Posted on 08/13/2019 2:56:43 PM PDT by jazusamo
The iconic A-10 Thunderbolt II will be flying into the late 2030s thanks to a re-winging project completed by the U.S. Air Force.
Air Force Materiel Command said in a press release on Monday that 162 A-10s received new wings thanks to a $1.1 billion project that began in 2011.
The contract, awarded to Boeing in 2007, required the creation of new parts for the plane’s fuselage.
“At the end of the program, making sure we had all the pieces and parts that we needed to make that happen required a really significant team effort,” said Stephen Zaiser, director of the 571st, Air Force Times reported Tuesday...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Good catch there. I agree with that. Thanks for pointing that out.
Two flew directly over my house yesterday, which is very odd...I have never seen one flying in this area. I think they were headed toward Whiteman AFB. I thought the first one was a small private jet until it was almost over me. I paid better attention to the one that followed directly after.
Air Force planes are not designed for use on air craft carriers. For that reason and reasons revolving around their primary missions the Marines do not want the A10.
BTW, it would take such an extensive (and expensive) redesign to adapt them for carriers and for the reasons stated in post #44 it would be cheaper to start from scratch.
I know the P-51 did, but I don't think the P-47 flew in Korea.
I could be mistaken. I saw a restored one in Galveston Texas. Could have sworn I saw something about it there. Beautiful Plane.
The engines of the A-10 are well above the main wing, for exactly the reason you thought of “high wing”.
The wings mask the engines from below, keeping the inlet air as “clean” as possible. The rear stabilizer also masks the engine’s exhaust from below, reducing its IR signature.
All in all, it is still the best thought out design for a GS aircraft ever built.
HORSE HOCKEY!
The avionics package and other electronics could EASILY be modernized in NEW airframes. The drawings should still be available, even if the dies were destroyed it's not that big a thing to make new ones.
Defeatists are just as bad as democrats.
I went to an auction years ago of a old gentleman who worked on the A-10. His house was filled with plaques, models, etc. Interesting fellow. He had pictures of him from WWII , somewhere in the Pacific,(New Guinea perhaps), in his Pith helmet and shorts, posing with aborigines. He claimed they were cannibals.
#3 It was the F-35!. That plane doesn’t have enough bullets to do much of anything.
Last I read no one wants them. The brass, not the troops.
The P-47N was still in service with some Air Guard units during the Korean War, but it never got over to Korea. A lot of historians wonder why it didn’t. Usually the answer to these imponderables is found in the supply chain. There were simply a lot more P-51s and veteran pilots trained for them. Spare parts, etc. And so the P-51 got pressed into a ground attack role that it really wasn’t suited for while the few P-47’s that were then left in service were trolling the skies over the US.
Same here - was stationed at Myrtle beach when they moved Warthogs in to replace the “Flying Cinder Block” A-7s.
Fell in love the first airshow as one was going down the runway at what seemed to be a very slow pace, never appeared to be ready to take flight, and the wheels went up leaving it at that height for a 100 yards before the hard turn into a climb that almost scraped the runway with a wing ....seemed impossible even as I watched it.
Never thought of that.
While flying the Hog, it was very difficult to wear my oxygen mask....I was always grinning too much.
“A-10s flew 32 percent of combat sorties in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
Either way what I want to know is kill ratios.” [Steve Van Dorn, post 59]
Someone misquoted something to you.
“Combat” isn’t limited to CAS.
I’d want to study the after-action reports for a long time before accepting “kill ratios” (whatever they are; one assumes they have something to do with strike-success reports from aircrews). Especially as reported by any single-seat pilot. Wars are absurdly unreliable venues from which to collect effectiveness data.
“The P-47N was still in service with some Air Guard units during the Korean War, but it never got over to Korea...the answer to these imponderables is found in the supply chain...Spare parts, etc. And so the P-51 got pressed into a ground attack role that it really wasn’t suited for...” [Tallguy, post 72]
The F-47 (the Air Force redesignated all “P” aircraft to “F” in 1948) is believed by some to have a better choice for ground attack than the F-51 in Korea, but it may not have worked that way.
