YA10B probably should of entered production but was Canned

Were you fortunate enough not to catch strays from its notoriously huge splash zone? It holds the record for blue on blue incidents for a reason. The F111 flew more sorties and killed many times more bad guys, just didn't have the propaganda department of this thing, with its all but unsupported reputation.

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sgtfuzzle17@reddit

Worth noting here, those figures were for tanks killed during ODS. Aardvarks wouldn’t have been as suitable for low intensity stuff like Afghanistan as the upgraded A-10Cs were.

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_deltaVelocity_@reddit

The ‘Hog is in the awkward position of being overkill (and expensive) for low-intensity COIN but being hopelessly obsolete in any sort of high-intensity conflict where air supremacy isn’t a guarantee.

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ithappenedone234@reddit

The Su-25 is doing just fine in 2+ years of high intensity conflict, against just about ever AA system in the world, and the Su is less capable than the A-10. There is no reason to believe that any AA system can reliably kill them in NOE. No AA system has ever been able to do so in the history of combat.

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PriestWithTourettes@reddit

If you call losses of 33 airframes in 2.5 years “just fine”…

I for one love the A-10 and Su-25, but the environment they were designed to operate in is no longer the environment of the current high intensity battlefield.

Drones are where things are going. Lower cost, pilots are remote and not risked, smaller so harder to hit by AA cannon.

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ithappenedone234@reddit

Yes those are just fine. Of course. That’s a tiny number and that’s why they exist to be used and used up.

Have you ever been to combat? Do you not know what we do and how we do it?

Yes drones are better, that’s the case for nearly every combat task in every environment. Autonomous and semiautonomous systems are obsoleting every legacy systems one after another.

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Booya346@reddit

It doesn’t have a huge splash zone lol. Go look up the REDs. Also frat is almost always the fault of the aircrew or ground force and not the aircraft itself.

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91361_throwaway@reddit

That is a dumb hot take. No other aircraft In modern history was tasked with doing what the Warthog did. Maybe AV-8B is the only thing that comes close.

The A-10 Saved many, many more men and women than what you’re whining about.

Go outside tomorrow and yell at some clouds

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wildskipper@reddit

Surely the Soviets and Russians have aircraft that have been tasked with the same role? Not to mention the aircraft used in numerous countries to fight insurgencies, bush wars etc.

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geeiamback@reddit

The Su-25 is probably the closest counterpart.

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_deltaVelocity_@reddit

Notably, the Frogfoot is more than 100mph faster and STILL takes heavy casualties as seen in Ukraine

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ithappenedone234@reddit

In Ukraine, where the loss rates per sortie have been low for 2+ years for the Su-25? Sure. Great example.

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Leandroswasright@reddit

I mean, it is pretty similar to the warthog and has the upside of being cheaper.

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Fordmister@reddit

Most everybody else uses a Helicopter. In terms of direct air support for infantry a solid helicopter gunship is going to be exponentially better at the job than the A-10 ever was. And in terms of anti armor work standard fast air with a proper sensor suite and weapons that can actually do the job are more effective.

It was an aircraft designed for a war it never fought, forced to fight wars it never should have and had been made rather obsolete pretty shortly after it came into service. If it wasn't for the morale effects and the internal politics of the US armed forces they would have been quietly taken out back and scrapped much much earlier in their career

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FatDudeOnAMTB@reddit

Helicopters have less range, less load capacity, less on station time, slower airspeed to respond to calls for CAS.

I've always understood if you were calling in CAS (emphasis on Close), blue on blue was just an unfortunate reality if it was close enough. I've never heard an infantryman complain about the A-10 except for very isolated incidents.

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Fordmister@reddit

The rates of blue on blue from the A-10 far outstrip that of other airframes when you account for the number of sorties. It's got an unacceptably high rate of friendly fire incidents because it was never built for it. It's a badly designed aircraft for CAS. and if it wasn't for the US air force and army having constant spats over who gets to kill tanks from the air it wouldn't even exist to begin with.

