Yea, well, good, I guess...it seems every Senator is going to try and re-instate his favorite item, if it is cut.

Round and Round....while nothing really gets done. The American Way.

What about moving all our troops and equipment from Saudia Arabia to Iraq? Is that going to save or cost money when its all done?

What about the base closures in the States and in the EU, When is someone going to let us citizens know about those deals...2015?

People better get their Sh*t together, the long knives and black death is about to desend on the world.

This is my post

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

This area is another political mistake by Bush. Denying the need for more troops has led us to a place where our current force structure is strained and inadequate, while at the same time there is no political will or sense of urgency to make radical changes in the Pentagon budgeting.

If there was a sense of urgency (as one might expect in a global war), chopping dogs like the Osprey in favor of adding additional active duty divisions would be a no brainer. Instead its business as usual, because the party line is that everything is fine. The turf wars have been given the wink to continue instead of admitting that we dont have enough boots to fill enough fields and proceeding from there.

Mark,

The V-22 Osprey has been an ongoing problem since before Bush was President, and the Pentagon has tried to cancel it several times. The main culprit is Congresscritters who put spin-offs in their districts above war-fighting needs. Given that they were doing this same sort of b.s. in other areas within a month of 9/11, if you have some elixir that will change their priorities then please share.

I do agree that the lack of urgency and mobilization in this war has been an issue from the get-go, and drives many of the dilemmas we (unnecessarily) find ourselves in today. That was, in my view, a failure of leadership by President Bush, who grasped immediately that the USA was at war but did not take those thoughts to their logical conclusion.

Mind you, I didn't see any other prominent public figures who really got this at the time either; Dashle's 2002 comments about how sorry he was that the war was distracting his party from things they wanted to talk about like prescription drugs is emblematic of the Democrats as a whole (with rare exceptions, like Biden and Lieberman), and I haven't really seen any prominent Republicans going after the "mobilize" theme yet either.

Since serious debate on these topics seem to be largely confined within the right wing of American politics, I suppose the most hopeful thing that could happen would be the emergence of a serious mobilization movement (or at least prominent spokespeople for same) among the U.S. Republican Party.

Deeper thinking about defense acquisition policies and processes is also important. Even a second Truman commission, while potentially useful if run by someone like Truman (i.e. familiar with the history of similar efforts gone wrong, valued results over grandstanding or partisanship), wouldn't touch the real problem. For instance

"The cost figures in the memo show the Navy spending $17 billion to buy 234 F/A-18 E and F planes over the next five years and another $15.3 billion to buy an additional 219 planes after 2007. If the Joint Strike Fighter now in development proves itself capable, the Pentagon may reduce its purchases of the F/A-18 as well as the F-22. The new Pentagon tables show $24.7 billion in spending on 32 Joint Strike Fighters over the next five years and $176.9 billion more to buy 2,812 additional copies after 2007."

If past experience is any guide, expect the JSF funds to drop by 20%, and the number of aircraft actually bought to drop by 50% or so. Result: fewer planes and a much older fleet as older airplanes are kept in service somehow to patch the gaps. Basically, the result is a more capable military for small missions and a less capable military for anything substantial.

"Franklin C. Spinney, an aircraft analyst inside the Pentagon who has been studying the procurement trends for decades, shakes his head in dismay over the current buying plans for fighter-bombers. "We chose to put our head in the sand in 1991 and 1992, and it's still there," he lamented. He calculated that the Pentagon, between 1991 and 2002, spent $55 billion for only 210 high-cost fighter-bombers, mostly F/A-18 Es and Fs and a few F-22s and Joint Strike Fighters. With that same amount of money, Spinney calculated, the military could have purchased 1,660 current-generation fighter-bombers similar to the F-16 C and D and the F/A-18 C and D. They are plenty good enough for the post-Cold War threats, Spinney argues, and would have modernized today's aging squadrons of fighter-bombers. As things stands now, the tactical aircraft specialist said, the military will receive only a few of the Cadillacs and have to spend billions fixing up the old, still-flying, Chevrolets. "This didn't have to happen," he said."

