A-10 gear fairing

In article ,
Ed Rasimus writes:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 11:25:25 -0400, John Hairell
wrote:

Ed,

Didn't you work as an ALO with a division in Germany at one point?
I'd like to hear about your experiences working with ground-pounders,
and your opinions on Army aviation, if any.

John Hairell )

No, emphatically no. Anyone who spends more than one tour (penance) in
the TACS (Tactical Air Control System--i.e., FACs and ALOs) is of
minimal value. Sorry in advance to those career FAC/ALOs that I've
offended.

I was an ALO in the 4th ID, Fort Carson Colorado from '85-'87. This
was after being passed over seven times for O-5 and with an extension
in service for two years. Assignment taken to get a move from Holloman
AFB (great place to fly, lousy place to retire) to Colorado Springs.
Nuff said.

I liked, and more importantly respected, everyone that I ever
encountered in Army Aviation. Mas grande cojones, en todos.

Ed, did you work with a particular Brigae whiel you were there?
Tank Boy (The youngest brother in the family) was in D/4/68th
Armor at the same time. (If you saw an early '70s Chevelle with the
New Hampshire license plate "LETHAL", that was him.


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

Ed Rasimus wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 04:57:52 -0400, Cub Driver
wrote:



Of course! Any fighter aviator would be eager to switch from Hogs to
Vipers (except for that occasional strange group that seems to have an

Evidently this is not true of Hog drivers. (And anyhow, aren't *all"
fighter pilots strange?)

Humans all tend to make the best of a bad situation. Take someone
before an assignment and ask them to list their preferences. Not many
folks will put the A-10 ahead of the Viper, Eagle or now, Raptor. Once
assigned and wrapped up in the mission, you then get the syndrom of
"mine is better" regardless of the airplane. Certainly some Hog
drivers love their airplane, but if told the unit was transitioning to
something a little more "swoopy" they'd eat it up.

And, while there may be a commonality of "strangeness", let me
reiterate my oft-stated position that not all folks assigned to fly
tactical aircraft are "fighter pilots."

But, I reiterate, the idea that the AF is "anti-CAS" is flat wrong.

Ed, you'd better read Campbell's book and then report back. He quotes
page after page of Air Force argument that your experience in Vietnam
was an anomaly that would never be repeated, that interdiction and not
CAS was what we needed, and that the A-1 and the A-10 would only get
in the way when the Russian tanks came through the Fulda Gap.

I'll try to get to Campbell's book, but having checked the summary on
Amazon, I can almost predict what it says. There was great debate at
the time of acquisition regarding whether we were "reliving the last
war" with the A-10. It would have been a great in-country airplane for
SEA. The real concern was whether the plain-vanilla airplane was going
to be survivable in Europe in a more intense conflict.

Question two, was the definitions of CAS and interdiction. There was
even a transition mission defined, BAI (battlefield area
interdiction)--neither CAS nor true interdiction, but systematic
attacking of the second and third echelon of the advancing horde. If
you did a good BAI job, the requirement for true CAS was minimized.

Defining where CAS ends and BAI or AI begins seems to be a bit murky.
If the definitions as stated by the US Army CGSC are used (CAS being
"in close proximity" to friendly ground units and requiring "detailed
integration" with friendly fire and maneuver, and AI being "at such a
distance...that integration of each air mission with fire and
movement..." is not required), there seems to be a bit of confusion
possible. For example, what do you call a mission against the second
echelon, fifteen or twenty klicks from the nearest friendlies, but
still within the FSCL boundary? It is not in close proximity, but IIRC
all air missions in front of the FSCL require pretty close
integration, lest you conflict with those arty rounds you mention.


Issue three, the development of the Army aviation component to better
provide supplemental firepower to artillery. If you got good gunships,
not just gun on Hueys, but Cobras and Apaches optimized for ground
attack and survivability, you lessened the need for "fast movers."

But the development of Army aviation, while initially aimed at
supplementing artillery, changed quite a bit with the development of
the divisional aviation brigade, which instead became a fourth
maneuver element, as opposed to a fire support element. If your attack
aviation assets are tied up with a deep mission, or with a continuous
attack mission along some axis, then the need for CAS on the part of
the ground maneuver brigades has not really been lessened. I never
thought of the aviation assets as so much substituting for CAS as much
as they *complement* it (JAAT being an example of the latter).


And, problem four, the difficulty in a fluid tactical environment with
deconflicting airspace. You can't be lobbing artillery in where
airplanes are operating. You can't be zooming around willy-nilly at
low altitude of rotary wings are transiting.

That sounds like the now-infamous "where to locate the FSCL" debate
during ODS; haven't heard much about it reappearing during the latest
conflict.