Is blue on blue a risk from CAS? Yes, but that's all the more reason not to use the damn A-10. It was never built to be a CAS platform. It's why its target acquisition is poor (especially in the earlier models) the splash zone from the gun far too big, and the aircraft far too vulnerable to shoulder mounted AA missiles.

You don't hear infantry complaining because all the ones who would are dead. The statistics speak for themselves though. It's a poor tank hunter, and far too good at accidentally killing friendlies to claim it's good at CAS.

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MC_C0L7@reddit

Yeahh, I'm not gonna hand wave away preventable friendly fire casualties just because cool gun plane go brrr. There's nothing the A-10 can do that a missile truck could have done better and with less risk to guys on the ground. In the GWOT days, before the fleet was updated with an expensive sensor package (in response to all of the friendly fire incidents, including a particularly bad one that killed a British serviceman and destroyed multiple vehicles), the pilots literally were using binoculars from the cockpit to try and find their targets, because they lacked anything more sophisticated.

It was a plane that was bad at what it was originally designed for, bad at what it ended up doing, and is only still in service because it went thru an extremely expensive upgrade process, just to do the same job a literal crop duster can do: sling PGMs and pray there aren't any MANPADs.

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highergravityday@reddit

Hey man, that’s way more than a crop duster. One beat Ripslinger in the Wings Around the World Rally!

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tgpussypants@reddit

Yeah Air Tractors are also great firefighter aircraft too.

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Mike312@reddit

I love that this is the page I opened up Reddit to after watching Lazerpigs series on how shitty the A10 is.

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humanmeatwave@reddit

Yea! You're going in hot!

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Turbo_SkyRaider@reddit

But does this come down to being an issue with the A-10 itself or rather an "organisational" issue, i.e. wrong identification of targets, improper attack direction, etc?

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

Feeding US pilots a pile of amphetamines so that they can keep their attention switched on for hours and hours was also a large cause of friendly kills.

Sauce: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/04/afghanistan.richardnortontaylor

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Hadrollo@reddit

The A-10 itself.

It was overhyped by a group of people in military aviation who referred to themselves as "The Reformers" - a small and overly influential group of people with questionable accreditations who were stuck in a 1960s mindset of dogfighting with cheap and maneuverable radarless fighters in an age where a radar guided missile can take you out from over the horizon. They're also the same group that published most of the negative press on the F-35 program, usually for Russia Today and other literal Russian propaganda outlets.

The A-10 originally had no sensors, pilots were up there using binoculars trying to identify targets. That main gun has a pretty awful circular area probable for CAS - and is underpowered against the tanks it was designed to attack, but that's besides the point. Combine poor target identification with a large splash zone and the A-10 is inherently a recipe for blue-on-blue incidents.

The only reason the A-10 still works at all is that it's been upgraded in exactly the things the reformers praised; they now have expensive on board sensors and rely more on expensive precision missiles. Even then, it's not a particularly great aircraft - it was designed as a gunship, the gun doesn't work properly so they use missiles, but the design still has the compromises to fit the gun. It's being replaced by a modified crop duster.

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tgpussypants@reddit

They make those modified crop dusters in a town near me! (Olney) The AT 802 is actually awesome, it's made to be incredibly cost effective and easy to repair. You should check out the Air Tractor website. Pretty cool stuff

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Hadrollo@reddit

I was driving rural for work about this time last year. It was a beautiful spring day, sun shining, I had a salt lake to my right and a field of flowering canola to my left. A local farmer in an AT-802 crop duster was flying about 5 metres above the canola, raised it a little, buzzed straight over me on the highway, then skirted along about twenty centimetres above the lake before lifting up and pulling a hard left horizontal loop. Those things can move. It was obvious that the guy wasn't working and was just out having fun, and I have never felt a greater desire to get my pilots licence than at that moment.

I would have stopped to watch some more, but then I drove through a swarm of bees that was like driving through bubble wrap for 500 metres. Weird end to the story, but it is what it is.

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tgpussypants@reddit

That's wild! I pull over often to watch the 802s and 502s rip around. They must have incredible power to carry around the huge balls on those pilots

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phoenixmusicman@reddit

The original A-10 didn't have sensors, period, it relied on the mk1 eyeball to identify targets which is why it caused so many blue on blue incidents

The upgraded A-10 did but that upgrade package costs more than an F-35A does now.

