Designing the replacement for the A-10

Arjen said:
@asVAL You should read The $5 Billion Misunderstanding by James P Stevenson before you advocate digging up that old corpse.
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I live in a hellhole Southeast Asian nation and already had some terrible experience with Amazon's international shipping service. Also not really wanting to commit piracy here so I'd say no. But my comment is more aimed at the A-12's technical characteristics which does provide some reference on how a stealthy, flying wing A-10 could be.
Or Northrop A-X.
 
The A-12 project was a complete shambles. One of the senior officers involved The then Secretary of the Navy stepped down after the Tailhook Scandal. He should have been fired earlier, for criminal deceit and bloody-minded incompetence in the A-12 affair. As well as many others of the officials involved. Most of them found out, when the whole sorry mess came tumbling down, the only way to fall is up. And they lived happily ever after.
 
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If you are fighting someone in the 2030s without manpads technology and caring about casualties from danger close, it is clearly a non-peer conflict probably involving nation building.

Personally I think "lethal" weapons are the wrong default assumption with this category of conflict. Why kill them when you can scale your response as desired?

I see drones mounted on pylons of fighter jets that can carry a whole host of weapons from guns, rockets, bombs to tasers, webs, microwave (anti-drone), dazzler, gas, to VTOL with robot arms that deals with the problem via direct contact.

Dedicated large aircraft with a single aimpoint is dumb. A normal jet packing half a dozen or more drones can engage multiple aimpoints at once is far superior.
Drone.jpg

Some part of me sees dropping terminators with landing jetpacks off fighters and call it a day.
 
chimeric oncogene said:
Why not just a Mojave or a CCA type unmanned aircraft with 16x hellfire? Have the Apache or Commanche or other FAC platform cue the targets and suppress defenses as in the Fulda Gap days, and have the fixed wing unmanned aircraft provide magazine depth. Replace the aircraft with artillery or other shooters as the situation requires.
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Because sometimes the bad guys are close enough to friendly troops that Hellfires would cause friendly casualties.

Those situations are why you put guns on your CAS plane. You may not have those situations happen often, but you do need to have the tool for those situations.

If we're just using aircraft to deliver antitank weapons, well, yes, a Mojave with 16x Hellfires is your better option.
Side note: I expect the US Army to slowly replace their MQ1C Gray Eagles with Mojaves and arm them. USAF hasn't lost their mind over Army controlling armed drones yet, so I think it'll fly.​
 

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