The F-35 is not a CAS aircraft because glide munitions are not suited for the role. Even the latest GBU-39D with SAL option is still a 2-5 minute flyout system. As soon as you bring the jet closer than 30km, you are at increasing risk to EO attacks from both MPAD scattered randomly about and high end ADV/MSAM like the Pantsir.
Or the 9M100. Or the IRIS-T. Or that squirrely R-27TE knock together the Houthis use.
Between high end, western, FPA systems on offer as _marine FLIR_ (order from Amazon or Ali) and the sheer competence of increasingly IMU+Datalink capable EO systems, the notion that you can 'outrange' the threat is just...ludicrous.
Obviously, this applies 'X10' to the Hog. Which should never be flying high enough to use either X8 or X16 GBU-39. Because it's got gerbils on exercise wheels in terms of fan:core ratios and so not only is it a thrustless beast, it runs out of thrust and has slow windup, at much lower altitudes.
Even the airfoil, thick as it is, is starting to run up on some pretty hard VNe limitations, by the time you get up to the 20 block or so.
However; what will 'fix' the A-10 is what will break the F-35A/B/C.
Namely the availability of Increment 2 JAGM. Which will give it a 25km low-slant shot, fully compatible with ATP-XR, that rivals or exceeds the abilties of the EOTS in terms of 'mode and options'. The AGM-179 is available, right now, via a three shot launcher, similar to the Brimstone one. And as soon as you put that on an F-35A, it's not stealth.
Last I heard, the F-35 still has speed and thermal issues, low down. So it's not like it can drop down low and 'dash in' to take shots. Which means that you have a briar patch issue. In that the A-10 is happy down in the weeds and, with a decent map and a lousy autopilot but at least LASTE, it can also do the kinds of pop up for sensor graze here. Fire on targets from over there. And, by range or by bearing, get rid of or bypass the threat radars all on it's own.
Will it be as efficient at doing so as an F-35 with an AGM-88G/SIAW or whatever?
Probably not.
The ALR-56 is not the ASQ-239, not even close, so the option to get a quick geolocate as 3DRK slant on a careless emitter and then lock him in with the EOTS is going to be potent. But...
Now you are down to a two weapon bay count of SIAW as your primary DEAD flyout option whereas the A-10 can literally bring X12 AGM-179 to the party with X7 AGR-20 as a backup.
Of course, 'in theory' the F-35 can also use the Wormhole Generator to create a wall of digital stealth behind which other jets can fly close enough to release 10-20km JDAM shots. But that again presupposes that the Pantsir or some followon, does not continue to improve as well.
Generally, you do not want to go within an EO envelope without something big and solid to mask behind. And as soon as the F-35 goes low, it faces a lot of kinematic and signature issues which RF stealth can do nothing about. Not least because it's now in an inferior lookdown position whereby every Tom, Dick and Ivan can see the right-angle features and lumps and humps of its own upper hemisphere hotside (cockpit, ECS, Cannon, empennage, fuselage upper deck).
Not to mention plastic airplane burn real gute syndrome and the lack of adequate fire extinguishing and OBIGS for all that gas saddle tanked around that very hot engine bay. As a napalm in a trash bag event, waiting to happen.
Just one lucky API round later.
OTOH, the A-10 is not going to be outrunning any airframe, ever, but with IBCT PAC-3 and NASAMS, it is likely safer than if it had an F-15 on-station with AIM-260. And it may well have both. As that Eagle is no longer penetrating but with ALQ-250, APG-82 and the PAS Pod, it's got really good eyes to cue the SAMs on anything coming in from sub-horizon.
If you also give the A-10 the ASQ-236 (Dragon Eye), the SLAR will probably match the APG-81/85 (no positioner) for useful popup and image+GMTT standoff, out to 60-80km. And that means you now have Pave Mover equivalent capabilities which, again, the F-35 can match. But only from a standoff position, nose-on with datalink pass down via LINK-16. That sounds like an incredible waste of a penetrating platform to me.
Last I heard, the A-10 does not yet have an SDR which will habla in Link-16. But it does have the seven other radios needed to Grunt Speak including SADL/ROVER. MADL is nice, MADL is not the be all/end all of TTNT because it's a different waveband and requires specific apertures to walk the talk. You can't just scab it onto an airframe.
Why you want to risk a secure, high end, ISR comms capability system in CAS missioning is another question... The Russians have _given away_ L265 ECM and No-35 Irbis by losing only a pair of Su-30/35 over Ukraine that didn't quite pancake hard enough. And now face the uneviable task of refitting brand new jets with No-36 (Su-57 radar) and yet another step upgrade, beyond Khibiny, to get back their eyes-on and ICMS edge.
You just don't do that, casually.
On the other hand, everything on the A-10 is OTS. If it loses RF security, go to Radio Shack and buy another model router.
Now let's talk operations. According to CRS/CBO stuff, the F-35 has an MA rate of around 51-54%. And an FMC rate which drifts between 21-29%. This, with New Car Smell airframe that is, on average, five years old (enough time to fill the spares pipe, not enough to begin to suffer sports injuries and lose it's sortie generation for put-away-wet natural causes...) is disturbing.
It speaks to the reality that an airframe stuffed with all manner of whiztronics, having things like weapons bays and stealth coatings (which _do degrade_, see the rusty F-35Cs) and systems like the IPP may be too clever for it's own good.
Even as a _shortfall_ in sortie generation speaks to it not being present for tasking in a condition where it's natural hunting ground is 50-100-200-400km the other side of the FLOT. I could see sections of two F-35s, one with AARGM and AIM-120D3, the other with (Sidekick) Six AIM-120D3 (because AIM-260 is going to be an 8", 500lb, weapon, incompatible with multi-carry in the F-35 weapons bays) being the chief fighter sweep and deep-DEAD for a B-21 force with a belly full of AGM-158s.
Now you're talking a 1,000-1,500km back. As indeed, the time when the F-35s flew 900 miles from Eglin to Oshkosh in 'two hours on 5,000lbs of fuel' suggests as the mini-111 role it was actually designed to win, in rolling up the Russian so that a B61-12/13 equiped B-21 force could take Moscow or the White Mountain Perimeter sites or even just the western silo based missiles a few hundred miles north of the Ukrainian border.
Because now we're playing a very serious game with an enemy whom we cannot afford to exchange blows with.
Between mission durations of up to 10-12hrs, from Volkel, Lakenheath, Mildenhall or similar, far-from-Iskander, strikable airfields, and the LO Barn visits to sustain that capability on an apparently highly breakable airframe, do you think you will even HAVE an F-35 coverage option for OBAS/BAI/CAS troll for fire missions on the frontline?
What if that front line is the Persian Gulf as Iran, a full member of SCO/BRICS decides or is told to 'do their part' in securing the Persian Gulf?
If you're facing a hundred+ FAC-Ms in assault waves and half of those have 20-200km AShM, sudden X12 AGM-179s starts to look a lot more appealing than 2-4 AGM-65 Mavericks. Or X2 GBU-12/49.
The point here is that the F-35 is not a CAS jet in it's primary variant. It's not likely going to be much of anything as the USN slow rolls the F-35C, hoping to 'outlast interest' as they slink towards the F/A-XX door, as they always do when forced to participate in a joint program they don't lead. And the Marines, well, 'Special Kids' that they are, they are simply non penetrating in any kind of external carriage, beast mode, role where JAGM could matter. They are also very, very, cheap. And don't tend to service the kinds of advanced weapons which could make them LSCO compatible. I mean, a 22,000 dollar AGR-20 makes them cry as you take their last dollar for crayons... Even if you could bring rockets on a Navy boat.
We seem to be headed for war as the need to establish a fenceline to keep Russo-Sino trade goods, energy and food out of Europe has turned Ukraine, the gateway node to 800 million Europeans, 465 million Arabs and 1.2 billion Africans, into a wasteland.
And we do not care because, ultimately, the OBOR threat of internal transport on 100kph fast freight is going to wreck us as half the planet moves off the dollar and into genuine (no IMF/WB, Cold War, debt holding) free trade.
With that as a given, the U.S. is picking fights it cannot win with the existing force inventory. And so ditching the A-10 to recover budget authority on things like a Blk.4/TR-3, 'no really, this is full rate ready', F-35 is kinda dumb. Because Blk.4 is already 2 years late a billion over budget and will be further split into untested-but-here and copes-and-dreams mini-blocks, just to begin to get it through the door for increasingly sceptical European customers.
Whereas an A-10 upgrade with SLAR, the AGM-179 (which we need, regardless, because glide bombs are not CAS weapons), and maybe a DIRCM/TRD set of augmented ECM pods could be paid for out of petty cash.
As, apparently, 'We just keep discovering billions behind the couch...'