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KnightofWhen@reddit

They’re never gonna go 😂 they’ve been on the chopping block since at least the mid 90s. These things are gonna get modified and deployed to Mars somehow during the colonial wars.

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ithappenedone234@reddit

But McCain is dead, so can’t protect them anymore and modern systems are cheaper, able to be provided to us as an organic asset and able to bring CAS much closer. We’ve got video out of Ukraine with organic CAS being provided at ~4 meters. No legacy system comes closer.

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91361_throwaway@reddit

Truthfully fail to see why they aren’t all transferred to the Reserves or Air National Guard, it’s a perfect mission set and timeline to get mobilized allows the active air component the ability take care of enemy air defenses.

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HyFinated@reddit

As an infantry medic that served in Iraq, the absolute highlight of my time there was having CAS from the A-10s and the Apaches. It was epic seeing these fly over and turn the calm ground into a violent dust storm.

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PuffinSinse@reddit

Thanks for sharing your story you are our country's best. 💯🫡🤝

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EagleCatchingFish@reddit

A friend of mine once read part of a letter that his infantryman cousin wrote from Afghanistan. I can't remember if he was on a forward base or on patrol, but his squad was under fire and it was getting hairy. He wrote about the relief and awe he felt seeing an A-10 come in and do a strafing run on the Taliban position.

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Kodiak01@reddit

Miss the days in New England when you could see the /r/Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt Brigade of the 104th or CT ANG flying around daily.

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Get_Your_Schwift_On@reddit

Growing up on the approach path to Barnes was a blast in the 80s and 90s. It's not the same with the F-15s.

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Kodiak01@reddit

Maybe not the approach, but the way the F-15s take off now is very entertaining.

On more than one occasion, travelling along I90W when they were taking off. They would stay slow across the Pike, crossing it at under 100' before pulling up. I watched more than one driver shit their pants at the view!

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Get_Your_Schwift_On@reddit

The rumble of the F-15s *is* pretty impressive, but the Turbofans just had this lingering sound around East Mountain that was comforting. You always knew Brrrt could show up for any Red Dawn baddies. The C-5's coming out of Westover was always awesome too. Especially on summer nights when the windows were open, before we all had AC.

My dad worked at Barnes for 40 years, but also grew up off the I90 exit. He remembers back when an F-100 pilot slid off the runway across both sides of I90 and up into the trees.

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DolphinPunkCyber@reddit

A-10 is one if those vehicles that are so ugly they are actually beautiful.

Just like Mi-24

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Hadrollo@reddit

Dunno, the Brits probably don't share the same enthusiasm.

I get it, big gun go brrrrt. But I'd prefer to see CAS that isn't a flying blue-on-blue incident and can actually take out tanks.

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Fordmister@reddit

Dunno, pretty sure the British Blues and Royals think they are pretty hideous...

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AutobotHotRod@reddit

You kidding me? A-10s are one of the coolest aircraft I have ever known.

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dwn_n_out@reddit

We had them on station regularly and thankfully and or unfortunately never got to see them let loose. But did have the privilege of talking to the pilot of one probably the most down to earth guy I’ve meet. He flew for delta or united back home and would come over and fly A-10s. the stories he had made him seem like a god for us bottom of the barrel grunts

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daltonsghost@reddit

I just love the way it looks 🤤

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z3r0c00l_@reddit

If you think the A-10 is ugly…well…fuck you.

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R-Cursedcomentes@reddit

I’m not people so I’m good. Plus if the F-100 and Gannet are pretty the A-10 are, and they are

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justtakeapill@reddit

"The ugly may be beautiful, but the pretty - - never."

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Aquanauticul@reddit

God I love ugly attack aircraft

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R-Cursedcomentes@reddit

Who doesn’t? I like “ugly” aircraft such as the F-100, XF-32, MiG-9, and the Gannet

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hundycougar@reddit

A6 comes to mind too

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DukeOfBattleRifles@reddit

They both look pretty nice, I like blunt nosed planes.