But it has hapened, consistently, for decades now. This isn't a partisan issue, it's a systemic one. If the USA wants an affordable military that can actually meet its mission needs, more progress and reform will be necessary.

But then, ongoing reform is a vital requirement of any command-and-control system - as true for social welfare as it is for defense, and unfortunately even less prevalent in that sector.

Joe, you are dead on correct. I can understand how immediately following the war the idea of a massive mobilization wouldnt have occurred to Rumsfeld and Bush. But as time wore on, it became glaringly obvious that all the technology in the world cant compensate for a GI with a rifle standing on a street corner. Once that was recognized (if ever it was), the rest, as your note, must follow to the logical conclusion that we need many more troops, and hence we need to adjust our force structure.

The president's party has both houses of Congress. He is a wartime president with the biggest bully pulpit in the world. I give him no slack on this. If he held a press conference saying that it was imperative that we field 2 more army divisions in the next 3 years, it would happen. If he tied that into killing wastral systems like the Osprey, it would happen. But either Bush doesnt see the need or wont spend the political capital. It all comes back to the sad fact that very few people in this country are taking this war as deadly seriously as they should.
At this point, my patience with Bush has waned. I would like to see John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Joe Biden get together and start a bi-partisan movement to put this war on the front burner. If the democrat leadership were smart (which they arent) they would seize this opportunity to make a dramatic change in our military structure which would help our troops and our interests. But it would require political courage and idiological coherence. I dont see it happening.

Wait. Hold it.

The Osprey has issues, but the underlying ideas make sense. Tilt-rotor is the logical next-step in rotary aviation, at least for cargo and transport duties.

We may as well do it now; Better now than after the other guy gets it.

Robots with laser guns and force fields make sense too, but how much R&D do we devote to it? The Osprey technology just doesnt work very well, and there are a host of practical question marks in its actual mission (its a sitting duck trying to land). You kinda got to look at the whole picture on the Osprey, its a cool idea, but for what its costing you could basically double our helicopter fleet. And who's 'the other guy'?

Pentagon paper pushers keep claiming the Osprey works. I suggest making the brass pushing this thing and their congressional allies fly to work in them daily. You'd see an instant change of heart, i can assure you.

Penta,

Are you serious? Who is this other guy who is going to develop what we can't?

Tilt rotor is a compelling concept. The bottom line, however, is that the U.S. military needs helicopter-like transport, in numbers, that can move its assets where they need to go. These transports also need to be cheap enough, so the U.S. can have enough of them that planners can afford to risk them in action near the front lines, because that's where rotary wing assets are most useful.

The Osprey offers more capable options if it works (if) - but also results in far fewer aircraft, at higher cost, and so inspire more risk-averse behaviour in using them. Not to mention more difficulty getting rotary transport everywhere they need to be duering surge periods when requests are coming in from all over.

This strikes me as a bad set of tradeoffs all around, a situation where greater individual capability leads to less capability for the system as a whole.

Indeed, a fine example of the problem with the Pentagon's current procurement system.

I always hesitate to post on these topics. It's not that I don't have info and opinions -- it's that, working daily with military, I'm aware of the limitations of both of them.

FWIW, a few personal comments nonetheless. First, re: Mark's comment about robots armed with lasers and force fields. Many people are perhaps unaware of the fact that over 90% of all of the robotics research in the US over the last 2 decades was funded by DOD. The issue is not lack of funding -- it is the complexity of the problems to be solved before we have truly autonomous robots. My own doctoral work involves artificial intelligence so I have some personal knowledge of the state of the art ... what we can do and what we don't even begin to have the theoretical basis for doing yet.

Consider as well that once a technology is developed, there is still the need to integrate it into military doctrine and training -- perhaps even to rip those up and reinvent them, a huge task -- before new technologies can be deployed in great numbers or to great effect.

Nontheless, a number of robots who can navigate over ground obstacles, teleoperated by remote drivers for the high level tasks (as is the Predator UAV), were in fact used quite successfully in Afghanistan. A 2nd generation of that design - which can be armed - will be deployed in Iraq this Spring.

