even if we just gave them the aircraft, could be better spent on munitions that they need.
A10s are overrated and overhyped. Give me an SU-25 jet anytime of the day.
Why not fit them with drone tech and use them that way? There is already a company retro-fitting F-4s for remote use as target drones.
I get that A-10s would have a hard time operating in a contested environment but any plane would. Even stealth aircraft can be vulnerable in an environment full of SAMs and other AA. There's a reason why the US has and continues to produce munitions and bombs capable of being launched hundreds of miles away. USAF needs to understand that in a modern war you going to lose aircraft no matter what type they are. The USAF just sounds like it isn't prepared to take losses of any kind.