A-X all over again - USAF pushes for A-10 replacement

[Ainen]

Survivability is more than stealth.
The primary threats for aircraft performing CAS are AAA, small arms, and MANPADS. You need an aircraft that can take a punch and stay in the fight.

AAA&Small arms are secondary now, because of MANPADS; you don't enter their range/altitude envelope. If anyone still meets AAA threat among fixed wings, it's in fact interdictors, when going for a low altitude penetration.
On the other hand, CAS aircraft over Ukraine did receive their fair share of SAMs and A2A missiles of all sizes.

That is so true quellish. The A-10 is just such an aircraft, unique in it's ability to take hits and still keep flying even with gapping holes in the airframe. Show me another aircraft that can survive like that.

Frogfoot, hah. Probably the most shot at aircraft of the last 50 years.

 

[iverson]

AAA&Small arms are secondary now, because of MANPADS; you don't enter their range/altitude envelope. If anyone still meets AAA threat among fixed wings, it's in fact interdictors, when going for a low altitude penetration. On the other hand, CAS aircraft over Ukraine did receive their fair share of SAMs and A2A missiles of all sizes. Frogfoot, hah. Probably the most shot at aircraft of the last 50 years.

A previous generation of experts declared AAA and small arms to be negligible threats. The need for the A-10 was one of the lessons learned. Plus ça change ...

 

[Scott Kenny]

A previous generation of experts declared AAA and small arms to be negligible threats. The need for the A-10 was one of the lessons learned. Plus ça change ...

In Vietnam, small arms were a threat because the entire country would point an AK into the air at a 45deg angle and let fly if they heard jet noise.

I'm never going to discount AAA. Not when every vehicle in the US military has at least one .50cal mounted on it. Not when there are quad 14.5mm and twin 23mm guns everywhere in a Russian TOE.

 

[Ainen]

In Vietnam, small arms were a threat because the entire country would point an AK into the air at a 45deg angle and let fly if they heard jet noise.

I'm never going to discount AAA. Not when every vehicle in the US military has at least one .50cal mounted on it. Not when there are quad 14.5mm and twin 23mm guns everywhere in a Russian TOE.

i think days of low altitude ops over a capable enemy are generally gone, it's unsustainable, at least not with modern approaches to pilot training.
High-risk CSAR/risky high speed helo escort - perhaps, but by no means it's something normal/mundane.
Are those missions enough to build plane around them - i honestly wonder. Reasonable survivability and even armor can be bought cheaper

 

[yasotay]

CSAR over enemy held territory is high risk, especially in daylight. Accuracy of small arms and MANPAD (any non-aided visual directed weapons) falls off significantly at night. This advantage of night will of course be reduced over time as more countries acquire night vision devices to be fielded to the tactical forces in numbers.
It would not surprise me if pilots are being briefed to not expect to be recovered during daylight hours due to the risk. This is also why many western air forces are providing extensive 'escape and evasion' training courses to the aircrews of aircraft that can be expected to operate near or beyond the front line trace of combat forces.
Radar operated weapon systems do present a different problem, but then this is a two way street as the emitter is certainly detectable. This leads back to CSAR mission packages that provide supporting fires to reduce the risk of electronic detection affecting the mission. Also the density of defenses tends to be around critical military and political nodes so finding a route of least risk is a time honored means of avoiding detection and/or engagement. Speed is important as it compresses command and control decision making. Of course the less time you spend in the danger area, the less chances someone is going to engage you.

 

[Skygato]

In CSAR, as well as other mission types (CAS, air assault) temporary control of the air is necessary to facilitate them. It is nearly impossible to predict the specific circumstances that CSAR will need to be performed in or the composition (How far away is the downed aircrew, what sort of terrain are they surrounded by, density and composition of AD, etc). The question should be less of "How do I make an aircraft survive in such a hostile environment", as few aircraft are capable of doing a self escort through a forest of AD assets. Some capabilities that may lend themselves to survivability(such as speed) may also negatively affect the performance of said aircraft in its intended roles (CAS, FAC(A))

In near future scenario, a CSAR package may be expanded with sacrificial UAS swarm to prevent the rescue flight from getting shot down. It also may be able to provide some sort of way to detect opposing SPAAs. You could still operate an A-X-alike aircraft in that environment alongside the rescuing helicopter/tiltrotor. The need to suppress & destroy any search parties or pop-up manpads probably cannot be done by any near-future UAS.

Of course, this comes with a huge asterisk. As mentioned before, CSAR is one of the most highly variable missions there is and is currently going through it's own crisis now that there's no more future orders for the HH-60W and the 60G is starting to get long in the tooth. Divesting the A-10 is now only compounding the crisis.

 

[shin_getter]

Infantry don't kill infantry, artillery kill infantry.

Having ability to defeat enemy infantry in contact doesn't matter in a big war, since it is the enemy artillery and drones that is doing the killing on your infantry. Unless you can reduce the enemy to a light infantry force without functional radios, CAS is a unimportant mission. You can scalpel enemy rifleman away, and then a 155mm mission lands and the infantry is wiped. The idea that the air force should have aircraft for killing enemy infantry within 50m of friendlies instead of killing all enemy artillery and win the war can only come from people thinking of zero casualty wars.

The infantry themselves are getting long range fires ability, with fpv duels extending to 5 to 20km and every bit indirect fire from mortars to grenade launchers getting greatly increased effects with modern comms. Rifle fire is less and less relevant even when two light infantry formations get into contact and the level of dispersion can only go up and up with the increased sensing and weapons range of modern infantry.

