Sunday Book Review: The Warthog and the Close Air Support Debate
The contours of the myth of the A-10 are relatively well known. Concerned that the Army would take control of the close air support mission with the AH-56 Cheyenne helicopter, the Air Force developed an alternative that could beat the Cheyenne on reliability and technical capacity. The presence of the A-10 proposal gave Congress the excuse to cancel the troubled Cheyenne, after which the Air Force attempted to discard the murder weapon. However, pressure from the Army and from Congress forced the Air Force to keep the A-10, and has kept the A-10 in service despite repeated USAF attempts to kill it over the years.
This story isn’t entirely wrong, but isn’t entirely right.
The problems, and consequently the story, begins well before the paper hits pencil on the earliest A-10 designs. The USAAF was not well-prepared for the close air support mission before World War II, preferring behind-the-lines interdiction in cases where strategic bombing wasn’t warranted. Disastrous experiences in North Africa led to institutional and organizational changes, forcing the ground and air forces to work together in a team that became very effective by 1944.
However, with the end of the war and the independence of the Air Force, attention to the close air support mission waned. Campbell capably illustrates the difference between an official commitment to CAS (which the USAF has always maintained), and a genuine organizational commitment to CAS (which has varied widely over the history of the air-ground team). The immediate post-war period, in which the USAF was dominated by the strategic bombing mission, was not a high point. Tactical Air Command, responsible for close air support, interdiction, and other tactical missions, decided to fight for resources by emphasizing its ability to deliver nuclear weapons, a decision which had dreadful consequences for procurement (many fighters developed in the 1950s sacrificed air superiority capabilities for nuclear weapons delivery), training, and doctrine. Fighting in Korea was a struggle, even as the USAF managed to achieve complete air superiority over U.S. troops.
With the Kennedy Administration came Flexible Response, and a new emphasis on the joint air-ground team. The Army began working hard on attack helicopters to fill the gap in USAF tactical capabilities, and McNamara even proposed assigning light tactical fixed wing attack jets to the Army, a prospect that the Air Force viewed with a great deal of hostility. Intervention in Vietnam strained the capabilities of both services, with the Army ill-prepared to fight a counter-insurgency conflict and the Air Force not well suited to either the conventional bombing campaign over North Vietnam or the close air support mission in the South. Nevertheless, the A-1 Skyraider performed well in the CAS mission, but as an aging propeller aircraft wasn’t particularly popular in the USAF. Under significant duress the Air Force adopted the A-7, a development of the Navy’s F-8 Crusader which the Air Force regarded as old and inferior.
The A-7 was an inconvenience, but the AH-56 Cheyenne was a problem. The high performance Cheyenne could fly at speeds that challenged the A-1, yet had a helicopter’s flexibility. It could threaten to take the CAS mission away from the Air Force. While the USAF didn’t particularly dig CAS, it feared that a shift in responsibilities would also lead to a shift in resources. Consequently, the Air Force responded by laying the framework for its own successor CAS aircraft, the A-X.
Turns out the Cheyenne was too advanced for its time, and could never quite be made to work. The development of the A-X program reassured both Congress and the Army that the Air Force was sufficiently committed to providing close air support, which made the Cheyenne superfluous. The USAF didn’t love the A-X program, but the growing strength of TACAIR, combined with the belief that the USAF would have to adopt one attack aircraft or another, incurred grudging acceptance on the part of the Air Force. There’s no question that the rise of TACAIR led to considerably more attention for close air support; squadrons of A-10s practiced the mission at various Red Flag exercises.
The first serious Air Force effort to ditch the A-10 came in the mid-1980s, when a proposal to replace the A-10 with the F-16 garnered significant support. The Air Force argued that A-10s were not survivable in a modern war environment, and that the “A-16” had dual use potential. Congress and the Army were not particularly amused, although the proposal did find some support in both places. The Air Force was slow to deploy the A-10 to Saudi Arabia in 1990, but internal pressure (largely emanating from the A-10 pilot corps itself) helped ensure that the Warthog would have a role. The A-10 performed very effectively during the war, although its loss rate was significant. There’s little question that the USAF, still interested in the F-16 option, downplayed the success of the A-10, but the image of the Warthog destroying Iraqi tanks in the desert became sufficiently popular in Congress that plans to retire it were shelved. The A-10 survived the post-Cold War drawdown, and survived (with Congressional support) another retirement effort in the early 2000s.