I would be the first to tell you that the A-10 is not the ideal solution. The ideal solution is an MQ-20 in a 50:50 Stealth/No Stealth flying bomb pylon with every other jet a sensor/relay node. Using a combination of Hatchet/Hammer class micros and JAGM-F for LIC and something like SPEAR-3 (100km @ Mach .9, below the horizon) for HIC.
Unfortunately, under the War We Brung exception of insane political leadership, that's not even on the horizon as the Three Air Forces are determined to chain a 15-20hr mission capability to a 5-10 hour fighter airframe via CCA, thereby neutering what makes UCAVs useful as both ranged and gapfill systems. 'But Bruh, Skynet!'
However; there are some options. ADM-160 could easily be expanded into an optical/RF pointer, when paired with MALD/MALD-J, as barking dogs.
That gets you a freebie on the SHORAD/M-SAM level threats. AGM-179 flatly _NEEDS TO BE HERE_ and AGM-179 Inc.2 gets you AGM-179 Inc.3 as JAGM-F which should be bay compatible.
GBU-39, GBU-53, these are NOT CAS WEAPONS. We discovered this, way back in the day, (I wanna say it was 2012 but I could be off) when the Rocketeer F-15E crews were given some crates of SDB to play with in AfG and promptly returned to sender as not compatible with mission.
Anytime you have a .5 Mach, minutes later, headwinds unsure, weapon on a threat which is displacing every 15-20 seconds, even if you have LOS as the do so, you are playing CSI Miami games with chalk outlines and coroners reports.
The point here is that the A-10 is a stable, (good fatigue, good cockpit with HRDS, adequate comms) which just needs a couple things to be compatible with a lot more than what it does now. Both low and high intensity. Give it those weapons/sensors and let the tactics build reflect them, and you will find it a lot easier to bridge to the F-35, higher, further back (Inc.2 is a 40km weapon from altitude, 60km with AB boosting), using similar (Inc.3, JAGM-F).
It's always better to saturate the threat, from range, with numbers, but when you only have two internal, stealth, stations and a 4 million dollar SIAW cost, it becomes particularly critical.
For the moment, we need things-with-wings as an immediately deployable force to cover the least threatening areas with the most applicable weapons. And that is, for instance, the A-10 in the PG or Mediterranean, the F-35A in Ukraine. And the F-35B/C 'somewhere east' of Taiwan.
This is not because the A-10 is a great high intensity conflict platform. From the earliest days in CAS flyoff against the A-7D at McConnell and pre-JAAT workups at Ft. Benning and Irwin, its abilities were defined not by the airframe or the gun but rather the standoff of the Maverick. The same is true today, except instead of a rail-forward missile with LOBL required target LOS, we have LOAL loft on an IMU and long range LDP targeting and trajectory shaped terminals to make a 32lb, dual heat, warhead do what it once took a 125lb, single stage, warhead to match with the AGM-65.
Nor is the A-10 ever going to be outclassed because the F-35 is such a great followon CAS provider. The Algernon is a piece of junk. Just like I've always said it would be.
Rather, 'we need both' because we are in the unenviable, Hitlerian, position of fighting a politician's war of choice, at least 5 years before we were planned ready to do so, with the new generation airframes fully transitioned to frontline-ready service (minimum 10 sortie per CAS day) with modern weapons in the inventory to offset their blatant vulnerabilities in the flatly much greater risk area of the FEBA mission environment.
We have literally come full circle as the Next Step in CAS is likely not air centric at all. To slow, too vulnerable, to few and far between to hit very fleeting, small, targets.
You will launch a drone to snap the target picture, and then you will fire a smart, ballistic, round at 14-15,000 dollars per shot densities (M1156 PGK) to lock it down and use tactics of isolation and starvation via transport interdiction, to starve them out of stubborn-stupid field fortifications (because man cannot fight the modern combined arms threats. Starting with drones, they move too fast and are too many...)
Depot targets will be the responsibility of GLCM or recoverable LAMs with micro munitions, removing the costs of the bus platform altogether.
Leaving the fixed wing force to hit industrial and transport targets at depth.
From the factory to the frontal depot forwards to the FSCL/zero line, wars will be won by starving logistics. And 'CAS' will be outmoded by COST on a per-man basis of killing individual effectors with 1,500 dollar FPV transitioning to HK (ATC) autonomous swarms.
But we are even further behind on this, than we are on the manned-air option.
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