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ClosedL00p@reddit

Ever wondered what an A-10 would look like with anorexia? Now you know

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Gtantha@reddit

Still not as ugly as the should of in the title. Shame on you, /u/Supercrown07

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AlpacaPacker007@reddit

Call it ugly to it's face. I dare ya.

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R-Cursedcomentes@reddit

I never called it ugly. It just looks like the A-10 with a few extra chromosomes

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101001101zero@reddit

Hard no

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jatosm@reddit

It’s so ugly it’s cute, like a pug

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WuhanWTF@reddit

The A-10 is the opposite of ugly.

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Quailman5000@reddit

I kinda like it more.

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904756909@reddit

should’ve

Or

should have

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fireandlifeincarnate@reddit

Why should it “of” entered production?

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the_dank_dweller69@reddit

Not the sole reason, but the Early A-10 had a guy and his eyeballs as the targeting pod(the brits are a lil too familiar with this problem), having 4 eyeballs helps alot when you have to navigate, spot, determine positions etc, even with modern TGP’s, datalink and certain pilot augmentations like HUD visors, its typically better to split the workload of ground attack air craft, or just aircraft operating in contested or ground defended airspace

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roberthadfield1@reddit

With that Brit problem are you referring to op Telic and the friendly fire incident with the blues and royals?

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LightningFerret04@reddit

Yeah, planes like the OV-10 worked pretty well with two people

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snonsig@reddit

Love your profile pic

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fireandlifeincarnate@reddit

Gay cat show rules supreme

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Drownedon42St@reddit

Just no. The projected loss rate during a land war in central Europe was 7% per one hundred sorties. The entire fleet of A10 aircraft would last about two weeks putting a WSO in wouldn't have changed the loss rate just upped the number of personnel needing rescue.

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ithappenedone234@reddit

Lol. That’s a tiny loss rate and no reason to bad mouth the airframe. No system or combat formation was going to survive ~90 divisions coming across the Fulda. We knew that. In case you didn’t know, combat systems are meant to be used in combat. They get used and destroyed, that’s what we exist for. Surviving is not an inherent part of the mission set.

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Spare_Student4654@reddit

In the 1980s It would only take one week until America was pushed out of Germany and back into the channel ports and the plan was then to nuke Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria in an attempt to stop Soviet reinforcements. When the Polish found out in the 1990s they were extremely pissed. It didn't really matter that they weren't survivable for two weeks. What mattered were kills per unit. And the 93% survival rate was absurdly high. It's likely the soviets would have had parity in the air.

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ZOMBEH_SAM@reddit

Hey, % means per hundred.

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beerhandups@reddit

7% per 100 sorties is very different from 7% per 1000 sorties. The basis for the 100% matters.

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destinationsjourney@reddit

ZOMBEH_SAM is right. % means per 100, you don't have to define how many it's related to. It literally means per 100. So, 1 in 4 would be 25%. 50 per 200 would also be 25%. It means that it's standardized. So if you are flying 100 missions at 7% loss, you will expect to lose 7 aircraft. If flying 1,000 missions, 70 aircraft. Saying % does not have to be related to a specific number, unless you are demonstrating it from raw data. For example, I tossed a coin 50 times and got 30 heads, so heads came up 60% of the time.

Source, I am an engineer and studied math (a lot)

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iamalsobrad@reddit

So if you are flying 100 missions at 7% loss, you will expect to lose 7 aircraft. If flying 1,000 missions, 70 aircraft.

Unless it says specifically that the projected loss rate is 'per 100 aircraft' or something, then you DO have to define how many it's related to.

If you have 1,000 aircraft and you have a 7% projected loss rate over 1,000 missions, you will expect to lose 70 aircraft, or 0.07 aircraft per mission.
If you only have 100 aircraft and you have a 7% projected loss rate over 1,000 missions, you will expect to lose 7 aircraft, or 0.007 aircraft per mission.

The latter is a loss rate that is an order of magnitude lower despite still being 7%.

In this case that part that is being left out is that it's 7% loss per 100 missions from a total of 408 A-10s.