I’m ambivalent about the future of the A-10. Armor notwithstanding, the Warthog isn’t particularly appropriate for a contested airspace, unless you can sacrifice hundreds of aircraft in pursuit of the destruction of several hard-charging Soviet armored divisions. The A-10 does very well in situations like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the opponent lacks the capacity to hit even a low and slow aircraft with anything more than small arms fire. It’s not an ideal aircraft for such a situation; something like a Super Tucano or an AT-6 is a better, cheaper counter-insurgency aircraft. But then, the chance that the Air Force will replace the A-10 with something like the Texan or the Super Tucano is regarded as virtually nil, which is why so many communities committed to maintaining the close air support mission are willing to go to the wall for the Warthog. In some ways, the continued sentimental attachment to the A-10 obscures the real issues associated with inter-service conflict and the close air support mission, and muddles the conversation about the appropriate level of prioritization for CAS against other missions.
But then, many old planes can prove very useful at new jobs (hello, B-52!), and you can do a lot with an airframe like the A-10. Wing replacements can keep existing planes flying until 2040, and fuel tank upgrades can increase range and loiter capacity. Additional weapon system upgrades can make the plane considerably more lethal, and it will always be better at some aspects of the job than the F-16 or F-35, although it may not perform much better than the system of drone-driven CAS that’s emerging in Afghanistan.
This book doesn’t answer every question about either the A-10 or the history of close air support, but it’s a pretty good introduction to both subjects. Campbell has obvious affection for the A-10, which is an odd thing to say were it not for the fact that nearly everyone seems to have a great deal of affection for the A-10. An update which covered the contributions of the A-10 to both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the most recent bureaucratic conflicts associated with the aircraft, would be more than welcome.
There’s a less-scholarly work on the A-10 that I enjoyed:
http://www.amazon.com/A-10-Warthog-Supreme-Tank-Busting-Osprey/dp/1855321955
Maybe I’m just an idiot, but it seems to me in the history of modern warfare, the only thing air power is truly effective at is air superiority and CAS. The rest is just a waste of precious resources. After all, IMHO, whatever a B-2 can do, a cruise missile and 20 of its fellows can do too
Maybe I’m just an idiot, but it seems to me in the history of modern warfare, the only thing air power is truly effective at is air superiority and CAS.
Logistics.
Surveillance, too.
I considered it and rejected since really good surveillance/recon can be done with satellites. Gary Frances Powers no more!
Actually no.
Satellites are great, but you have to wait for one to come overhead. Plus the bad guys know when they’re going to be overhead and can plan accordingly.
If you need intelligence “on demand” there’s only so much satellites can do.
The problem with drones is they crash, a lot. Not a big deal if it’s a million dollar Predator, but a very big deal if it’s something like a Global Hawk.
So the Global Hawk is being phased out in favor of, you guessed it, Gary Powers’ U-2.
No SR-71?
Long since retired but Lockheed-Martin has proposed a follow on.
I’ve seen an SR-71 fly exactly once. I was at Eglin AFB back in the 1980s when one came in with engine trouble. After they got him fixed he did a nice little fly-by on departure.
Interesting point.
Although, airlifts haven’t weren’t that impressive in the 20th century (even the Berlin airlift of ’48 was insufficient), I would imagine air forces could do it better in today’s theater
Interdiction
If you can keep the enemy troops from getting to the front lines then you have to worry about differentiating them from the friendlies while you scream over the tree-line at 300 feet and 400 knots.
