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When it comes to fixed wing CAS nothing is quite as effective as the A-10. It can fly slow enough to allow the pilot to get his eyes on the target, not just trusting to FLIR or imaging pod, has the armour and redundancy to withstand a lot of hits and carries a whole whack of stuff!! We actually missed our chance at getting some A-10's; when the USAF were planning to downsize their fleet they offered up some to us but in the political world of the early to mid 90's having something like the A-10 would have seriously offended Canadian sensibilities. If they ever reopen the line it may be something we should look into.

You really can't compare fixed wing CAS and rotary wing CCA (close combat attack, everyone in NATO, except the Marines now use this term for RW CAS). FW CAS is an Air driven task that supports the ground guys but doesn't have the interoperability that RW has (I could easily make the case that the Marines are the exception to the rule). RW CCA is much more intimate to the ground forces, the guys flying the missions usually live next to the guys calling the fire (or at least next to their commanders) they understand the commanders intent and his scheme of manoeuvre more intimately and ultimately their effects can come in closer to the troops.

In reality both sides of the coin have their place in the battlefield but from a Canadian perspective (and yes I may be biased here) some kind of an attack helo would be more beneficial. Whether it's a Cobra or a Y-Huey with rockets and guns (which would be my personal favourite, for reasons that are beyond this discussion right now) this would provide more effective and intimate support than an A-10 or Harvard II with guns.



Artillery is great when you don't care about precision strike, always remember it's an area weapon, once you try to apply a precision role to the guns the cost goes up astronomically! How much is an Excalibur round? $500,000 a piece, or something absurd like that. We do CAS and RW CCA today, the Hornet guys are getting very experienced at it and once we make a few tweaks to the Griffon it will become an excellent CCA platform. All this for much less than the cost of a few missions worth of Excalibur.



Different war with a different aircraft. So far in Afghanistan there hasn't been a real Stinger of SA-7 threat, they do exist but their capabilities are far outdone by the capabilities of modern day missile warning systems and helicopters. Most choppers in Afghanistan aren't heavily armoured, they do carry some but not enough to seriously degrade their abilities (the heat and altitude do that enough!). And modern day composite blades and skin stand up much better to SA and heavier machine gun fire then the old steel/aluminium ones. I've seen pics of a US Marine Huey which came back from a mission in Afghanistan just after they put the new composite blades on, one of the blades had 5 fist size holes and the pilots said they barely felt a thing! That's impressive! Another Huey had a foot long gap in its tail rotor driveshaft and still made it home...again impressive!!

   

Inverted

Granted. Another difference was the Soviets were dumb enough to deploy Strellas where no air-threat existed----INSANE. RPGs where there was no real armour threat.....although RPGs are handy man-portable artillery but more valuable for a low tech enemy than a modern army with armour and air assets.

Remember when I was there when the simple expediant was to entice Soviet helos into a valley, to expose their, then, unarmoured dorsal area to rifle fires from the ridges. Also, simply firing into the intakes, made the turbines go on self destruct.

A10's have a range/loiter advantage as well.

   

RPG's are probably the biggest threat to choppers in Aghanistan right now, which is why you have seen most countries change their aviation tactics (except the US Army which will not acknowledge that flying around at 200' is the dumbest thing you can do, which explains all their chopper crashes).



Most have learned from this, most newer engines are designed so that the turbines are a little more protected from a straight shoot, and most helo pilots won't put themselves into a fire sack without eyes and bullets above (UAV's, AC-130's or even an Apache sitting high). You can't avoid taking some fire, even an archer could take a chopper down with a lucky shoot, but we are mitigating as many risks as possible.

As for the A-10 loiter and range, I'll give you the range point but then most aviation units will deploy so that they are well within range of their customers. In Afghanistan most of the FOB's are within a 40nm radius of KAF, close enough for a chopper to fly out spend an hour on station and get back. I can't find anything really accurate in regards to the A-10's loiter time in Afghanistan. I've seen 1.5 hours of loiter with 10 min of combat (seems a little odd to me) or 1 hour with 30 min of combat (more realistic in my mind). So their loiter time is pretty comparable to most attack choppers.

Don't forgot I think the A-10 and an attack chopper would augment each other quite nicely, each has it's role. I just think that given the choice between one or the other (a more realistic Canadian view) we would be better off with an attack chopper.

Cheers,

   

Inverted

If you had to make a choice, my guess is that you would appreciate an A-10 escort..... in daylight. The new attack ships really OWN the night though.

I recall the tactic of a combined gun-ship helo and sandy (skyraider) really screwing up charlie's whole month in minutes.

   

Problem with choppers over an A-10 though is the maintenance is a pain in the ass, and choppers aren't well suited to a desert environment. Fixed wing handles it a little better.

   

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