The chief reason there were fewer F-47s than F-51s in service in 1950 was that Air Force leaders had been ordered to prioritize their assigned airframes according to forecast utility in “general war” - a total conflict against the USSR in Europe. Korea was a side show.
With range, interception, and dogfighting capabilities inferior to the F-51, the F-47 was judged to be outclassed by Soviet Frontal Aviation and thus was placed well down the list. Hence it was relegated to continental air defense and other ANG missions. Training and resupply were reduced correspondingly.
The F-47 could haul greater warloads than the F-51, but thus burdened it weighed twice as much and the resulting poor takeoff performance would have precluded its deployment to the small, primitive airfields near the front lines, which were readily usable by the F-51, from which it launched on short notice and flew only short distances to prosecute close air support against Communist forces.
“Could have been” is always problematic; honest comparisons are out of reach. Some insight might be gained by looking at USN losses of ground support aircraft of somewhat similar design to the F-47: the Corsair and the Skyraider, both propeller-driven craft powered by large air-cooled piston engines, sustained heavy losses to ground fire: 312 and 124 respectively. The Naval acquisition organization went to the trouble of obtaining modified Corsairs from Vought, equipped with 25 pieces of additional armor, 17 of which protected the engine & subsystems. The aircraft’s oil cooling system, which had proven almost as the F-51’s cooling system, was relocated out of the wings to improve survivability.
Some perspective on losses of aircraft to hostile fire: the losses of F-51s in Korea are widely condemned, but in a single strike on 25 October 1951, Mustangs inflicted over 200 KIA/WIA on the enemy, greater than the total number of F-51 pilots killed during the entire war.
“...The avionics package and other electronics could EASILY be modernized in NEW airframes....even if the dies were destroyed it’s not that big a thing to make new ones...” [Don W, post 68]
One assumes your extensive experience in system design, aircraft construction, avionics installation, and die sinking informs your thinking on this.
“Dies” are just one aspect of tooling. Not sure if they are the most expensive, but their fabrication requires skill and experience few workers have. Fewer each day.
Drawings & other manufacturing records aren’t necessarily kept; recall that Fairchild Republic went out of business about 15 years ago.
Avionics have changed completely, since the A-10 was designed (over 50 years ago). Even if the old airframe could be redesigned to accept the new stuff, other systems would have to be added to bring the machine up to snuff with only the most basic capabilities of more recent aircraft. Single-seaters are notorious for being densely packed, and available interior space may not be there to accommodate newer systems. And if a “new” A-10 couldn’t accept digital data, communicate with other forces (nor ground troops, nor control centers), and defeat modern air defenses, it would not survive in today’s environments.
Agreed. Which suggest the people that should have the biggest say are the experienced ground units. Which units do they prefer for air support.
We really do get stupider as we get older, don’t we?
We could never figure out how to do anything we once did when we were young and knew everything.
Nobody today knows how to design and build new aircraft, specially one that uses ideas that were perfected 50 years ago. Disassembly and measuring of the main structure is nigh on impossible, and nobody could ever figure out how to build structure ever.
The electronics take up so much more space today for 1/4 the utility, for example (Sarcasm).
Of course there is no way to upgrade avionics or other electronics in a system that is using a long proven design that said airframe could possibly communicate with other assets in a combat zone. They’ve been shooting down A-10s like there’s no tomorrow in the sandbox.
I don’t know what your qualifications are, FRiend, but as an engineer, I damn sure have a LOT more confidence in the designers and constructors of military assets than I do in the pessimistic ramblings of an anonymous Debbie Downer.
There is a company that is currently building brand new DeHavilland Beavers. DeHavilland went out of business about the same time the A-10 was in the design stage. If the plans for a civilian bush plane can be found and used, I have little doubt the plans for the Wart Hog are available.
If the US aviation industry can’t reverse engineer one of its own products, we are in far deeper kimchi than anyone could believe. The Soviets did it with the B-29, which is a much more daunting prospect IMHO.
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