Which kind of exemplifies the “problem” that the Air Force has with CAS. One of the things the AF “discovered” in Viet Nam was that their preferred platforms of the day (the F-100, F-105, and F-4) were way too fast to perform CAS. They also sucked at interdiction in a jungle/high-clutter environment. These two lessons lead to the deployment of very slow-moving forward observer aircraft such as the O-1 Bird Dog and the OV-10 Bronco to mark targets, and the use of AD-1 Sky Raiders for CAS.
Years later, the AF has decided that the lessons of Viet Nam don’t mean a thing. Slow-movers like the A-10 just don’t figure in AF thinking. So, they push to force-fit fast aircraft such as the F-16 into the CAS role.
Is there an argument for just using gunships, like AC-130’s or helicopters?
In some instances.
AC-130s can only be used in a very benign threat environment because they’re vulnerable to pretty much everything, including MANPADs. One was lost during the Gulf War to a MANPAD.
Helicopters can work well but they also were found to be very vulnerable to old-fashioned AAA during the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Close Air Support is a tough mission no matter who’s doing it. You have to be able to put down enough firepower to do the job but not kill the friendlies as well.
You also need to survive small arms fire, MANPADs, mobile AAA and possibly tactical SAMs.
I remember YEARS AGO reading Chuck Yeagar’s book and he talked about how much the P-51 pilots hated CAS. There was glory in becoming an “ace” and shooting down under-fueled and out-numbered German interceptors. More people died doing CAS than intercepting Germans fighters.
Still, as the last few wars demonstrate, CAS is more valuable than anything else the over-rated and expensive air power come up with
The P-47 was much better suited for CAS. It had an air-cooled engine, more armor and more guns.
The P-51 was a thoroughbred, but one bullet through the cooling system and it was long walk home.
Huzzah! Confirmation of my pop’s anecdote.
He was a forward observer during that little shindig, and he said the Mustang pilots came in fast, missed their marks, and went home for more bombs, because they were fighter pilots who wanted to be off fighter piloting.
He had nothing but high praise for the P-47 pilots, who I suspect were in a unit devoted to close-in support.
I don’t think they do a better job at that than cruise missiles or drones. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to be in a German regiment attempting to get into France in late ’44, but they got there and dug in (until St. Lo)
Perhaps its niche, but cruise missiles have not yet gotten to the point where they can adequately perform the same as bunker buster type munitions required to get to hardened or buried targets. Cruise missiles are certainly nothing close to the capability retained within a Massive Ordinance Penetrator.
30 of them (which cost less than one B-2) couldn’t do it?
Depends on the target. For a very hardened underground bunker the 30th cruise missile would just spread the dust around from numbers 1-29 but the bunker would probably still be there.
Plus a B-2 is reusable. So unless you’re assuming that the B-2 would get shot down on its first mission it’s more economical than 30 cruise missiles.
Wouldn’t you think that everyone and everything inside would be deaf, dumb, and blind?
Personally, don’t know, ’cause I have a) never been inside such a place, b) never bombed anyone who is, c) never read anything about bombing such sites.
Some of them are dug in so deep underground it might actually take a nuke to get at them.
Before we can proceed any further I need to know which prep school Mr. Campbell attended.
Me, to it, you beat.
Well since he’s writing about military tech and therefore a CAA puppet, it can’t have been a very good one.
That’s whore of empire, thank you very much.
+1
Clearly the popularity of the A-10 is predicated largely on its awesome nickname.
Well, that and the big fucking gun.
The Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 (Shturmovik) was fairly popular on the Eastern Front in World War 2, and had much the same mission. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-2#.22The_flying_tank.22
Forgot to add – perhaps the popularity of close air support aircraft is linked to their role in combat.
I liked the letter Stalin sent to the manager of the Il-2 factory:
“They are as essential to the Red Army as air and bread. I demand more machines. This is my final warning!”
Joseph Stalin – King of the motivational speakers.
I have to imagine, given who he was, that the letter was extremely motivational
The official nickname is Thunderbolt II.
Warthog is an unofficial name bestowed by crews based on its visual ugliness.
Similarly, the F-111 never had an official nickname but was named ‘Aardvark’ by its crews due to its long-nosed appearance.
