Lobby traject A-10

Gestart door Enforcer, 10/12/2014 | 09:02 uur

Harald

It's Time For America To Give Its Allies The A-10   (... A-10's voor weinig of gratis ..?)

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The idea of providing our allies with surplus US hardware, including A-10s, even for free, is an underutilized foreign policy tool.

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The idea of Boeing selling them at the cost of upgrades and service contracts is fine, but anything over that is a barrier to their distribution and should not be allowed. The tax payer would be paying for them to bake in the desert anyway, so giving them away is a win and it would cost us a lot less to arm our allies with A-10s, or any other surplus fighters for that matter, than to operate our own from their bases half way around the world, on a rotating basis with no end in sight.

So what are we waiting for? The DoD should immediately tally available A-10s, and other aircraft such as F-15s and F-16s, for distribution to our allies, even if it is just a few dozen jets to begin with. If the ax ever actually falls on the USAF's active A-10 fleet, then hundreds more Warthogs should be available for gifting immediately.


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voor het gehele artikel, zie LINK

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/its-time-for-america-to-give-its-allies-the-a-10-1706083434

Harald

There Was No Way a P-51 Could Replace the A-10

But Congress ordered the Air Force to check, anyway


PA-48 Enforcer versus YA-10A

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-48_Enforcer





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II



The U.S. Air Force has a complicated relationship with its low- and slow-flying A-10 Warthog attack jet. And that's putting it mildly. The flying branch has tried more than once to retire the ungainly A-10 in favor of speedier planes, only for lawmakers to block the move.

But on at least one occasion, the Air Force actually defended the heavily-armored, gun-armed Warthog from an unlikely challenger—a modern version of the World War II P-51 Mustang that Congress for some reason really loved.

In 1979, Congress demanded the Air Force test out the tiny Piper PA-48 Enforcer light attack plane—a derivative of the then-39-year-old P-51—as cheaper alternative to the A-10, which was brand new at the time. Five years later, the air service put two Enforcers through their paces.

When they ordered the evaluation, American legislators did point out some real problems over at the Pentagon. "Congress expressed concern with the rising costs, increasing technological sophistication and decreasing readiness of tactical aircraft," according to the official Enforcer test report, which we obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The propeller-driven Enforcer promised to solve one of those problems. Piper claimed the plane would cost just a million dollars and be cheap to maintain.

The PA-48 was cheap because it was simple. Like, World War II simple. The Enforcer actually began as the Turbo Mustang, which Cavalier Aircraft Corporation developed in the late 1960s with the P-51 as a starting point. More than a decade later, Cavalier sold the rights to Piper, which renamed the plane as the Enforcer.

The practically all-new aircraft married the Mustang's basic shape to a powerful turboprop engine. The plane had a variety of other improvements and could carry a range of weapons on 10 underwing pylons.

The various enhancements and the plane's low cost gave the Enforcer some surface appeal. But in reality, politics propelled the modernized Mustang. By the time the evaluation kicked off in 1984, the Air Force had already been dodging the Enforcer—and its designer David Lindsay—for a decade.

After selling the rights to the PA-48, Lindsay had shut down Cavalier to free up time for promoting the plane. In addition to his aviation interests, Lindsay was a newspaper owner and publisher.

"In the mid-1970s, Lindsay achieved considerable traction ... through briefings given to the House and Senate Armed Services and Appropriations Committees," says Air Force historian Brian Laslie.

"The Enforcer has impressive credentials," a group of U.S. senators—including powerful South Carolina Republican Strom Thurmond—wrote in a letter to Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger in 1974.

In the 1960s, the Pentagon had bought Cavalier Mustangs for Bolivia. The U.S. Army also purchased a few examples for experiments. Cavalier also sold upgraded P-51s to El Salvador and Indonesia. In the waning years of the Vietnam War, the Air Force had even briefly considered sending Lindsay's planes to America's Southeast Asia allies.