You must have close
control of the airspace and delivery designations to effectively
employ "danger close." And, for a variety of reasons (economic,
political, practical--pick one,) we simultaneously add the demise of
the airborne FAC in a slow-mover fixed wing.

I believe the use of PGM's in the CAS role is making this a bit easier
in terms of operating CAS in "danger close".

Brooks


Did I get the high points? Do I still have to buy the book?

"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
om

But the development of Army aviation, while initially aimed at
supplementing artillery, changed quite a bit with the development of
the divisional aviation brigade, which instead became a fourth
maneuver element, as opposed to a fire support element. If your attack
aviation assets are tied up with a deep mission, or with a continuous
attack mission along some axis, then the need for CAS on the part of
the ground maneuver brigades has not really been lessened. I never
thought of the aviation assets as so much substituting for CAS as much
as they *complement* it (JAAT being an example of the latter).

But are JAAT and JAWS even *practiced* any more?

--
http://www.delversdungeon.dragonsfoot.org
Remove the X's in my email address to respond.
"Damn you Silvey, and your endless fortunes." - Stephen Weir
I hate furries.

(Kirk Stant) wrote in message . com...
Cub Driver wrote in message news).

Kirk, you must read Campbell's book The Warthog and the Close Air
Support Support, from Naval Institute Press. He was an A-10 pilot (and
A-7s for the Navy before that!) and he certainly lays out the case
that only the power of the U.S. Congress forced the A-10 down the
throat of the Air Force brass, and that the brass spent the next 20
years trying to get rid of it.

I'll have to get his book and read it. However, that position is not
reflected in the actual operational use of the A-10, which has been in
the limelight of every conflict we have faught since we got it - not a
good way to make a plane look bad!

And yet on the eve of ODS, the USAF had already announced its plans to
retire the A-10; performance during that conflict resulted in a rather
quick about-face on that.

There was also a lot of opposition
to the F-4, and to the F-16, and even to the F-111 when they were all
introduced, but they all turned out to be excellent weapons. I think
only the F-15 had no opponents from the start!

How many of those opponents to the F-4, or even the F-16, were in the
USAF, though?

And we go back to the
problem of single role aircraft - when you are cutting back, they are
the first to go, regardless of how good they are. Once the military
started getting funds again, the A-10 started getting a bunch of
excellent upgrades (LASTE,Aim-9 rails, etc.), and now they have
finally added a decent targeting pod - not something you do to a
"despised" weapon system. If only they would put some new motors on
it...

It was more than just the funds issue--as I said earlier, the rails
were already greased for the A-10 to head to AMARC en mass at the time
that ODS kicked off. As late as this past year a senior USAF officer
had to backtrack regarding a memo which purportedly sought to again
kill the A-10; there was a bit of discussion in the group about it at
the time. And I am not sure the A-10 was ever really a "single role"
aircraft; ISTR it was also looked on as a replacement for the A-1 in
the SAR escort role when it came into service, in addition to its
primary attack role, and later FAC role.



Even the supersonic b.s. seems to be pretty well established--thus the
F-16 as the "successor" to the A-10. (The F-16's main virtue as a CAS
aircraft seems to be that it can fly supersonic if it's not carrying
any CAS stores

Supersonic performance is so misunderstood by non-military aviators.
Until the current generation of supercruise fighters become
operational, supersonic performance was mainly an air defense asset,
where intercept time was crucial. It also implied a high
thrust-to-weight, which is nice to have in any fighter, but at the
cost of persistence. With the F-16 (and F-4 before, and Mirage, etc)
you have the best of both worlds: clean, you can go fast; load it up,
you can carry lots of stuff that goes boom and still turn and burn.
As a side note, it always amazed me how the brit press badmouthed the
F-15E saying it would be a terrible low altitude fighter bomber
because of it's high wing loading, then praise their industry for
turning an excellent low altitude fighter bomber (Tornado) into an air
defense fighter (Tornado F3).

Back to the F-16 and CAS, it's asset is that there are a lot of them,
they have excellent A/G sensors and targeting systems, they carry a
useful combat load, and they can get to the area fast and survive
pretty good. Not bad for a plane that was originally designed to be a
day only "guns and heaters" dogfigher!

Not sure how accurate that is; from what I have read, the F-16 was
planned as a multi-role platform during its initial development phase,
well before it ever entered into service.


Finally, about the paint - When the primary threat was the WP, all AF
tactical aircraft with an air-to-ground role had a dark green paint
scheme - the European 1, I think it was called - nice dark wraparound
that finally got rid of the idiotic white bellies (and the givaway
belly flash) that worked great in Europe but sucked big time at
Nellis! Then when the F-16 came into the inventory, the fashion
changed to grays, and even the F-4 got a nice gray cammo. A-10s just
took longer, I guess.