The A10 also got the warthog nickname because it sounds like it’s grunting when it fires its gun.
Very few Air Force aircraft were ever called by their official titles:
An F-16 is either a “Viper” or, derisively a “Lawn Dart”
A B-52, of course, is a “BUFF”
Similarly an A-7 was a “SLUF”
Even though there are other tankers, a KC-135 is just called a “Tanker”
A B-1 is a “Bone”, from b-one
Heckuva chopper, that Cheyenne. I actually saw it at the Military Helicopter museum in Ft. Rucker. 255 mph is crazy fast for a chopper.
I’m throbbing with excitement just reading this post.
Jeesh. Control yourself.
That youtube video needed more flying, less taxiing, and more Kenny Loggins.
MOAR DED BROWN PPL.
It had DoD brown ppl, FWIW.
There are better replacements for the A-10 than the AT-6. Predator is the one that springs to mind.
In a situation where survivability is an issue, use a plane where you can’t lose the pilot.
I’ll just leave this here. I suppose it should have more of a Predator/Reaper ‘hump’ for the satellite dish, though.
I’m going to stick my neck out a bit, here, about what I think might have been a point
madeattempted by the Prep School King.Lots of people who are not hawks are fascinated by weapons and weapons systems. Somehow we/they separate the ‘coolness’ of the weaponry from its purpose and actual use.
I find medieval crossbows and swords quite fascinating – the latter are often beautifully decorated, in fact. But, they were brutal as weapons.
So the PSK might have been (at one point seemed to be) going on about this seeming disconnect between fascination with the tools and the use of the tools.
Aye, although I think Prep School King was operating more from his own personalized, pre-organized script that making a serious analytical point. But there surely is a point to be made on this. Oddly enough, the A-10 was specifically designed to kill (mostly white) Russians and Eastern Europeans riding in advanced tanks rather than brown people, and has been moved more towards the latter over the history of its deployment.
You are being very fair – I am not sure there was much of an “organized script.” :-)
” ..the USAF managed to achieve complete air superiority over U.S. troops.”
Wasn’t this taking inter-service rivalry a little far?
Thankfully, now they just play each other in football
I assume “over” is meant geometrically rather than metaphorically.
Screw the At-6 and the Super Tucano. And the A-10.
It was a major mistake to ever take the A-1 out of production. A slightly updated version (no need to fool around too much with perfection) would be better then all the other candidates and a hell of a lot cheaper. It was the American version of the Strumovik.
But no. Every time we get around to declaring peace, the US armed forces go on a technology binge and produce large numbers of highly advanced, horrendously expensive, operationally fragile weapons that don’t work very well when we actually go to war with them. The A-10 is an exception to this rule as was the A-1. Of course, such weapons must be cancelled. Too bad.
Best steak sauce on the market. A-1 is definitely the Strumovik of condiments
I question the assertion that the A-10 had a “significant” loss rate in Desert Storm. According to “To War in a Warthog”, the A-10 force suffered five losses (destroyed) in 8,000+ sorties. A loss rate of .062%. The “War is Boring” link cited to justify the high loss commentary does not provide any of the analytical assumptions that went into the USAF’s Cold War loss predictions. Furthermore, historically speaking, modeling has significantly overstated the losses for air campaigns (“The Simulation-Reality Mismatch). The validity/utility/relavence of a model that is 20+ years old is highly questionable. The drone driven CAS model you reference is useful provided you have permissive air space and eletronic spectrum. You might feel less ambivalent regarding the A-10 if you were looking for air support.
A-1, Super Tucano, A-10… I’ve always thought that, in the eyes of the people in DC, the problem with any of these is that they don’t cost enough money.
And sure, they’re not good against a mod-ren Russian army rolling into Germany, but that’s another joke our our DoD shopping sprees: we keep using Batman/James Bond level whizbangeroo in backwaters against very poor people. Even 45 years ago, we had more plane than we needed for these jobs. (Other than the A-1, of course, etc etc.)
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Sunday Book Review: The Warthog and the Close Air Support Debate – Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money