The projection is bonkers anyway. Each pilot would have been expected to fly 4 missions a day (i.e. a total starting sortie rate of 1,632 per day), so with the projected loss rate they would expect to lose 94% of their aircraft (384) within the first 24 hours.

Assuming a constant attrition rate and no replacements, the last aircraft would be lost halfway through day 23. This aircraft would have completed 800 solo missions in the 10 days since the penultimate aircraft was lost and it's pilot would presumably be either be ripped to the tits on amphetamines or a total psychopath...

Source, this webpage and I'm also an engineer who studied maths (a lot).

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destinationsjourney@reddit

With a reply like that there's no way you're an engineer.

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Nope_______@reddit

Nope, you're wrong. You may be good at math, but not English, and claiming yourself as a source and being wrong looks really bad. Read the comment again. 7 aircraft out of 100 aircraft per 100 sorties is not the same as simply saying "7% of aircraft." 7% of aircraft for what, the whole war? For one operation? You have to specify the 100 sorties as well.

If you say 7% of aircraft per war, or 7% of aircraft per operation, or 7% of aircraft per 5 sorties, each means a very different thing. So "per 100 sorties" is not extraneous, you just didn't fully comprehend the comment.

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Vnze@reddit

"x % per" is very redunant as % is "per 100". So 7% per 100 would be "7 per 100 per 100" which either means nothing or is confusing as hell.

The absolute amount of planes lost would be different, yes, but that's not the point here as we're talking about a loss rate ("per"), not an absolute number. And when you're talking about a relative amount (such as the loss rate), your base number doesn't change a thing.

Ergo, 7% will always equal 7%. 7% of 100, however, will not equal 7% of 1000.

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Desperate_Damage4632@reddit

But dude, both of those things are 7%.

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Kardinal@reddit

I tend to agree the A-10 is way overhyped and not very survivable, but I do wonder if night capabilities might have changed that. I don't know. But I wonder.

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Drownedon42St@reddit

The A10 was designed for close air support (CAS) mission which typically had high loss rates to begin with, and at the time late 1960s early 1970s FLIR was still rare and expensive. CAS at night would have been incredibly hard.

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Cloudsareinmyhead@reddit

It wasn't originally designed for CAS. It was meant to be for taking out enemy tanks but got switched to CAS when it emerged it couldn't actually kill the modern tanks of it's day

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Drownedon42St@reddit

Yes it was designed for the CAS role. The A10 is the product of the USAF A-X Program to find a CAS platform cheaper than the A7 and more capable than the A1.

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Cloudsareinmyhead@reddit

It wasn't. It was intended to be a tank buster originally (or at least that was what the original concept was meant to be). As a CAS aircraft it was done mostly out of spite as the Army was developing the Cheyenne helicopter at the time to do that job and that pissed the air force off

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GnarlyNarwhalNoms@reddit

It's also worth noting that at the time they were designed, they'd have been up against a lot more AAA (which is the sort of threat it's more capable of taking a hit from). Look-down shoot-down was relatively new and rare on Warsaw Pact fighters, and SAMs have made leaps and bounds since then. It was about as survivable as it gets at the time, but yeah, the have changed.

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destinationsjourney@reddit

ZOMBEH_SAM is right. % means per 100, you don't have to define how many it's related to. It literally means per 100. So, 1 in 4 would be 25%. 50 per 200 would also be 25%. It means that it's standardized. So if you are flying 100 missions at 7% loss, you will expect to lose 7 aircraft. If flying 1,000 missions, 70 aircraft. Saying % does not have to be related to a specific number, unless you are demonstrating it from raw data. For example, I tossed a coin 50 times and got 30 heads, so heads came up 60% of the time.

Source, I am an engineer and studied math (a lot)

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HarryPhishnuts@reddit

That was pretty much the estimate for all FEBA air-to-ground assets not just A-10s. You could argue the A-10s might have been slightly lower because they were built to be more survivable then the lot of Harriers, Jaguars,Corsairs, AlphaJets, etc... So they'd be more likely to bring their crew home.

