Possible reason the A-10 is being dropped

To my knowledge, with few exceptions the air force -- even when it was part of the army -- has had little enthusiasm for ground support.

Current doctrine is that the army gets to play with rotary wing craft but doesn't get to fly fixed-wing. So, by that doctrine the Air Force gets the A-10. But by their own leanings, they don't want to do what it does, so they've been trying to rid themselves of it for years.

But -- I'm a life-long civilian, so what do I know?

The cannon as I recall was intended for ICBM intercept. MIRV bodies... The cannon is likely very close to the one I consulted about with the R&D/E company as they needed a fanout buffer and we had a good one. I developed a level shifter to get to the logic (non-standard) levels of the barrels in the R&D gun.

Mart> This is an interesting article that may explain why the Air Force

I suspect the U-2xx depleted heads of the cannon was part of it, as after an engagement the heads had to be recovered. Nothing like land mines sitting there for years and years. Remember they were tank busters.

Mart> >

I'm not sure that is correct as the A.F. has been engaged in ground support for it's whole existence. The entire purpose of the armed C-47's (Puff the Magic Dragon) was ground support and I was even bought several beers by Army guys when they found out that I was in the organization. Our big brag was that if we got there before They got through the fence that we never lost a camp.

But I might add that the Army was very jealous of their helicopter rights and privileges. We built two Hueys with twin mini guns and rocket pods at Nha Tang and had to go to the Army for help in adding the rocket pods and the fact that the Air Force was "building armed helicopters" went all the way to headquarters MAAGV.

( We got to keep our armed Hueys because the were labeled "for "Air Base Defense" :-)

John B. on Wed, 23 Sep 2015 10:26:45 +0700 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

Which doesn't mean that the USAF, the USAAF, or the Air Corps, or the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps had really like the tasking.

Yep. If the Army can't have fixed wing aircraft, then the Air Force does _not_ get rotary wing aircraft.

Turf wars, as bad as on a Union job.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

The Marines flew Harriers, presumably for CAS. I think the Harriers are being phased out. Maybe they should transition to the A-10

As they said in that article, and as I pointed out here six months ago or more, the A-10 was conceived before terrorists had MANPADS. Imagine trapshooting with loads that seek the clay pigeons electronically.

And so ground support has shifted toward high-flying aircraft with sharply targeted weapons. That new generation they talk about in the article, in addition to the soon-to-come laser weapons, change the game.

I've always liked the A-10, but they were designed to deal with the groundfire that was typical in the 1960s.

I'm not sure that the Marines would want a 40 year old airplane :-) But probably more to the point, can an A-10 do the same job?

The A.F. says that retiring them would save $3.7 billion from 2015 to

2019.

ICBM's are rather fragile things and I think a laser could do some damage. An A-10 is a tank buster, what can a laser do to 10" plus of armor plate?

500LB laser guided bombs might be the replacemnet for an A-10. They did use these in the gulf war for killing tanks.

Remove 333 to reply. Randy

I thought that lasers only operate at a small radius, under a few miles.

It takes an ICBM a few seconds to fly that distance.

i

Lasers are nowhere near capable of taking out an ICBM today, or a tank. Maybe in the future. For now, as Randy says, it's the new super-smart bombs that are the tank killers.

th respect to technology, engineering and science. Having decades old habi ts and traditions don't always do it. Its always been like that. There's no such thing as "oldie, but goodie".

rom-carriers.html

Its about time. The technology has been around for years and years, like wi th green cars, aircraft and other transportstion.

No, it hasn't. Fiber lasers of that capability (from IPG) just became available about four or five years ago, and weaponizing them into something that really works has only been possible for a couple of years.

I had a couple of green cars -- British Racing Green. d8-)

Sensor-Fuzed Weapons, how to break a massed tank assault. This from Textron.

.

Joe Gwinn

with respect to technology, engineering and science. Having decades old h abits and traditions don't always do it. Its always been like that. There 's no such thing as "oldie, but goodie".

s-from-carriers.html

Yes it has. "The first laser was built in 1960 by Theodore H. Maiman at Hu ghes Laboratories" (wikipedia), this makes the technology at least that old .

If the military had placed the majority of its funding into that program ve rsus others, then the technology would be far more advanced by today.

Ooooh....duck hunting will never be the same.

This is kinda OT from the thread or the group, but --

It seems like we've been getting really good at precision guided munitions against technologically unsophisticated enemies (who respond by finding ways to engage us in technologically unsophisticated, yet effective, ways).

Are we ready for a war with China or Russia? Somehow I don't think we're going to scrape all the way through the 21st century without a war with one of them.

I built my first laser in 1965, with a synthetic ruby rod given to me by Dr. Herb Elion of Princeton University, who did pioneering laser research for the US Navy.

I research and write about lasers every month. The company that makes the laser weapon power sources for the US military, IPG Photonics, is one I'm in contact with every week. I know what they can do, and I know the specific laser power heads that the Navy and Air Force are using in their weapons. I'll be watching their newest ones at work in November.

These devices are made with diode-pumped lasers that have fiber amplifiers. They're good for around 10 kW each, and the weapon development comes from ganging them up and focusing them together. The Navy weapon is 30 kW. The next step is to get them up over 100 kW. They aren't there yet. And that will not be nearly enough to knock out an ICBM.

The recent developments have been with lasers that have a wavelength on the order of 1000 nm -- near inrared. Most high-powered lasers have wavelengths that are reflected by shiny or polished surfaces. The output of the fiber laser, currently the hot ticket in laser cutting machines for fabricators, is absorbed by shiny surfaces. That combination of power, compactness, and wavelength is what makes the laser weapons possible. This is all fairly new technology.

The technology comes from a transplanted Russian company that is now based in the US. The diodes that power these things are the product of US, Japanese, and Russian technology.

You do go off on speculative tangents, mog.