With the level of drone spam common on many battlefields, interlocking ground based AD is necessary for survival against other ground forces. It is pretty funny to jump into this threat envelope with a platform 3 orders of magnitudes more expensive. Personally I don't think any IFV without AA capable autocannon can be considered acceptable as a new build today.

We should all realize that the current day formations have embarrassingly horrible air defense capability compared to what is being planned and what is necessary to survive current offensive weapons.

 

[Scott Kenny]

i think days of low altitude ops over a capable enemy are generally gone, it's unsustainable, at least not with modern approaches to pilot training.
High-risk CSAR/risky high speed helo escort - perhaps, but by no means it's something normal/mundane.
Are those missions enough to build plane around them - i honestly wonder. Reasonable survivability and even armor can be bought cheaper

The V-22 says hi. So does the V-280.

And the A-10 was technically designed as a CSAR escort to replace the old Skyraiders (among other jobs).

I mentioned this on the NGAD thread, how I see there being 4 basic types of CCA/Loyal Wingman drones:

1. Flying AAM weapons bay. I don't have a good mental image for what this might look like. Needs to be big enough to carry about 2000lbs of AAMs, roughly 6x AMRAAMs and 2x Sidewinders. The Sidewinders are there to have an IR seeker in addition to the ARH missiles, not because we expect this thing to dogfight. If we get dual-seeker BVRAAMs, we can drop the 2x sidewinder requirement.
2. Recon. Probably going to look like TACIT BLUE, even if it's not that big. Same job, flying into A2AD space and providing radar and EO data to the rest of the horde, ideally without the bad guys finding the drone. May end up as two separate airframes, depending on how much space and power the radar and EO eyeball need. Could be as small as a JASSM, if we're okay with near-disposable levels of drone, and that would absolutely have separate radar and EO CCAs. Might use the stretched JASSM-ER airframe and recover via parachute.
3. EW. Replaces the EA-18G Growler, so it's going to have similar payload. ~7000lbs of jammers, a couple of AARGMs and a couple of JSOWs for time-critical SEAD/DEAD. Could use the same airframe as the Ground Attack CCA, but doesn't have to.
4. Ground Attack. I'm picturing something akin to the Northrop A-12 proposal here. 2x AMRAAM (optional), 2x AARGM, and 4x 2000lb bombs. I want a bomb rack that will let me stick 8x SDBs into the volume that a 2000lb bomb takes up for capacity reasons.

The manned A-10 replacement is mostly going to quarterback the drones for this work. Two seats, so the pilot can concentrate on flying the plane and the backseater can quarterback the drones (and play flying FAC if necessary). I'm going to give the manned plane a 25mm gun with a big ammo drum (enough for 10x 1sec bursts). It probably won't be used but one time in a hundred flights.

 

[shin_getter]

I don't know why people care about minimum payload for a drone when logically such forces should operate in a formation. The drone only need to have enough payload to carry the heaviest munition or subsystem.

Now there is advantage of building small airframes in logistics and attrition tolerance, and there is advantage in building bigger with more efficiency.

I'd expect that existing suitable engines would impose strong constraints in the short term and it'd take 2nd generation developments driving new engine requirements for more optimized designs to be built.

 

[Scott Kenny]

I don't know why people care about minimum payload for a drone when logically such forces should operate in a formation. The drone only need to have enough payload to carry the heaviest munition or subsystem.

It's about control links.

If your drone only carries 2x AMRAAMs it can be very small but it's also basically a one-shot deal: you use up one drone to shoot down one enemy plane, so you need as many drones as the enemy has planes. Which means you need as many control links as the enemy has planes.

If your drones are already smart enough to fly in a formation all by themselves, the manned plane saying "follow me" or whatever, then it's okay to use smaller drones. Groups of drones acting as a single unit for control link purposes.

But if your drone control link abilities are limited, then you need each drone to be able to shoot more than once. That's why I think the early CCAs are going to be bigger. Well, that and the size of equipment they need to haul. That EW drone is going to be big because the jammers are heavy, for example. Plus a ~2000lb weapons bay with space for 4x weapons (though as fat as those weapons are the bay might end up big enough to hold 4x 2000lb bombs).

Now there is advantage of building small airframes in logistics and attrition tolerance, and there is advantage in building bigger with more efficiency.

I'd expect that existing suitable engines would impose strong constraints in the short term and it'd take 2nd generation developments driving new engine requirements for more optimized designs to be built.

Yes, I'm expecting the CCAs to be a whole new "Century Series" of rapid developments as appropriately sized engines and airframes are developed. Initially using things like FJ44s or that Honeywell F125 out of the Taiwanese F-CK-1 if you need afterburners; then going to newly designed engines that are better optimized militarily.

 

[martinbayer]

Whoever thought you'd see these three flying in formation?

View attachment 709376

Bright Star 23 formation flight

A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon and an A-10 Thunderbolt II fly in formation with Pakistan Air Force JF-17 Thunder aircraft off of the wing of a U.S. Air Force KC-10 Extender during exercise Bright Star 23 over Egypt, Sept. 14, 2023. Bright Star 2023 is a multilateral U.S. Central Command...

www.dvidshub.net

There are pictures of the Concorde flying in formation with the Red Arrows Hawks, see https://www.alamy.com/red-arrows-ha...flypast-fairford-air-tattoo-image1857730.html, so I really don't comprehend your question? Any airplane may be photographed with any other airplane, as long as they share the same local airspace, so what's the surprise here?

 

[jsport]

Future threat tanks maybe launching as many three classes of uas from a single tank while mounting ever advancing hard kill APS. both the USAF and the USA need to be thinking way more long term than they appear to be currently.