USAF to Make Recommendation on A-10 Replacement in Fall

The US Air Force is deliberating if and how to replace its close-air support workhorse, the A-10, and may have a better picture of their path forward later this year, the service’s top civilian said Wednesday.

During an interview with Defense News, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said she and other top service leaders — such as Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein — will be briefed on various options for replacing or augmenting the A-10 Warthog this fall, as the service begins to build its next five-year budget plan.

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The USAF Air Combat Chief is NOT thrilled with the idea of an aircraft meant for permissive airspace only.

US Air Force Interested in two Aircraft for Replacing the A-10

The US Air Force is considering two new procurements to boost their close air support mission, including an off-the-shelf option for permissive environments and a cheap, clean sheet design aircraft that would replace the Fairchild Dornier A-10.

In a recent briefing, air force officials laid out their plan for the light-attack OA-X and the A-X2, a short-term replacement for the A-10. The service is looking at an initial order of about 20 aircraft for the OA-X mission a early as next year, with serious procurement launching in Fiscal 2018, Dan Goure, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, tells FlightGlobal. To meet that rapid need, the service is examining two fully developed aircraft, Beechcraft’s AT-6 and Embraer’s A-29 Super Tucano, and are planning a “fly off” for this fall.

The air force has excluded Textron AirLand’s Scorpion, a dual light attack fighter and trainer aircraft still in its development phase, as an option for OA-X.

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The funding is not certain and the USAF Sec is wary.  She's not been briefed.

Arguing Over the A-10's Role of Close air Support

Last year, at the height of the F-35/A-10 close air support (CAS) debate, Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Mark A. Welsh III stated that the Air Force averaged 20,000 CAS sorties a year in Afghanistan. But was it really CAS? Within the fighter/attack community, the narrative of seasoned aviators who’ve “been there, done that” tout that airpower did not really perform CAS at all. Instead, they argue it featured glimmers of CAS sprinkled on what was actually ground-directed dynamic targeting. Not only are they right, but the distinction is even more important, as it biases and bounds the air support dialogue of the A-10, its potential successors (A-X2 and/or OA-X), and even the F-35. Air support in Afghanistan worked, but it is a mistake to think it was all CAS.

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The (eventual) retirement of the A-10 Warthog has been a challenging issue for the Air Force. The original plan to replace the A-10 entirely with F-35 has fallen by the wayside, buttressed by the reality that the extended combat deployments undergone by the fighter/attack force were never envisioned when the F-35 plan was hatched. Twenty-five years of continuous conflict, most of it irregular in nature, has highlighted the utility of a relatively slow, heavily armed multirole aircraft. Our operations over the past decades have been largely very similar to the kind of counterinsurgency demands that led to the requirement for a new attack aircraft (then called A-X) in 1966.

As the Air Force has moved toward the position that a replacement attack aircraft (A-X2 or OA-X) is necessary, one persistent issue continues to arise: What kind of aircraft might be able to do “high threat” CAS? In a presumed environment where the air defenses are too lethal for the A-10 to survive, wouldn’t the F-35 be a better alternative? The question itself is highlights a persistent trend in Air Force concept development — a mythical set of conditions that is highly unlikely, fundamentally not credible, based on a misunderstanding of the air threat, or, in this case, all three. There is no reasonable case to be made for an aircraft that can survive in a high-threat CAS environment, because there is no credible case to be made that any aircraft can survive in such an environment. It isn’t that there isn’t a need to apply airpower in such an environment. Rather, it is that having a need doesn’t equate with delivering a capability. The idea that the Air Force can deliver effective CAS in a highly contested environment is a myth, one that the Air Force would be well served to get rid of.

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US Air Force Moving Forward with A-10 Replacement

The Air Force is moving forward with a key step in developing a dedicated close-air support plane to replace the A-10 Warthog, a top general said Thursday.

“My requirements guys are in the process of building a draft requirements document for a follow-on CAS airplane,” Lt. Gen. