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Eventually, the U.S. Air Force wants to replace the low and slow-flying A-10 Warthog with the fast-moving F-35 stealth fighter. But it’ll take years before the troubled jet fighters are ready for duty.

In the meantime, the Air Force still needs a plane for dedicated close air support missions — something the A-10 excels at. So what does the flying branch propose? Not keeping the Warthog.

Instead, the Air Force wants to replace the Warthog with a modified F-16 fighter jet — an old concept that failed to live up to expectations decades ago. The F-16s would fill in temporarily until the F-35s can take over.

We have a hard time believing it — but yes, this is a serious proposal.

via Now the U.S. Air Force Wants to Replace A-10s With F-16s — War Is Boring — Medium.

Mr. Trevithick makes most of the classic mistakes in this article about the Air Force, Close Air Support, and the A-10.

First, he quotes Pierre Sprey. Sprey’s a statistician and music producer. He’s not an aerodynamicist, or fighter pilot, or JTAC or any other sort of expert on attack aviation. For God’s sake, he still thinks the F-15 was a mistake. Sprey hasn’t been right about anything to do with airpower since he was crunching numbers for the guys that DID design the A-10.

Second, Mr. Trevithick seems to be one of those who believes the Air Force has long wanted to dispose of the A-10. They haven’t. There was great concern about its survivability in the mid 80s, and even after the Gulf War. But the Air Force has put a lot of effort into keeping the A-10 in service, and viable as close air support weapon, including updating its suite of weapons to include modern sensors and precision guided munitions. And of  course, the Air Force has been pleased with the Warthog’s perfomance in the permissive environment of Iraq and Afghanistan the last decade.

But the fact of the matter is, the Air Force is face with the sequester. That limits not only the total dollar amount available to the Air Force, which is tight but not unduly so, but also fails to give the Air Force authority to shift funds from one account to another. That inability to shift funds from one account to another is what is critically hurting the Air Force (and to an extent, the other services).

While the Air Force has a moral obligation to train for and support the current wars and engagements we find our nation in, they also have an equally strong moral obligation to prepare for future conflicts. And the fact of the matter is, the proliferation of formidable air defense assets means that the A-10’s ability to survive above the battlefield will continue to diminish. Fighter pilots have a saying- speed is life. And it’s true. Particularly in regards to avoiding surface to air missiles. In Desert Storm, four A-10s were shot down, all by relatively unsophisticated short range heatseeker SAMS. Only three F-16s were lost, in spite of larger numbers deployed, and of those three, only one was lost to a short range system. Some of that disparity in losses may simply be luck or happenstance, the methods in which the different airframes were employed. But the fact is, with proper tactics, the F-16 is far less vulnerable to low end air defense systems than the A-10. And before the entire chorus of A-10 fans chime in about the myriad survivability features built into the A-10, understand this- these were the very threats the A-10 was designed to face- shoulder launched SAMs and the SA-9/SA-13 systems. As tough as the A-10 is, the only true survivability feature is to not get hit.

Mr. Trevithick takes us back to the abortive attempt in the late 80s and early 90s to ameliorate these survivability concerns regarding the A-10 by using the F-16 in the CAS role:

The Air Force told the Pentagon and Congress that former A-10 pilots flying modified F-16s—also known as F/A-16s or simply A-16s—would be the most sensible option.

With a GPU-5 gun pod strapped on, Air Force officials believed the fast-moving F-16s could attack enemy troops just as well as A-10s — while avoiding enemy missiles. The GPU-5 contained a 30-millimeter Gatling gun derived from the Warthog’s monstrous main cannon. Both guns fired the same massive shells.

…

But by the time Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Air Force had prevailed and begun implementing its plan. When the American-led coalition unleashed its aerial blitzkrieg against Iraq, the flying branch had F-16s with GPU-5s ready to go.

The results were a mess.

“The F-16 … did not live up to the expectations,” the RAND Corporation concluded in a study ordered by the Air Force afterwards. “The GPU-5, 30-millimeter gun pod, was tried for one day.”

The biggest problem for the add-on guns was recoil. Attached to the centerline pylon under the F-16’s fuselage by two relatively small hoops, the pods wobbled around violently as they fired the huge shells.

That’s very much true. The GPU-5 gun pod was something of a miserable failure.  And aside from the Mk1 eyeball, the F-16 didn’t have much in the way of sensors for picking out tanks and other ground targets. Of course, neither did the A-10. For that matter, the 30mm gun wasn’t really the prime tank killing weapon, for either platform. Bot the F-16 and the A-10 routinely carried four to six AGM-65D Maverick guided missiles. The standoff range of the Maverick was intended specifically to keep the attacking jet out of the range of short range missiles such as those that shot down four A-10s.

Further, Mr. Trevithick completely ignores the revolution in sensors and precision weapons over the last two decades. The vast majority of weapons used in Desert Storm were simple, unguided dumb bombs, either the Mk80 series GP bombs, or various cluster bombs. Today, it’s extremely rare in combat for a non-guided weapon to be dropped from a jet. JDAM, LGB, SDB, the options are ever increasing for the JTAC. Further, the introduction of ground launched precision weapons, such as guided rockets and artillery, and even mortar shells are likely to reduce the need for close air support as we’ve seen it used in the permissive environments of the last decade and a half of war.

F-16s now regularly lob all sorts of guided missiles and bombs at hostile targets. But today’s much improved version—lovingly referred to as Vipers—still don’t have anything that can match the Warthog’s devastating gun.

And after a series of upgrades, A-10s now carry the exact same precision weapons as the Vipers.

Well, while there IS something to be said for the psychological impact of the Warthog’s gun, in terms of terminal ballistics against troops, there’s not really much difference between the Warthog’s gun, and the M61 20mm Vulcan of the F-16. And if both platforms are lobbing all sorts of the same precision weapons (always, by definition, under the terminal control of the JTAC on the ground), what really is the advantage of the A-10 over the F-16 today.

To simply ignore the improvements in sensors and armaments twenty years of progress is foolish. The F-16 is a far, far more capable strike, interdiction, and Close Air Support platform than it was.

Is replacing the A-10 with the F-16 ideal? No. But given the budgetary constraints the Air Force is faced with, it is an entirely reasonable course of action.