Future of the A-10 Warthog

That sir is a true statement!

 

Yes, I read somewhere that a sustained recoil from the gun is a pretty significant percentage of the thrust of one of the engines.

 

In my early days I worked the flightline with F-15s. During the winter's cold you could stand at the fringes of the jet's exhaust to get warm, with only a bit of buffeting. Try that with a A-10 and you'll nearly freeze to death.

 

In the early 80's, I think, I chatted with an A-10 pilot who was standing by his airplane that was on display. I talked with him about it and he mentioned that when the gun was fired at full rate the muzzle gases would shut the engines down. He said that the "engineers were working it out." Turns out that they installed two deep strakes on the sides of the fuselage just aft of the guns. That picture that was posted illustrated the thick mass of muzzle gas from the gun. What an awesome weapon! Why can't our politicians understand how to apply our weapons and troops?

 

They're the same engines as on the S-3 Viking, which was called the "Hoover".

 

I can definitely tell you that when you were a range officer, the sound of the GAU-8 drowned out any engine noise, and that was with practice rounds. Could not say the same for any of the 20 mm guns.

 

Stand behind the M-1 tank. It will keep you warm .

 

Oy vey.....
http://theaviationist.com/2016/03/24/us-air-force-retiring-a10-anyway/

Even though we have nothing that can replace it, we are going to retire it anyway. So sorry you guys on the ground that need CAS.

 

When it comes to turbines... the diversity is inspiring.

A-10 flightline maintenance was the closest I ever got to being a soldier.

 

They'll just use something even older.
Decades-old OV-10 Bronco planes used against ISIS - CNNPolitics.com

 

Ney- The A-10C has been extended in service to at least 2022 if you read through the rest of the thread here. The A-10 is not the only aircraft that can perform CAS. One of the most successful in Iraq and Syria has been the B-1B, which can carry a whole bunch of PGMs (144 SDBs) and stay over the troops for much longer than an A-10. Those are rotating back to the US and are being replaced with B-52Hs, which have been upgraded with the 1760 PGM bus to handle SDBs and all the other PGMs. Having an aircraft that can stay on station for hours instead of minutes and that never runs out of munitions is a big advantage. The B-2A has similar capabilities.

 

Happy Brrrrrt Day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvIJvPj_pjE

 

Taz - thanks for the info. I have always found you to be a fountain of info about aviation. Sad to see the U-2 go....and almost as sad as I was about the SR-71.

What was your opinion of the phasing out of the Blackbird? Just curious. It is my favorite plane of all time but I realize that it was costly to keep in the air, parts were taken from other aircraft to keep the airworthy in the air and has been replaced by drones, satellites, etc.

 

The SR-71 was retired for the same reason my F-111s were, too expensive to maintain. Both were late late 50s, early 60s designs and parts were getting difficult to find. F-4s suffered a similar fate. You could operate 2-3 wings of F-16s for the same amount as a wing of F-4s or F-111s. The SR-71s were much more expensive to maintain than either of those fighters and needed their own dedicated fleet of KC-135s to handle the JP-7 fuel an SR used.

 

Man! How I enjoyed those videos of the A-10 firing! That is an airplane that I would love to fly. After hearing the GAU on the firing runs I thought that its sound wasn't much different than 8 cal. 50.'s going off at once. Just a bit sharper. Great stuff! Thanks

 

I don't know about the sound of the gun. But clearly when you're on the ground, pinned down by ennemy fire, hearing that sound coming in must be the greatest relief.
Clear illustration of how a simple design aimed at doing one thing well endures the test of time. Much better than all the 'one plane' does all approach

 

Knew some people in that part of the Air Force. As I understand it SR parts bins for the most part were empty. Keeping a plane airworthy meant parting out another. I was told there were zero spare engines and few parts. Already airframes without airworthy engines. Most tooling was required to be destroyed at end of production so making more parts was out of the question. Plane was never intended to last as long as it did and was never replaced so it was just natural selection at work.

 

Thibaut- When you are a grunt, all you really want is to be able to talk to someone in an airplane who can put ordnance on the target. Personally, it would cheer me up a great deal to know someone had 144 SDBs that could each hit a separate target for about as long as I needed them. Even more scary to the bad guys because the bombs appear from nowhere. The system that terrified the Iraqis in Desert Storm was the B-52 and they could not even hit anything with their dumb bombs from 45,000'. Just seeing a string of bombs hundreds of yards long coming from a clear blue sky scared the crap out of them, even if it did not kill too many of them. Now the B-52H drops PGMs that will hit something.

 

Terry, your comments must be classic because I worked with a German expatriate who was an 88MM gun crew member in 1945 in Hamburg, Germany. He described the frantic firing that they did with the 88's to fill a block of sky with flak as the B-24's were coming over. He also described the fear of watching a string of bombs coming down that was sure to get them all but then hitting some distance behind them. He said that they watched this type of thing many times and the fear never left them. He was 14 years old at the time.

 

Bob- Just watched "Enemy at the Gates" (after reading the book) about snipers and Stalingrad, and you can see that when the He-111s are dropping their strings of bombs.

 

Was that SOP?

Any idea as to the thinking behind it? Seems kinda shortsighted....

 

Usually, the tooling was put aside until everyone was absolutely convinced it would no longer be needed. On the F-111s, Congress added 12 additional aircraft in 1972, 1973 and 1974. So the tooling was dragged out of storage to build those additional F-111Fs. By 1974, you could tell, and those 1974 contract F-111Fs were put together pretty crookedly. Enough crooked that they were significantly slower than ones built in 1970.

 

Among other types which were put back into production were the Grumman C-2 and the Lockheed C-5, so obviously the tooling was still around.

 

I have been told and I also seem to recall from one of the books on the history of the airplane that due to some of the brand new technology, all of it being very secret that it was a condition in the contract with Lockheed. Many of the parts were ordered 3 copies for every airframe, one for assembly, one for spare parts and one for testing, usually destructive testing.

One of my friends a Beale said retiring the SR was just not a choice.

 

I don't know. At the time technology was progressing so fast I am sure they thought they would be well beyond the SR capabilities by the time it was an issue.

If you told the guys at the Pentagon in 1960 that the B52 was still going to be operational in 2016 they would have sent the guys with butterfly nets after you.
How many of those are still flying only by virtue of the parts available from Davis Monthan?