On the basis of those sales and near-sales, the senators insisted that the Enforcer "should not be cast aside by service biases."

But the Air Force had just committed to buying the A-10. And political in-fighting had already forced a fly-off between the Warthog and the A-7 fighter-bomber. The flying branch was is no mood to hold yet another competition.

In spite of this hostility from his prospective customer, Lindsay continued to appeal to the Pentagon and Congress. Piper pitched the Enforcer to the Navy and Marine Corps, too.

"Some members of Congress considered offering the Enforcer to the Army if the Air Force refused," Douglas Campbell writes in his book The Warthog and the Close Air Support Debate. But the Army was wary of that idea after spending years arguing with the Air Force over what kinds of aircraft the ground combat branch should be allowed to operate.

Fearing another caustic battle, Army officials declined to get involved with the PA-48 campaign.

When their Congressional advocates finally prevailed, Lindsay and Piper seemed caught off guard by the victory. Having crashed one of the two original Enforcer prototypes, the company decided to build two entirely new aircraft for the tests.

Piper spent three years getting the planes ready for their big day. Even so, the newly manufactured Mustangs—just five percent of the parts came from surplus P-51s—had serious problems.

For one, the Enforcers lacked propeller and pilot safety features that both the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration required. But perhaps more importantly, the PA-48s could not safely carry the GPU-5 gun pod.

The pod contained a smaller version of the A-10's fearsome 30-millimeter Gatling gun. The Air Force had originally built the pods in an abortive attempt to give fast-moving fighter jets the same destructive power as the Warthog.

Piper representatives promised they would fix these problems, but the Air Force insisted on evaluating the existing prototypes. The tests did not inspire any greater confidence in the design.

The flying branch did conclude the PA-48s were easy to operator and repair. But the aircraft were also under-powered and handled poorly with a full load of bombs and rockets.

Pilots also had trouble seeing targets because of the Piper's long nose. The flyers couldn't reliably hit anything if they were "unfamiliar with a
target area," the evaluators note in their report.

And while the aircraft were hard for heat-seekers and radars to track, the Enforcers had neither the speed nor the maneuverability to dodge surface-to-air missiles or enemy fighter planes, the official report points out.

Lastly, the single-engined attackers were almost dangerously fragile compared to the A-10. While a Warthog driver sat comfortably inside a tub of titanium armor, the Piper's pilot had no more protection than his World War II counterparts.

True, the Enforcer was cheap. But so was the A-10—at least, when compared to other aircraft the Air Force was buying at the time.

The Warthog "was nowhere near as expensive ... as the B-1 or F-15, whose respective per-unit costs were something over $60 million and $15 million," Campbell writes.

"The A-10 ... is not a sophisticated aircraft by any means," according to Laslie.

The Air Force concluded that the Piper plane possessed no meaningful advantages over the Warthog. "The Enforcer was antiquated even when compared to the A-10," Laslie notes.

Lindsay never found a buyer for the PA-48. And having survived that challenge and others, today the A-10 continues to serve on the front lines of America's wars.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/there-was-no-way-a-p-51-could-replace-the-a-10-a65e39df1085

Ace1

Citaat van: Harald op 10/12/2014 | 22:35 uur
in het huidige upgrade programma zit ook een Helmet Mounted Cueing System, als het DAS systeem van de F-35 samen met het Helmet-Mounted Display System (HMDS) 100% werkt zou dat nog wel een upgrade kunnen zijn.



http://www.gentexcorp.com/default.aspx?pageid=3743

A-10 pilots first to field target system downrange
http://www.acc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123339936

DAS systeem :
http://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/ANAAQ37F35/Pages/default.aspx



Jij bedoeld dit? 


