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2016-07-21 Home Front: Politix

This 1973 war is why the Air Force thinks the A-10 can't survive in modern combat

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Posted by gorb 2016-07-21 13:35|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 If we are faced with an advanced enemy, the air force is supposed to be doing more than sending in A-10's unsupported. Any SAM battery stupid enough to turn on their radars should die in minutes from HARMs. If you are unwilling to prepare the battlefield, you are going to suffer massive losses. This is what the whole concept of COMBINED ARMS is about. That means the air arm needs fights, bombers and CAS aircraft, not the overpriced version of a chinese knock off swiss army aircraft.

Posted by Silentbrick 2016-07-21 13:46|| 2016-07-21 13:46|| Front Page Top

#2 All the Air Force wants to do is take down fighters. They don't consider it manly to deal with tanks.

Take CAS away from them and give it to the Army and Marines. That way the mission will be done by people who care about it.

(And if the Air Force won't provide air cover to CAS from other services, then disband them and fold them back into the Army.)

Posted by Rob Crawford 2016-07-21 14:04|| 2016-07-21 14:04|| Front Page Top

#3 SEAD anyone? Each tool has strengths and weaknesses, but Combined means the Zoomies need to be a part. If Air supremacy is their sole mission, the CAS mission and the tools to do it becomes another form of direct fire strategy, just a bit more vertical, and the ground forces are the place for those tools.

Posted by NoMoreBS 2016-07-21 14:12|| 2016-07-21 14:12|| Front Page Top

#4 IIRC it was the new missile/gun combination of the SA-6 and ZSU-23 that caused the problem. At first Israeli pilots would split-S upon being lit up by the SA6 radar - right into the sights of the quad 23mm guns.

Once they figured it out there was hell to pay.

Posted by Peanut Gallery 2016-07-21 16:35|| 2016-07-21 16:35|| Front Page Top

#5 Of course, not everyone agrees that the Yom Kippur War is still a proper example of the close-air-support debate.

D'Oh! The Soviets, Egyptians and Syrians thought, planned and wargamed until they had a decent set of tactics against the IAF doctrine. When the Israelis started adapting the situation changed. Kenneth Pollack's Arabs at War thesis as to why the opening moves worked so well and the rest was the normal mediocrity in action.

They are assuming the F-35 will ever be built in sufficient quantities to actually do anything in that high-intensity combat theater.

Posted by magpie 2016-07-21 16:55|| 2016-07-21 16:55|| Front Page Top

#6 Remember that little war we had in '91? Where Iraq and Baghdad were the most heavily defended air space outside of Moscow? Remember how the A-10s were shot down in droves because it couldn't survive?

No, of course you fucking don't. We didn't lose one! (yeah a couple were shot up and had to be scrapped, but they made it home)

The A-10 with combined arms thrives and terrorizes enemy ground forces and I guarantee the F-35 won't perform as well. Especially if they come in low and a 20mm anti-air gunner does a good eyeball track. How well would the flying turkey do against shells vs. the A-10? It would be very expensive, burning metal is what it would be.

Posted by DarthVader 2016-07-21 17:12|| 2016-07-21 17:12|| Front Page Top

#7 Darth: Four were shot down, one shot up and crashed on landing, and one was shot up and crashed on landing during extreme weather, totalling six losses in Feb. 1991.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2016-07-21 17:18|| 2016-07-21 17:18|| Front Page Top

#8 A-10 has no future against a proper enemy armed with manpads.

Posted by Tarzan Slailet2796 2016-07-21 17:46|| 2016-07-21 17:46|| Front Page Top

#9 After 8 years of riddling our military personel with transvestites and imcompetant PC people, no matter what our weapons are, we will be defeated. Just like the navy strayed into Iranian waters recently and surrendered at a moments notice.

Posted by Unelet Protector of the Sith2424 2016-07-21 18:09|| 2016-07-21 18:09|| Front Page Top

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