Re: the comment I can understand how immediately following the war the idea of a massive mobilization wouldnt have occurred to Rumsfeld and Bush, I'm not at all sure it was a case of "didn't occur to" them. The SECDEF is right -- you go to war with what you have. Those who talk about increasing force size are missing two important issues. First, increasing the force will decrease effectiveness in the short and mid term, because experienced NCOs will have to be pulled from operations to train the new recruits. More than any armed nation, we rely on our NCOs for the effectiveness of our army, The resulting disruption would have crippled us in Iraq -- and here I am reporting not just my own opinion, but that of very experienced Amry officers, including former battalion commanders, I work with.

Second, before you recruit new people you had better have the right force organization and doctrine in place. Otherwise, you will expend a good deal of energy, time and money on things that will only have to be redone. A key mantra in the US Army is "we fight the way we train and we train the way we expect to fight". The time to enhance the force size is when the move to brigade-level deployable units has progressed. It makes no sense whatsoever to build more force that is structured to fight the Soviets in a force-on-force encounter when that is not what we face for the next decade or more.

Notice, by the way, that I haven't even approached the question of whether it would have been politically possible for Bush to in fact sell the idea of increasing our army's size. This administration doesn't do a good job of selling its policies. That may be due to a variety of reasons, including the hostile political climate that followed the 2000 election and -- more significantly -- the left wing chorus of "we deserved it" after 9/11.

Or perhaps it is due to other factors. But in any case, there are good military reasons for not increasing the size of the army last year or the year before.

Finally, to answer two questions above. Papa Ray, BRAC (base reallocation and closings) recommendations are in Congress' hands if I recall correctly. And Richard, re: who could build tilt-rotor, the Japanese could today and the Chinese will be able to within 5 years or so, by my estimate.

I consider myself a proponent of the F/A-22, but right now I am moving towards the idea of building the aircraft only as a "silver bullet" rather than a true F-15 replacement.

The reality of modern war is that 'Jihad Joe doesn't have an air force.' Even in Iraq, the enemy buried his planes in the sand rather than fight us. In the middle east, we can be assured of air superiority from almost the beginning of the conflict.

The equation changes dramatically when we talk about Russia, China, India, and other countries that can afford super-fighters like the SU-27 and its derivatives. In that case we need the F/A-22 to defeat these emerging challenges to our air superiority, particularly in a scenario where China tries to invade Taiwan.

Cut the F/A-22 buy down to 100 so we can afford an army expansion. After our commitment to Iraq is (hopefully) reduced via an improved Iraqi army, we can bring the F/A-22 program back as the FB-22 regional bomber.

Good points, Robin, and thanks.

I think Mark Buehner's point was that even if a concept makes sense on some level, that doesn't make it deployable or even wise. Which is true. But the info. on the robots was a good reminder of what's going on.

Appreciate the comments on force effectiveness reduction due to expansion. I see the wisdom in forcing a bureaucracy to reorganize smarter by not giving it an easy out, and also appreciate the point you made about effectiveness. I also think at some point there's a squeeze between the ideal and the immediate, however, and that point may have been passed. When 3-star generals are sounding serious alarms about sustainability, I'm inclined to listen - and this was a low-variables, forseeable problem. It isn't possible to plan for every contingency in Iraq pre-invasion, but it is possible to plan for something like this, or at least recognize it.

I'm should note that I'm very agnostic on the "more troops for Iraq" issue, but there should be enough extra forces on hand to begin moving key skills from the reserves back into the regular army per Tim's briefing, and also to let the Army fulfil existing rotations without extensions, stop-loss, and other "emergency" measures that shouldn't still be emergencies. As these measures affect re-enlistment, well, that hurts effectiveness too.

Re: tilt-rotor... I say let the Japanese develop one, then, since the V-22 continues to suck up money and not work very well. The USA could create a consortium to share some of the work done to date, secure licenses on set terms to build any resulting designs, and help Japan's defense industry take a strategically useful next step. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Meanwhile, something has to be done about rotary wing assets for U.S. forces, and the best seems to be the enemy of the good here. Building far more helicopters based on existing templates strikes me as a far better use of the money if overall force effectiveness is the question.

I've wondered why it is that A-10's - which are actually useful in the kinds of wars we are likely to fight in the next decade - get starved for funds and support while the F-22 soaks up incredible amounts of resources for a weapon to use against an opponent we don't yet have.

I'd love some insight form the inside-the-ring folks on that one...

A.L.

A.L.

The Air Force hates the A-10 and has ever since it was introduced. The fact is most of the Air Force brass are fighter jocks, and view the A-10 as a mud fighter.
There has been talk of giving the Army control over the A-10 fleets which would make sense, but the Air Force would never go for it.
Given the fact that the Apache was pretty much exposed as having a glass jaw, without the A-10, the Army just doesn;t have a good close support platform. For all the talk of Jdams and laser guided bombs, sometimes plain old stell on target is what gets the job done. Fast movers like the F-16 can't provide what the A-10 can, the ability to stay on station for long periods of time and deliver repeated runs at enemy target in close coordination with ground forces.

The AF is not as anti-Warthog as you might think, Finlay. It will be flying well past 2010 and possibly into 2020.

The retirement date for the Warthog depends on whether the JSF can do the same job. The Air Force has seriously discussed the idea of buying the JSF with the vertical lift fan to use in the close air support mission. The solution is not ideal, as the JSF lacks the redundnacy that makes the A-10 so survivable. Still, it's a lot better than the "A-16" Fighting Falcon that the AF wanted to use as a Warthog replacement in the 80's.

But the A-10 and its replacement have to coexist with planes like the F/A-22. If the US has not destroyed the enemy's air force, US ground forces will not be able to fight effectively. If planes like the F/A-22 do not destroy the enemy's integrated air defenses, close air support planes like the A-10 can't deliver firepower where it's needed.

A.L. I'm not inside the ring, but basic organizational theory provides one answer.

Let's first acknowledge up front that it isn't an apples to apples comparison, however. The F-22 is an F-15/ F-16 air superiority fighter replacement, and sometimes an F-117 stealth fighter/ "Wild Weasel" upgrade if equipped with anti-radar missiles. Those roles have to be performed and old aircraft replaced by something, regardless of the A-10's existence or non-existence.

With that said...

Shepherding a new weapons system into production is a great promotion vehicle in the Pentagon. The F-22 provides that in spades because of all the important sub-projects involved. It also provides new jobs in a number of Congressional districts, and new planes that will ensure long-term longevity for any air base they're posted to. This ensures that the base's economic spin-offs will continue to accrue to nearby Congressional districts and to that state's Senators. Etc.

Does improving support for the existing A-10s provide those same opportunities? No. Public Choice theory thus predicts that it will receive a lower organizational priority. And it does... a phenomenon not confined to the A-10.

A better question might be "why would the F-22 receive such priority over options like producing new runs of existing planes per Spinney's suggestion?" That's a more direct comparison, a build of 2 different kinds and numbers of aircraft to fulfill the same role.

When discussing THAT question, I'll throw out the Iranian experience with F-14 Tomcats in the 1980s in the Iran-Iraq war. They demonstrated that a clearly superior platform flown by better pilots could not only act as a "mini-AWACS" radar plane for others, it could literally intimidate enemies out of the sky (recall that the F-22 project started in the late 1980s, and note that this is a normal procurement cycle for new fighters these days). The Iranian F-14s' long-range radar superiority and ultra-long reach of their AIM-54 Phoenix missiles often meant that the first clue a Tomcat was in the area was when Iraqi planes started exploding. Whereupon the Iraqi force, still unsure where their enemy was, would usually run. Once the USA began passing radar data to Iraq later in the war, Iraqi attacks would often stop when F-14s were flying, and resume as soon as "the coast was clear." (See "Iranian F-14 Tomcat Units in Combat" by Tom Cooper and Farzad Bishop: Osprey Publishing 2004.)

F-22 attempts to achieve the same sort of thing with its new array radar and stealth features. This is what the Pentagon means when it talks about "air dominance," which it often does when discussing the F-22. I've got to admit the F-22 would be a GREAT intimidator, especialy if you added a new long-range ramjet AMRAAM.

When looking for logic behind the F-22, I'd also include the very sharp points about casualty aversion that David Blue made in your thread about Chester's transformation piece. If the belief persists that the USA can't take casualties (and there is still good reason to believe that) then one natural response by the Pentagon is to always want to be significantly better than any potential opponent, and never feel able to settle for "good enough" in any area. Thinking along those lines, consider new missiles like the European Meteor coming on line soon, and probably destined for export markets like China. So one can also understand the priority on stealth features (to not be seen at longer ranges) and supercruise (for fast getaways if needed).

Of course, to explain why 'Wild Weasel' missions to destroy anti-aircraft installations don't get the same priority as protection for the USAF's beloved air-superiority fighters, you'll want to talk to Trent about the 'Fighter Pilot Mafia'

Ultimately, the central questions remains: What is most rational for the force as a whole, and would less expensive options serve to deal with some of the rational concerns (such as array radar upgrades and ramjet AMRAAMs for current fighter designs, plus vectored thrust addition).

It isn't ALL Pentagon/congressional politics - some of the impetus is rational on a macro scale too. That said, there's a lot of "other" stuff going on, and in order to become relevant to the debate Democrats will need to understand the military well enough to see both sets of points and judge intelligently. We need more Democrats like Aspin, Hart, Hightower, Inouye, Nunn et. al (heck, I'd be happy to see more Republicans like them)... and I've no idea where they'll come from. For reasons senior Democrats have already discussed.

I'd be very happy if someone surprised me, though. This stuff needs intelligent debate.

Greetings,

Thanks for so much info. and for the insight.

Two things I know, second hand on one, first hand on the other is that they can build more and improve on the Warthog and Spooky (Puff,the magic dragon). They are needed in the types of combat we will be engaged in.The Soldiers and Marines love both of them and would employ many more of each, if we would just give them out to them.

The other thing that I know, from being around a long time and being informed is that the biggest problem this REPUBLIC has is its embedded, bribed and out of touch representives.

If you and I could, someway, revamp (read kick out all of the deadwood, crooks and do gooders) out of our government, then, just maybe, we could get something done, in a timely manner.

This is MY post

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

In our efforts to move towards a state of more civil discourse in this country, I thought a group started by a bunch of college kids from Virginia has the right idea.

They call it OrangeBand. They hand out orange strips of fabric that can be taken and personlized to represent an issue important to whomever decides to wear one. Then, when the band is displayed on a bag or somewhere else it can be used as a conversation starter. Together with educational forums, they are trying to bring us back into normal, constructive dialogue on a daily basis.

Good ideas are always simple. Check it out at www.orangeband.org

Every era sees the US military gutted because there is no immediate prospect of danger. Thus American troops were outgunned in the Spanish American War; WWI saw American troops using British and French artillery and aircraft; WWII saw avaitors flying outmoded aircraft in the face of unexpected Japanese Zeros, Sherman tanks might take on a German Toiger if there were six Shermans and you were willing to lose five Shermans; in Korea the MIGs ran wild; in Vietnam we fielded an imperfect rifle; and we are told today we don't need the F-22 or Osprey while in the 80s we were told we didn't need the Abhrams or Bradley.

Seems to me a great many servicemen paid for our politicans egos and errors. Looks like Rummy and Bush are going to do it again.

Finlay, post #13: "There has been talk of giving the Army control over the A-10 fleets which would make sense, but the Air Force would never go for it."

Don't ask me to back this up with a link, because it would involve a long search through discussion logs, but I have heard that it would have been possible for Army to take control of A-10s, if in return Air gained permanent control of all anti-air assets. The deal wasn't taken.

I would have taken it. The rule that fixed wing and flying is air is good in that it is a bright line that limits turf wars, but it isn't functional. Ground attack in sight of the troops is Army work, and killing enemy air is work for an organisation with fighters and anti-aircraft artillery and missiles, among other assets - that makes sense to me. Close air support, naval support, strategic bombing, air superiority - these are really different jobs, it seems to me, even if they use common assets and skills like the ability to maintain aircraft. They call for different people with different interests. Big bomber guys are not fighter guys, and so on. I would want my service to get all and only the assets that logically, functionally belonged to it. I would not want my close air under the authority of someone whose daydreams might be about winning wars with strategic air alone, but I would trust people focused on killing hostile air to do that really well, even if that put me in a vulnerable position if it turned out their priorities weren't mine.

Only, I would have wanted not just the aging A-10s as a one-off item (with maintenance of course) in return for making army naked to the sky. I would have wanted permanent, genuine, whole-hearted doctrinal Air agreement to this understanding of Army's job, and to future generations of mud-hugging tanks-that-don't-touch-the-ground, designed to meet Army's future desires.

Would other people here have taken that deal, if it was your choice? Why or why not?

By the way, post #14 from Impossible Scissors: "But the A-10 and its replacement have to coexist with planes like the F/A-22. If the US has not destroyed the enemy's air force, US ground forces will not be able to fight effectively."

I think this should be written in letters of fire. Anything else we say about functions and priorities has to respect this tremendously important fact.

To A-10 Fans & Lovers:
1. The A-10 was the politically-selected choice falling out of 1972's A-X competition. It was sufficient, but not the best choice.
2. The A-10s vulnerabilities were revealed during Tactical Aircraft Survivability Evaluation in 1979 (TASVAL79). Tactics were adjusted to improve survivability, but pilots' fetish for the gun prevent complete mitigation.
2. The A-10s vulnerabilities were demonstrated in Desert Storm, when attrition rates shot up as they were employed progressively farther ahead of the land battle. Like helicopters that are also low and slow, you need to operate them over your own troops to prevent/reduce attrition.
3. Grunts love them because they can hang around, like a security blanket, and in a high-threat area, they are just as effective as a security blanket. Better to use loitering heavy bombers from a high-altitude with precision and near-precision weapons.
4. Contrary to popular lore, meat-servos (pilots) love them. They like the visceral feel of the gun up close and personal.
5. The ability to take punishment is a foolish and expensive way to ensure survivability. Surviving having pieces of you shot off is NOT an acceptable long term survival strategy.
A message for F/A-22 doubters will come later..............Check Six!

Simple question: What does the F-22 bring to the table that the JSF cant do?

I had also heard that the AF refused to refit our current generation of fighters with thrust vectoring engines (one of the big features of F-22 performance) because it would undercut the need for the Raptor. No link, so take that for what its worth.

#20 from SMSgt Mac . . . "To A-10 Fans & Lovers:" (David Blue, hearing his name or close enough, sits up straight and pays attention.)

1. The A-10 was the politically-selected choice falling out of 1972's A-X competition. It was sufficient, but not the best choice.

Interesting! What was the correct solution, how do we know that, and roughly what might that concept look like if you built it now, with the best technology compatible with keeping this beast cheap enough to be expendable?

"2. The A-10s vulnerabilities were revealed during Tactical Aircraft Survivability Evaluation in 1979 (TASVAL79). Tactics were adjusted to improve survivability, but pilots' fetish for the gun prevent complete mitigation."

OK. It sounds like slightly more information on that might be interesting.

And - what about effectiveness? That is primary, right?

"2. The A-10s vulnerabilities were demonstrated in Desert Storm, when attrition rates shot up as they were employed progressively farther ahead of the land battle. Like helicopters that are also low and slow, you need to operate them over your own troops to prevent/reduce attrition."

Fine by me - certainly not the casualties, but that it confirms my idea that helicopters and A-10s are essentially part of the ground combat team and not an independent force.

(However, I don't blame those who thought attack helicopters might be an independent force for giving the idea a chance to work.)

"3. Grunts love them because they can hang around, like a security blanket, and in a high-threat area, they are just as effective as a security blanket. Better to use loitering heavy bombers from a high-altitude with precision and near-precision weapons.
4. Contrary to popular lore, meat-servos (pilots) love them. They like the visceral feel of the gun up close and personal."

I hear only good things about "hog drivers" - they know their jobs and really look after the friendly troops under them. This is how things should be. You say the pilots love their work, and the troops love it too and are greatly heartened - and you somehow say this like it's not a good thing?

And why are we considering only "survivability", "vulnerability" and "security blankets", when hog drivers are thinking on entirely different and it seems to me the right lines?

