<story><title>The Air Force Initiative to Replace the A-10 Warthog Is Vaporware</title><url>http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-air-force-initiative-to-replace-the-a-10-warthog-is-1771018719</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>beloch</author><text>CAS is a job best done by relatively slow, but well armored aircraft flying low and slow. Pilots need to have time to develop awareness of both their allies and their enemies. Pilots of this type of mission are going to come under fire, which is something the air force is fundamentally unwilling to accept. Marines in planes, on the other hand, are likely to accept similar risk to marines on the ground if it reduces risk for all. Given that CAS pilots must work most closely with those on the ground, it makes little sense for them to be air force.&lt;p&gt;That being said, drones are probably the real A-10 killers. They can fly right down an enemy&amp;#x27;s throat without risking their pilot&amp;#x27;s lives. VR technology promises to give drone pilots a better field of view than any cockpit offers, and pilots could potentially switch control to a new drone when their previous drone is forced to return to base. This means one pilot could follow an engagement from start to finish, instead of multiple pilots trading off. This would greatly reduce the likelihood of pilot error and friendly fire incidents.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Air Force Initiative to Replace the A-10 Warthog Is Vaporware</title><url>http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-air-force-initiative-to-replace-the-a-10-warthog-is-1771018719</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>awinter-py</author><text>If there&amp;#x27;s a consensus on what&amp;#x27;s wrong with pentagon procurement, the bullet points are: 
(1) no &amp;#x27;feasability feedback&amp;#x27; mechanism to reject wishlist items that inflate complexity or delivery date,
(2) focus on &amp;#x27;joint procurement&amp;#x27;, i.e. one product that solves army &amp;#x2F; air force &amp;#x2F; navy problems, i.e. a flying submarine with wheels,
(3) lead times are too long for bespoke products (by the time it&amp;#x27;s delivered your needs have changed).&lt;p&gt;A-10 was built based on CAS lessons that had been learned the hard way in Nam, where helicopters had to take the place of fixed-wing airplanes that couldn&amp;#x27;t do the job. (meaning it was built to do one thing well). It wasn&amp;#x27;t a swiss-army knife.&lt;p&gt;If you believe that it&amp;#x27;s not practical to build a swiss-army knife aircraft, then you probably weren&amp;#x27;t surprised by the crappy fighters we turned out in the 90s and 00s. The head airplane designer on china&amp;#x27;s F-22 killer basically laughed when he was asked about the F-35, and said &amp;#x27;the best thing that ever happened to us was when the US decided to put VTOL in their main fighter -- and not even in all of them.&amp;#x27; China could never afford to do that but arguably the US can&amp;#x27;t either. A post-IOC F-35C had its wings fall off (yes) and the pentagon lockheed liaison&amp;#x27;s explanation was &amp;#x27;the pilot was too heavy, we&amp;#x27;re looking into it&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Even more interesting than the A-10 is the F-16; it was a backburner project at lockheed and the pentagon tried to shut it down because they didn&amp;#x27;t want it stealing any PR thunder from the bigger badder F-15. These days the F-16 is doing every job because it&amp;#x27;s cheap, easy to maintain, lots of people can fly them. Lockheed just shut down the line for these but the aftermarket is booming.</text></comment>