On Mon, 8 Dec 2003 23:13:38 +0000, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:

In message , Hog Driver
writes
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul J. Adam"
That's an extremely large "if", given the extensive air-to-air sensor
suite fitted to the A-10...

Well, using AWACS and mutual support tactics, the A-10 pilots are going to
have an idea where to pick up the tally.

Again, AWACS is situation-dependent, and there's that oft-quoted
statistic about 80% of surviving pilots wondering who shot them down
(tracking that statistic to a source is probably good for a PhD thesis -
anyone up for funding it? )

I got a fair way toward a conference paper on it, with the help of the
guys at Wright-Pat. The conclusion is very limited because it's based
on very limited data, more like randomly-collected anecdote, long
before AWACS or modern RWR. I wouldn't use it to try to support my
arguments about modern air warfare.


Again, for real life this isn't much of a problem because the A-10
operates in total air supremacy and has never had an enemy aircraft ever
get a chance to shoot at it (rendering the preparations of the A-10
crews to fight back untested).

I don't think that's right. We know that two A-10s nailed helos in
'91, so the possibility of helo-A-10 combat has to be considered.
If an A-10 can get a helo kill with a gun designed for air-to-ground,
then a helo with such a gun can do the same thing to the A-10.

Restricting armament to its advertised role is silly. Just ask the
Argentineans in that ship that the Royal Marines pasted with their
Carl Gustavs. Or the F-15 that nailed the helo with the 500-lb dumb
bomb. Having seen those happen, the idea of an A-10 going up against
an enemy aircraft doesn't seem so far-fetched.

Again, situation dependent, lots of 'what ifs' that
you can't know about until you are there.

This is too true, sadly, and imposes all sorts of limits on open debate.

I don't think it's that kind of limitation. I think it's more like
there being too many scenarios to really predict accurately. Most of
them are going to be kind of unexpected, which makes it hard to
predict.

I think we both know that the possibility of air-to-air gun fighting today
is highly unlikely. Lessons learned from the past would behoove us to have
them on our jets, or in the case of the A-10, use them to really screw up
the bad guys on the ground.

I hate to be contrarian... all right, I don't. I _like_ being
contrarian. Lessons from the past suggest that getting missiles working
and crews trained is a better path to dead enemies for air-to-air work.
Air-to-ground, guns pull you into IR-SAM range and even for A-10s that
isn't healthy.

The fighter world decided this once before, you know. They were wrong.
That was back when NATO faced the WarPac military, though, as well as
before AWACS, etc. A lot of this discussion is assuming, rightly or
wrongly, that the only scenario is the overwhelming Western military
against some over-classed small country. That may not be a good
assumption.

What about India and Pakistan? Are they going to be fighting the same
kind of air war? Probably not. The UK and Argentina fought something
a lot different from either anti-Iraqi action.

We design and build most of our aircraft for export as well as
domestic use (for pretty much every current "we"), so it's important
not to get too fixated on one combat scenario. We may have to put
guns into fighters to keep aircraft salable, after all.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer