Why doesn't the A-10 have an arrester hook?
Posted by HeroicODST@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 16 comments
Other planes like the F-15/16/22 have them for emergency landings on prepared runways if the brakes fail and for how tough and how many redundancies the A-10 has I can't think of a reason for it not to have one.
Don't know if this is the right sub for this, let me know of others that might be better
Safe-Informal@reddit
Newton's Third Law of Motion (For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction). If the brakes fail, they just fire the gun and the plane slows down.
mkosmo@reddit
Serious answer: Gun is disabled with weight on wheels.
That70sShop@reddit
Whatabout if'n you gotta shoot yer way off'n th' tarmac?
BigBob1000@reddit
That’s pretty funny, but I wonder if anyone has done the calculation on the effect of the gun on the A-10’s speed.
BackgroundGrade@reddit
The GAU-8 Avenger fires up to sixty one-pound bullets a second. It produces almost five tons of recoil force, which is crazy considering that it’s mounted in a type of plane (the A-10 “Warthog”) whose two engines produce only four tons of thrust each. If you put two of them in one aircraft, and fired both guns forward while opening up the throttle, the guns would win and you’d accelerate backward.
To put it another way: If I mounted a GAU-8 on my car, put the car in neutral, and started firing backward from a standstill, I would be breaking the interstate speed limit in less than three seconds.
from: https://what-if.xkcd.com/21/
SoftLikeABear@reddit
The gun isn't mounted on the plane. The plane is built around the gun.
Hell, the best description of the A-10 I've ever heard was, "We just invented this really amazing gun, now we need to invent a way to make it fly."
Maleficent_Sir_5225@reddit
Someone did some napkin math for you.
Monster_Voice@reddit
Mostly due to the fact that a stray shopping cart on a windy day can outrun one.
GrafZeppelin127@reddit
Seriously, I bet the only reason it doesn’t have propellers is because they’d get in the way of the Gatling gun.
DBond2062@reddit
It does. It just surrounds them with an armored shroud.
FlightFramed@reddit
Yeah, my first thought as a layman was "well if your A-10 is going fast enough to need one I think you have bigger problems"
KnowledgeSafe3160@reddit
You got a good giggle out of me 😂
sierrahotel74@reddit
They just land with the wheels retracted. Scrape to an end, lift it up with a crane, drop the gear and prep it for its next mission.
anactualspacecadet@reddit
Cuz its really slow
Conor_J_Sweeney@reddit
I believe it’s because the A10 is already designed to take off and land on small dirt strips, so an arrester hook just isn’t necessary. If the brakes do have issues, you just find a runway already fit for an f16 and you should have enough room to stop.
454k30@reddit
It's not the wrong place to ask, though the military aircraft subs have more on this. You named a few aircraft that do have them. Notice how they are all fighters that you named? During the design criteria for the A-10, the choice to not include one was made. There would be a lot of reasons why not to include one. Could be that the landing speed is slow enough that they wont run out of runway before coasting to a stop. Could be that they didn't want to add the structure to the aircraft to make it work (added weight reduced ordnance). Could be that they were intended to operate from unimproved airfields that don't have a wire. Could be that they just weren't expected to have a very long lifespan or that they were affordable to replace (unlike fighters). Anyway, hope that helps answer your question.