(Pardon my political incorrectness here - I am not trying to frame US warriors as Nazis.) I also remember reading Marshal Chuikov's assessment of Nazi pilots as vital to blitzkrieg. At that time, discounting freak individuals, there was not much that close air support was going to so to substantial ground forces except frighten them, but Chuikov thought that skilled Nazi pilots, demonstrating great familiarity with friendly and hostile tactics, made a big difference. Is it so different now - has the skill of working with ground forces from the air been negated by the superior effectiveness or remote warfare weapons? It may very well have been - I'm asking.

By the way - what do hostile soldiers think and feel about all this?

But, you put your finder on the weakness of my long-held belief that friendly air assets should be organised functionally. If guided weapons may have changed the game so much that an ideal close air support platform is practically anything that has a large carrying capacity and the proper electronics and weapons, then I should rethink from scratch.

"5. The ability to take punishment is a foolish and expensive way to ensure survivability. Surviving having pieces of you shot off is NOT an acceptable long term survival strategy."

We;; absolutely. I feel the best way to ensure survivability is to stay home and let others do the fighting for me, and it's worked for me so far. :P

But what if you have other priorities? Don't we then wind up with the unacceptable survival strategy of getting shot (body armour), of getting one's vehicle shot at and bombed (vehicle armour) and so on? While staying out of the opponent's range is a great idea, it only partially works for Army. And we are talking about Army.

In response to Mark in #21:
The F/A-22 is optimized as the ultimate air-to-air weapon, and the only attack aircraft that can operate unescorted during the daytime in a high-threat environment. The JSF is lacking in the air-to-air realm.

The concept of having an F/A-22 and a JSF is a lot like the high-low fighter mix of the F-15 & F-16 or F-14 & F/A-18. Clearly, you would choose the F/A-22, F-15, or F-14 over its counterpart. However, the money isn't available to buy enough of the super-fighter. So the military fills the rest of his requirement with a more affordable plane that's almost as good.

The F/A-22 is the only plane that combines stealth and supersonic cruise. This allows it to operate unescorted during the daytime, unlike the F-117. It is also the only plane that can consistently defeat upgraded SU-27's in a dogfight. JSF cannot cruise supersonically, has less range than the F/A-22, and would be a poor dogfighter by comparison. The buzzword with JSF is "affordable stealth."

In response to David in post #22:
The alternative to the A-10 was the Northrop A-9. Although the A-9 never made it into production, the Soviet SU-25 followed the same basic layout and philosophy as the A-9. In this case, the commonality is due less to piracy than to being an optimal solution for filling the same requirement.

In response to post #23 from Impossible Scissors: Thanks.

Having looked around, I still like the A-10. Handling characteristics, which slightly favoured the A-9, are not everything. The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was one of the all-time great planes, and not because it danced like a ballerina.

Anyway, I don't see a difference in concept between the A-9 and the A-10, certainly not one that would be useful to dwell on today.

RE: The A-9/SU-25 as the "far superior" aircraft... More hard points is the only advantage I see. Speed and maneuverability slightly better, but not to an extent that really matters; and engine placement and tail construction are inferior for survivability. Which matters.

I think the U.S. Air Force made the right choice in that competition, myself. The military gets it right sometimes, too.

As for the SU-25 representing an "optimal solution" independently arrived at, hooey. The Soviets did a hell of a lot of outright stealing from the USA, and technical espionage was one of the KGB's principal activities. The R-77 "AMRAAMski" is a fine example, and hardly the only one. Sukhoi was not an innovative design bureau at the time, either... its SU-17/20/22 series was closely derivative of the MIG-21, and the SU-24 openly copied the F-111 design wholesale - so the fact that the SU-25 should strongly resemble the A-9 does not surprise. I'm hardly inclined to believe that this ratifies the "Frogfoot" as a better design, any more than it ratifies the F-111 as a work of genuis (it wasn't).

I'll buy that the A-9 was capable, therefore, but better? I don't see it. I'd buy A-10s over SU-25s for the Katzmanistan Air Force any day (though I'd also buy SU-30MK/35 Flankers over F-18E Super Hornets - I have nothing against Sukhoi planes per se).

