This was published in April. The other post above was news in that the old contract work was not canceled.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.milita ... t.html/amp

from the referenced article:

"The Air Force sought to retire the A-10 around 2015 as it dealt with tight budgets and prepared to bring on the F-35, which needed crucial maintenance personnel and other resources. Some A-10 supporters also said the Air Force was no longer interested in its close-air support mission, but former Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh strongly denied that claim.

...and the hits keep coming...so Welsh, "strongly" denied the claim that the AF was no longer interested in its CAS mission...lol...so, is that like Demi Moore "strenuously" objecting...has about the same effect
__________

as far as our new Secretary of Defense mentioned ...an inspirational choice from our CIC...he was a young officer in the 101st and then went on to Command an Airborne Company in Vicenza...in the Army arena that's about as good as it gets...think he spent the rest of his time thereafter in the Reserves...alot of us will be watching very closely to see if he buys the AF.'s song and dance re their CAS mission...I'm hopeful, but his bio says he has been in D.C. for a while as well, so time will tell

Seems like this would be a great platform for patrolling VIP airspace and intercepting way-ward single-engine goobers out for a ride in the TFR.

I'd wager we could keep 6 of those in the air, continuously for 24 hours, for what it costs to scramble two fighter jets to intercept the occasional fool in a flivver.

If you’re talking about the A-10, per hour operating costs are in the same ballpark as the F-16. If you’re talking about the T-6 and other trainer variants, then, yes, per hour operating costs are significantly less than an F-16 but nowhere near low enough to do what you propose. Further, neither the A-10 nor the trainer variants have radar which limits their ability to intercept targets to basically VMC conditions.

Looks like armed Caravans are being used in some CAS roles.

https://www.foxnews.com/tech/us-special ... ion-attack

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-u- ... bacc520562

When your enemy wears flip-flops, was trained with a religious text as his training manual and drives a Toyota pickup with a machine gun in the back, lots of inexpensive solutions will kill him just fine. Put that guy in an organized military, give him a year of decent training and arm him with a modern SAM or AAA piece and killing him gets very expensive, very fast.

Sometimes even less training than that (cue to 56 seconds). Expensive indeed.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/wobG_68P_LE[/youtube]

There are some good comments above.

I have been in the high end fight (Kosovo) and the low end fight (IRQ, AFG) and my take away is we need better equipment across the spectrum of conflict. Some MDSs readily adapt across the spectrum of conflict while others are only suited for the high or low ends. I am happy to see DoD actually buying something new. My take on this particular platform is that it is very capable in accomplishing the mission for which it was designed. Why pour in tons of resources if there is no requirement for high end capabilities. The A-29, Combat Caravan, etc. loiter foreve without tanker support, have all the datalinks and gateways I need, they carry plenty of munitions, have very low operating expenses and are highly adaptable.

Jim: I didn’t realize how much the Stinger had been used in Afghanistan. Wow!
No out running those.
We were up against the Strella in RVN. Very lethal until we developed counter measures. The fast movers could out run them. In rotary wing, we couldn’t, but counter measures made it less lethal and the bad guys had limited supplies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GL7Sg5YkCI

I am happy to see DoD actually buying something new. My take on this particular platform is that it is very capable in accomplishing the mission for which it was designed. Why pour in tons of resources if there is no requirement for high end capabilities.


...that's one way to look at it as far as some of the multi-role missions...of course the guys on the ground might have a different perspective as it pertains specficially to CAS...that if your in a fire-fight in danger close proximity to the bad guys--then "high end" capabilities may indeed be required in the form of a CAS aircraft that can perform and be useful to our troops and marines on the ground in such circumstances with their lifes on the line...

...while the Caravan may be useful in limited transport and reconnaissance roles, and maybe can even fire a few rockets down range in a pinch--it is certainly not a capable aircraft to perform CAS in the traditional sense...an individual rifleman on the ground could bring this aircraft down...

...just more off the shelf fixes from our friends in blue to the CAS mission instead of having a true developmental program in place to field an aircraft to adequately replace the Hog's CAS capabilities moving forward

Serbs shot up A-10 pretty bad in Kosovo, but they weren't able to bring one down. The worst that happened was one that made an emergency landing in Montenegro, which fortunately was already free from Serbian control at the time.

The bad news for A-10 is that threats continued to evolve, all the way from MANPADs, to troop and point defence (e.g. Pantsir S1), to theater SAMs. No titanium tub can save you from a 154 lbs warhead in a missile that can maneuver at 19g.

If the Light support aircraft ever comes online, it will only come in after the rotary wing and drones cleaned the field from heavy anti-air. And even then, pilots will need to wear some protection from lasers.

I am one of the Airmen that calls in CAS. The reality of the last 12 years of calling in air strikes in close proximity to troops is that 75% of the time, I am calling in munitions from a UAS. I’d much rather have a platform on call that has a human flying it. The other reality is that I am not going to get a F-35 because of competing priorities. A Caravan or UAS is much better than a platform I’ll never get. Hard to call in air strikes from a no-show.

"The reality of the last 12 years of calling in air strikes in close proximity to troops is that 75% of the time, I am calling in munitions from a UAS. I’d much rather have a platform on call that has a human flying it. The other reality is that I am not going to get a F-35 because of competing priorities. A Caravan or UAS is much better than a platform I’ll never get. Hard to call in air strikes from a no-show."

...exactly, and this is why our troops and marines on the ground deserve a dedicated and capable CAS aircraft...but the Caravan ain't it...

...and more of our A-10s should currently deployed forward where our troops are in harms way, as opposed to sitting idle on tarmacs in the States...and the next generation CAS aircraft should be being designed and developed thru standard force development protocols, instead of off the shelf make shift purchases...

...from my perspective, in essence when the AF's leadership loses sight that their primary mission is to support our Country's ground maneuver elements, then perhaps it is time to reintegrate all of our air assets back into the Army structure...or hand back the CAS mission to the Army and let us handle it.