The Night/Adverse-Weather (N/AW) experiment was to see if a second crew reduced pilot workload in working a FLIR/Laser Designator. However with the Mavericks are the time (late 70's) it was figured that a single crew could handle it.

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atape_1@reddit

And these projects were done, in the 70s, 80s? I would imagine that today, with AA systems being way more portable and reliable that number would be substantially higher.

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Amigo-yoyo@reddit

You should OF learned how to use HAVE

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cshotton@reddit

*should have

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ClexAT@reddit

r/boneappletea

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says-nice-toTittyPMs@reddit

This is not at all what a bone apple tea is

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SortOfDaniel@reddit

It is, just way more subtle than most

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says-nice-toTittyPMs@reddit

It's literally in that subreddits rules that it doesn't fit...

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Mr_Havok0315@reddit

Those people are the reason I unsubbed

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KaHOnas@reddit

It upsets me that it's become so commonplace that I didn't even notice.

There should be consequences.

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surgicalhoopstrike@reddit

Thank you!

It feels like an uphill battle sometimes, dunnit?

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Schubert125@reddit

That's because we as a species are flying downhill at an alarming rate

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asuranceturics@reddit

Maybe that too, but mostly English orthography is a mess.

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PuffinSinse@reddit

There's a lot of soldiers on the ground alive today because of the a10's close air support! Plus it's time on station and survivability! They are going to be sadly missed especially when you see the war in Ukraine a tank war if they don't want to spend the money send a few a10's and see why they have been on the front lines since the Vietnam war!

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bigkoi@reddit

Make a version that deploys hundreds of tiny swarm drones.

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Specialist-Ad-5300@reddit

Night/Adverse Weather Warthog

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Hungry-Cabinet-6754@reddit

After 11 years as contractor in military aviation I can tell you one thing. The bidding/awarding of contracts is rarely ever based on what's best for the troops. The REAL deciding factor in many of these cases is who has the most "friends" in Congress.

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Brief_Lunch_2104@reddit

Why should it have?

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PHX1K@reddit

Why should it have entered production? The USAF didn’t need another night attack airframe.

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

I wonder what would have happened of A-1 obtained a turbo-prop instead. It was a solid performer.

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f4fvs@reddit

Radial Engine and Spad go together like Rhubarb and Custard.

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AllCapsLocked@reddit

A-10 still a solid machine, was really good at it's job. Probably has still all time record equipment destroyed for a purpose built tank killer.

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Cloudsareinmyhead@reddit

It wasn't and it was crap at it's job. They actually had to move it to a CAS role because it couldn't kill tanks terribly effectively. Also sorry to disappoint but no. The F111 got twice as many tank kills with fewer sorties in Desert Storm.

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

F-111's success is more Saddam's failure, not the aircraft being any better. If Saddam's army wasn't composed of the most incompetent bunch in a field since British light cavalry idiots attempted to raid a well-defended artillery battery in Crimea, things could have been a bit different.

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f4fvs@reddit

Oi - there were only a couple of idiots in that tragedy.

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HarryPhishnuts@reddit

I don't know if it was crap at its job, but maybe over-hyped. Remember its job was to try and kill as much Soviet armor as possible rolling over the plains of Central Europe under very contested airspace. I think the 30mm got all the attention because it was cool but the truth was it was largely going to be slinging Mavericks and dropping Rockeye cluster munitions as much as brrrtttt-ing stuff. And even then they were expected to get chewed up pretty good.

You also have to remember the only reason that the F-111s could go tank-plinking from medium altitude in the first Gulf War was because there was little to no anti-air threat. Just had to stay above the ManPads. You could even make the argument that what made it so good at that was having a second crewman to work the Pave Tack targeting pod for the LGBs. So maybe a 2crew A-10 wasn't such a bad idea?

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AllCapsLocked@reddit

crazy, learned something new

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Hellfire-071@reddit

Whats the point of it?

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Such-Oven36@reddit

Why should it have been produced? Technology was already in the works LANTIRN, moving maps and most everything the ‘B’ model offered were superseded/ incorporated in the ‘C’ models.