Nor does it surprise me that a new type of aircraft (quiz: the last dedicated close support aircraft in U.S. inventory before the A-10 was...?) would require tactical shifts and a learning period for U.S. pilots. Or that a CAS aircraft would work best in conjuction with friendly troops, given that this is the whole idea behind the type. That's only to be expected, and is not proof of anything re: design.

But let's look at planes and their fit in important roles. The A-10 example offers a very useful template.

We can start with this little piece of wisdom from SMSgt Mac:

"5. The ability to take punishment is a foolish and expensive way to ensure survivability. Surviving having pieces of you shot off is NOT an acceptable long term survival strategy."

This seems intuitive, and it's true in other contexts, but in the A-10 or SU-25's case it's wrong. And the A-10 is necessary BECAUSE this is wrong.

If you do close air support over a serious battlefield (as opposed to the AC-130 "Spectres" for support over low-intensity battlefields, who can dish it in spades but don't take it well), resiliency is very nearly the ONLY long term survival strategy.

• You cannot independently pick out targets on a crowded battlefield, make judgments, and then put significant, sustained, accurate firepower on the enemy when flying at very high speed.

• The low altitudes at which you must work make even breaking Mach 1 difficult for any length of time, no matter what you fly. So you're coming in low and slow.

• Maneuverability is limited at 100 feet above the deck, where you can expect to fly (or lower) to avoid major SAM radars. Even without them, the enemy can still put up a near-wall of gunfire from various sources (this was, in fact, Soviet doctrine: "everybody shoots"), then add shoulder-fired missiles like the SA-18 to the mix. This isn't a dogfight, it's a charge.

Translation: if you do this job properly, you're going to be hit eventually.

Which explains the consistent "flying-tank" design features of the most successful close air support planes, from the IL-2 Sturmovik onward. Avoiding damage altogether is not a realistic option in this role.

This showed in the performance of supposed A-10 "alternatives". The F/A-16, designed for speed and maneuverability as a dogfighter not for accuracy and resilience, was a failure in the close air support role during Desert Storm. Of course. Too fast, not accurate enough, not enough firepower punch, could be intimidated off the deck. It was so bad that they were pulled from the role and the brass (who were going to replace the A-10s with "A-16s") tried to forget they had ever suggested it.

F-15E Strike Eagles (which are great long range strike aircraft) would have been better, but not a whole lot better. And losing them gets ex-pensive. B-52s and JDAMs are good against primitive enemies, or against dug-in enemies who don't have serious anti-aircraft missiles. SMSgt Mac's doctrine can apply under those conditions. But it stops applying over battlefields with SAMs, or when you need to be able to target specific moving objects like command vehicles, anti-air defenses, tanks, etc.

Even stealth may get you in for the first pass, but it doesn't stop gunfire or infared attacks (though some IR countermeasures are possible as separate features). The coatings etc. are also highly tempermental, and do not stand up to either rigorous deployment from less than ideal airfields, or battle damage. Stealth is great if you want to run most strike missions, therefore, but it hits its limits in Close Air Support.

All of the above explains the virtues of having dedicated aircraft for certain missions, designed around accepting those missions' limitations rather than denying them. Precisely because they don't try to do everything well, they're often less expensive.

It also serves to explain the limits of the new JSF/F-35 in the close air support role, to which the USAF has unwisely tasked some F-35s as a successor to the A-10. The fact that the JSF is much more expensive than the A-10, less heavily armed, AND less resilient does not encourage me... it sounds like an A-16 reprise. Though I like the aircraft very much for other missions and I support building it in numbers.

Just another example of not having to go with the new and shiny all the time... and maybe unmanned drones with fulfil this role by then, but I'm not betting on it. When the current A-10s hit the end of their useful life, the USA should strongly consider just building them again with minor upgrades (upgraded software, avionics, maybe engines, gun if they can improve it but I doubt it). The original batch of A-10s were 1/5th the price of the F-16 at about $4m per, and cutting some $40M F-35s to get 3-4x the number of A-10 IIIs for close support seems like a great deal to me as well as a great idea on the battlefield.

I get the sense that the A-10's replacement will be a UAV fielded sometime after 2020.