Harald

in het huidige upgrade programma zit ook een Helmet Mounted Cueing System, als het DAS systeem van de F-35 samen met het Helmet-Mounted Display System (HMDS) 100% werkt zou dat nog wel een upgrade kunnen zijn.



http://www.gentexcorp.com/default.aspx?pageid=3743

A-10 pilots first to field target system downrange
http://www.acc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123339936

DAS systeem :
http://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/ANAAQ37F35/Pages/default.aspx



dudge

Pilots Plan Tomorrow's A-10
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/pilots-plan-tomorrows-a-10-833a05de6fae

Is in het kader van dit topic geen slecht artikel.

Oorlogsvis

Citaat van: jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter) op 10/12/2014 | 20:00 uur
Nee.


kan een A-10 bears onderscheppen ?...natuurlijk niet daar hebben we de  F-35 voor..

dudge

Citaat van: Enforcer op 10/12/2014 | 09:02 uur
Wat stel je voor? Een crowdfunding project om de A-10 naar NL te krijgen en dan in een PPS constructie beschikbaar te stellen aan de Luchtmacht?


Dit onderwerp naar aanleiding van de discussie over de A-10.

Crowdfunding en PPS is in o.a. de Ukraine inmiddels trouwens redelijk gemeengoed. Enige manier om dat leger een beetje aan de praat te houden.

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

Citaat van: Ace1 op 10/12/2014 | 19:42 uur
Kan een A10 ook Bears onderschepen in het nederlands luchtruim door ze bv op Leeuwarden te stationaren?

Nee.


jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

#17
Citaat van: colourmaster2010 op 10/12/2014 | 19:26 uur
Niet eens een gekke gedachtengang, zeker met het oog op de actuele Russische 'dreiging' en het gebrek aan tanks, ben absoluut voor aanschaf!


Symbolisch bedrag per kist, laten we stellen 1 euro, ook als compensatie order voor de F35. Op het niveau 2015+ brengen en aan de sterkte toevoegen naast 37 F35 (eventueel aangevuld met een kleine extra batch) minimaal 24 A10C.

Dit hoeft geen wishfull thinking te zijn, die symbolische ene euro misschien, maar veel hoeven ze niet te kosten.

Iedereen blij:

De USAF is blij dat 24 (of meer) kisten uit de sterkte worden gehaal en ze niet in de woestijn gestald hoeven te worden of door de schredder moeten worden gehaald. Daarnaast komen er iets meer onderhoudsmensen beschikbaar voor de USAF F35.

De NAVO: een aantal uitzonderlijke CAS kisten blijft voor de NAVO behouden.

De EU: een nieuwe capaciteit wordt aan de EU toegevoegd

De KLu: wordt niet gedecimeerd en kan "uitbreiden" tegen een acceptabele kostenpost die ook nog eens de exploitatiekosten van de F35 reduceert.

Ace1

Kan een A10 ook Bears onderschepen in het nederlands luchtruim door ze bv op Leeuwarden te stationaren?


colourmaster2010

Niet eens een gekke gedachtengang, zeker met het oog op de actuele Russische 'dreiging' en het gebrek aan tanks, ben absoluut voor aanschaf!

Huzaar1

Citaat van: Ros op 10/12/2014 | 14:34 uur
Dat zal zo zijn, er zijn nu eenmaal voor en tegenstanders. En beide partijen zullen het niet laten dit met regelmaat bekend te maken. Waar ik moe van word is dat, als er ergens op de wereld een militair apparaat een kunstje vertoond men steevast begint te roepen dat wij dit wonderlijk ding ook moeten hebben. En dat men daarbij direct iedere zin van realiteit overboord mikt.




We hebben het over de A-10....

niet over een of andere peppie communicatiesatteliet of Karel Doorman.
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion" US secmindef - Jed Babbin"

jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)

Citaat van: Harald op 10/12/2014 | 15:55 uur
Over survivorbility en battle damage gesproken :



Je  fighter, van Gripen tot F22, haalt dan 9 van de 10 keer de landingsbaan niet meer (al is er beeld van een Israëlisch F15 die op 1 vleugel thuis is gekomen)

Harald

Over survivorbility en battle damage gesproken :