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rodface@reddit

Don't recall where I read about the plan to turn this into a hurricane chaser (for NOAA?), shame it didn't end up happening

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sentinelthesalty@reddit

Well usaf had plenty other aircraft to sling presicion guided munitios, F111, F15 etc so it was unecessary.

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Misophonic4000@reddit

"Munitios" sounds like a magic missile Harry Potter spell

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mz_groups@reddit

I thought it was some sort of corn chip that was meant to be served with a spicy salsa.

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Misophonic4000@reddit

Avoid the new Depleted Uranium flavor

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HarryPhishnuts@reddit

Got to remember this was in the late 70's for basically frontline support meant either dropping dumb-bombs or shooting unguided rockets or Mavericks. The expectation was for a lot of various cluster munitions to be deployed. For that the USAF had A-10, A-7, and F-4. The F-16 was just coming on. The F-111 was intended for deep strike behind the front lines.

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Supercrown07@reddit (OP)

And yet they scrapped the F111 just after 1991

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sentinelthesalty@reddit

Well it was a flaming money pit. And F15E kinda made it redundant.

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Supercrown07@reddit (OP)

A lot of aircraft are like that a money pit

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TheLaotianAviator@reddit

But it's more or less of which one is the cheaper, more effective money pit.

F-111s were pretty maintenance heavy especially with the swing wing design. Also limited to 4 hardpoints on the Vark's wings which limits payload capacity.

F-15E can do more while also costing less and being less of a pain in the ass to maintain.

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the_dank_dweller69@reddit

Logistically its also helpful to have yet another role of aircraft be filled with an airframe with parts commonality, and pilots from separate roles may also share this benefit as the training time to adapt to a different variant of the same aircraft is far less time consuming than an entirely new aircraft(AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MIGHT RAHHH)

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BBLeroyBrown223@reddit

Damn straight. Like the OV-10 it could of been a cheap alternative! (I know nothing of this aircraft) (of)

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Kerbal_Guardsman@reddit

Its almost like the F-15E was made to replace it!

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HotRecommendation283@reddit

F-15E moment

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Jaded_Daddy@reddit

Sorry, the two seater is just a more handsome aircraft. It just is. We should totally have built them.

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Supercrown07@reddit (OP)

Extra pair of eyes to

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Jaded_Daddy@reddit

Exactly! Bring the FAC to do their job and let the pilot focus on theirs. It's a time-honored system cuz it works.

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Supercrown07@reddit (OP)

Yep pilots do their thing while WSOdoes his

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Jaded_Daddy@reddit

That's GIB. 😉

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Supercrown07@reddit (OP)

GIB?

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Jaded_Daddy@reddit

Guy In Back.

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Supercrown07@reddit (OP)

Never heard that before

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mz_groups@reddit

It's an oldie but a goodie. Generic for RIO or WSO, or whatever other designations the GIB (or, in the case of the A-6 and the F-111, GNTY - I just made that one up now)

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Jaded_Daddy@reddit

I think it started with the F-4, or at least it was in reading about them way back when that I first heard it.

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trey12aldridge@reddit

I disagree, Hornets flew as many sorties as the A-10 in the GWOT, and there wasn't a large difference in their performance using single seat vs dual seat. The issues with the A-10 are not related to task saturation or the pilot being unable to keep track of targets. The issues are that it was built to fight the last war, which made it incompatible with the next one. It was designed from the experience circling over patches in the trees for hours and taking hundreds of small arms hits as it dropped bombs on marked targets, but by the time it actually saw use, CAS had fundamentally changed to allow for high altitude strikes using guided ordnance, with many strikes being needed for much less time than in previous wars because of the increase in weapons accuracy (both through guidance and computed targeting integration). It was a fantastic morale booster, and with all its upgrades it could prove a very successful FAC-A but as a result of that change in CAS, the A-10 has always been the aircraft playing catch up in the CAS role. And a second person would have done nothing for that but make it far more expensive to fly.

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DavidPT40@reddit

I know this was probably a trainer, but CAS aircraft that have two aircrew have far fewer friendly fire accidents than single crew CAS. A-10s were mistaking Marine AAVs for Iraqi T-72s in the Battle of Nasiriyah. And that's just one incident. A-10s probably have the highest friendly fire rate of all USAF aircraft.

So yeah, this aircraft should have went into production.

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Terrible_Blood253@reddit

What’s this puppy’s top speed

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Supercrown07@reddit (OP)

420mph

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Terrible_Blood253@reddit

Do u know which company designed?

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Supercrown07@reddit (OP)

Fairchild Republic

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Terrible_Blood253@reddit

Do you know if there is a textron equivalent or comparable model?

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chathamharrison@reddit

There was a Textron proposal a decade ago called the Scorpion, but it never got beyond a demonstrator. It wasn't nearly as capable of hauling ordnance, but it was high-tech yet used off the shelf Cessna parts, so it might have provided a lot of capability for the price.

https://scorpion.txtav.com/

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Supercrown07@reddit (OP)

Not up to date on the dedicated tank buster roll

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razrielle@reddit

I love that the place around where I work I can go up to the ONLY one of these and touch it

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Novalissee@reddit

Why are there still morons who wright « should of » instead of « should have » it baffles my mind

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SexyWampa@reddit

“Write”, pot meet kettle…

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Scrappy_The_Crow@reddit

Why are there still morons who write « wright» instead of « write » it baffles my mind

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Novalissee@reddit

well this is a typo, not quite the same

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HotDogOfNotreDame@reddit

Don’t be that guy.

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Novalissee@reddit

I’ll be whatever guy I want, including women

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HotDogOfNotreDame@reddit

lol ok

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rcbif@reddit

It's just so jarring to look at, because you recognize that general silhouette, but the proportions are just off a bit.

A10 uncanny valley.

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MaximilianClarke@reddit

As if the world needed an even uglier warthog.

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RowAwayJim91@reddit

Double fugly

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Demolition_Mike@reddit

Well, the C does all this version did and more

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Fordmister@reddit

Ah yeas, another upgrade idea for the A-10 designed to address the shortcomings inherent in the design that totally compromises the entire point of the A-10 and why it had those shortcomings in the first place....

With every upgrade to the A-10 that I've read about the fact that nobody seems to have bothered to ask "cant the Apache/insert other airframe we already have already do this better?" or has ignored the fact that the answer to that question has always been YES continues to astound me

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tfrules@reddit

Nah the A-10 is overrated garbage that would’ve died in droves facing a proper integrated air defence

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Aegis4521@reddit

*should have

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rokkerboyy@reddit

T-46 Eaglet in the background.

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itchygentleman@reddit

You really think "of" is the word to use there, huh?

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workahol_@reddit

This thing was the sexiest Warthog variant and you won't convince me otherwise.

Good reading with more pictures: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-story-of-the-ya-10b-formerly-night-adverse-weather-a-10-the-only-the-only-two-seat-warthog-ever-built/

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ThatGirlWren@reddit

Thanks for the article! The more I look at it, the more I like it.

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notbarrackobama@reddit

It's like its mutating into an SU27

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fightcluboston@reddit

We have an A10 at home

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space-tech@reddit

If you live in relative proximity to Edwards AFB, and you have the clearance, you can see this thing in person at the Flight Test Historical Museum.

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quantumtom@reddit

Ahh ... yes.

Republic's night/weather (family model) Thunderbolt II.

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-only-two-seat-warthog-ever-built-the-story-of-the-ya-10b-formerly-night-adverse-weather-a-10/

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snappy033@reddit

Imagine the airsickness from pulling all the Warthog aerobatics but in the backseat.

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BWEJ@reddit

When you type “should of,” what do you think that means syntactically?

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BiffSlick@reddit

Should have

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LeatherRole2297@reddit

WITH a bonus T-46 Eaglet behind! Cool picture!

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Kronicalicious@reddit

Did it go BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR?

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Supercrown07@reddit (OP)

It probably did

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RandoDude124@reddit

What fresh hell is this?

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Activision19@reddit

Two seat A10. According to the air force museum website, it was a late 1970’s/early 1980’s adverse weather/night version of the A10. The back seat guy was an electronic systems operator that operated a flir, terrain following radar and a laser designator. They also investigated using it as a trainer.