March 20, 2015
Eventually, the U.S. Air Force wants to replace the low and slow-flying A-10 Warthog with the fast-moving F-35 stealth fighter. But it’ll take years before the troubled jet fighters are ready for duty.
In the meantime, the Air Force still needs a plane for dedicated close air support missions — something the A-10 excels at. So what does the flying branch propose? Not keeping the Warthog.
Instead, the Air Force wants to replace the Warthog with a modified F-16 fighter jet — an old concept that failed to live up to expectations decades ago. The F-16s would fill in temporarily until the F-35s can take over.
We have a hard time believing it — but yes, this is a serious proposal.
Air Force leaders pitched the plan during a March summit focused on how close air support missions—the complex and often dangerous air strikes that help out troops on the ground—would work in a world without the A-10.
The conclusion? With the Joint Strike Fighter not yet ready, and saving the Warthogs completely off the table, the only option is to have existing fighter jets do the A-10’s job.
“We want to take those [A-10] aviators, and have designated, predominantly close air support squadrons in F-15s and F-16s,” Gen. Herbert Carlisle, head of Air Combat Command, told reporters after the gathering. “We will always do close air support.”
Carlisle oversees most of the Air Force’s active-duty combat jets and spy planes. But beyond taking advantage of the Warthog crews’ experience, the general offered very few specifics.
“The findings of the summit … can be summed up by the phrase ‘we have a plan,’” retired Air Force officer Tony Carr wrote. Carr has diligently followed the A-10 debate on his blog John Q. Public.
The meetings were “a PR briefing, not how to fix close air support,” former Pentagon analyst and A-10 designer Pierre Sprey told War Is Boring.
Before the Air Force creates or converts any of these new squadrons, the flying branch will first build an organization tentatively called the “CAS integration group” to make sure everything works. CAS is the common abbreviation for close air support operations.
The new group could get up to a dozen F-16s to run its experiments. Tactical air controllers—troops who coordinate bombing and strafing runs from the ground—would also take part in the tests.
“We need resources to build up the organization [and] build exercises,” Carlisle said. “It’ll evolve over time.”
But in 1985, the service proposed essentially the same plan as an alternative to the A-10 … and for many of the same reasons.
It didn’t work out.
At the time, the flying branch concluded that the Warthogs would soon be too vulnerable to survive above the battlefield without major improvements. Modern radars and powerful anti-aircraft missiles were emerging as a growing threat to the slow-moving A-10s.
The Air Force told the Pentagon and Congress that former A-10 pilots flying modified F-16s—also known as F/A-16s or simply A-16s—would be the most sensible option.
With a GPU-5 gun pod strapped on, Air Force officials believed the fast-moving F-16s could attack enemy troops just as well as A-10s — while avoiding enemy missiles. The GPU-5 contained a 30-millimeter Gatling gun derived from the Warthog’s monstrous main cannon. Both guns fired the same massive shells.
The Air Force had already tested A-10s against A-7 strike planes armed with the GPU-5. But during the flight tests, the Warthog proved to be the more effective aircraft.
Aviation firm Piper Aircraft also expected its PA-48 Enforcer — an unlikely challenger derived from the World War II P-51 Mustang — would carry these weapons, as well.
Three years later, the Government Accountability Office examined the Air Force’s plan. The federal watchdog was … skeptical.
“The GAO observed that the tactical aircraft development priority is the Advanced Tactical Fighter,” the report noted, referring to what would become the F-22 stealth fighter. “The Air Force cannot afford to fund two development projects concurrently.”
Meanwhile, the Pentagon was worried they would be on the hook for three different aircraft. Since the Air Force hadn’t yet converted any F-16s, the Warthogs would still have to keep flying — for at least some amount of time.
“The [Defense] Department was concerned that the Air Force may not have sufficiently considered all viable aircraft alternatives or adequately emphasized the close air support mission,” the GAO reported.
But by the time Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Air Force had prevailed and begun implementing its plan. When the American-led coalition unleashed its aerial blitzkrieg against Iraq, the flying branch had F-16s with GPU-5s ready to go.
The results were a mess.
“The F-16 … did not live up to the expectations,” the RAND Corporation concluded in a study ordered by the Air Force afterwards. “The GPU-5, 30-millimeter gun pod, was tried for one day.”
The biggest problem for the add-on guns was recoil. Attached to the centerline pylon under the F-16’s fuselage by two relatively small hoops, the pods wobbled around violently as they fired the huge shells.
Shooting straight was practically impossible. The F-16’s “weapon releases were so inaccurate they couldn’t hit a dinner plate with a spoon,” Sprey said, relating an anecdote he’d heard from a veteran of the conflict.
The abortive GPU-5s are now long gone. The Air Force has no current plans to buy any other similar weapons.
Over Iraq and Kuwait, the aircraft’s only saving grace had been the sheer amount of them. “The F-16 force provided the numbers to keep constant pressure on the Iraqi army,” RAND noted.
To be fair, the Air Force didn’t give many smart bombs to units flying the Falcons — which would have improved their accuracy. The flying branch believed the F-16’s computer gear was sophisticated enough for pilots to lob unguided bombs onto enemy formations.
“Although this accuracy is satisfactory for buildings and large targets, it is not an effective way to engage hard point targets such as tanks, unless the weapon has a large lethal radius,” RAND’s researchers stated.
Not bad for waves of F-16s bombing entrenched Iraqi positions. But this sort of “accuracy” would have been wholly insufficient, if not downright dangerous, if the Iraqis came especially close to friendly troops.
As a result, “most of their sorties were flown against Iraqi forces … in the kill boxes centered in the northern half of Kuwait, and in southern Iraq,” well away from coalition forces, RAND’s report stated.
F-16s now regularly lob all sorts of guided missiles and bombs at hostile targets. But today’s much improved version—lovingly referred to as Vipers—still don’t have anything that can match the Warthog’s devastating gun.
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