Euro 1 was known as the "Green Lizard" IIRC. And if you check into it,
I believe you will find the F-15 was sporting that flat blue-gray
scheme before while the YF-16 was still tooling around in red, white,
and blue.

Brooks


The whole subject of aircraft camouflage is fascinating; Keith Ferris
wrote some interesting stuff about it - some of our F-4Cs at Luke had
his schemes on them when I went through RTU and boy were they neat
looking.

All OT, anyway, and still no answer to my original question!

Regards,

Kirk

(Kirk Stant) wrote in message . com...
Cub Driver wrote in message news).

Kirk, you must read Campbell's book The Warthog and the Close Air
Support Support, from Naval Institute Press. He was an A-10 pilot (and
A-7s for the Navy before that!) and he certainly lays out the case
that only the power of the U.S. Congress forced the A-10 down the
throat of the Air Force brass, and that the brass spent the next 20
years trying to get rid of it.

I'll have to get his book and read it. However, that position is not
reflected in the actual operational use of the A-10, which has been in
the limelight of every conflict we have faught since we got it - not a
good way to make a plane look bad!

Not quite. It missed Grenada, where the only CAS missions were flown
by the USN and USAF AC-130's, and it was also not used in Panama,
where IIRC the only fixed wing CAS missions were flown by the ANG
A-7's that were down there on rotation (and that strange F-117
mission...).

Brooks
snip

"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message ink.net...
"Tex Houston" wrote in message
...

Guess you never saw an F-102, F-106 or even an F-101. The name of the
paint
was even Air Defense Gray. Nothing new with the advent of the F-16.


Well, he did say "tactical aircraft with an air-to-ground role". I don't
recall ever seeing a gray F-102.

Actually, I think all of the F-102's were painted either gray (albeit
not the same flat colors used by the later tactical aircraft) or SEA
camo; I believe the type of alloy used on the skin required painting,
which is why you don't see any photos of "silver" F-102's other than
the prototype.

Brooks

After an exhausting session with Victoria's Secret Police, Kevin
Brooks blurted out:

How many of those opponents to the F-4, or even the F-16, were in the
USAF, though?

Against the F-4? Hmmm, guys flying single seat fighters that carried a
gun. "Two seats? WTF do you do with the wasted space?"

How about the HQ Staff folks that were concerrned that if the F-16
were fielded, the F-15 program would suffer. How could the F-15
program suffer? Some bright person would figure a way to task the F-15
for surface attack ("not a pound for air-to-ground") and give the
air-to-air role to the F-16. In Trest's book on Boyd, he mentions the
concerns the F-15 supporters had about the F-16.

And there were more than a few officers above John Boyd that flat out
didn't like him, ergo his pet project.

Not sure how accurate that is; from what I have read, the F-16 was
planned as a multi-role platform during its initial development phase,
well before it ever entered into service.

Read Trest's book on John Boyd. His proposal for the F-16 didn't even
include a radar, much less thinking of carrying a bomb. Boyd's concept
was air-to-air all the way.

Juvat

Asked the crew chief at the last airshow. He showed me the spiral
antenna and the wire which you can see by looking up inside the gear
sponson behind that black plastic cover (not just black paint). Don't
know exactly what it's for tho.

Kirk Stant wrote:

A question for any Warthog jocks (or fans) out the

Why is the front of the right gear fairing on all A-10s painted gloss
black? Is is a radome of some sort? If so, what for?

Unless, of course, you would have to kill me if you told me, etc...

Just curious,

Kirk
Old F-4 WSO



--


**GOT JETS?**
http://www.rfsm.net/

Dave Stein -- President
Red Flag Scale Modelers
Las Vegas, Nevada
YOU NEED A HOBBY!

**GET SOME!**
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On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 13:24:11 GMT, Ed Rasimus
wrote:

Did I get the high points? Do I still have to buy the book?

Yes, you did, but you still have to get the book. (You don't have to
buy it. A big-time author like you can write NIP and get a review
copy, I betcha.)

What you left out was the continuing USAF dislike of the A-10. It
wasn't just the acquisition; it has lasted for a generation.

Campbell does go to great lengths to define air support, even unto
BAI, but to me this is meaningless. You know it when you need it, and
you need it when the bad guys are swaming over the ridge and there's
no artillery sighted in on your position.

(Under my definition, of course, the A-10 has never been used for air
support. 15,000 feet! That was its minimum altitude over Yugoslavia!
Did Art Kramer ever bomb from that high?)



all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
om...

Actually, I think all of the F-102's were painted either gray (albeit
not the same flat colors used by the later tactical aircraft) or SEA
camo; I believe the type of alloy used on the skin required painting,
which is why you don't see any photos of "silver" F-102's other than
the prototype.


Hmmm, most of the photos of F-102s I've seen had them painted white.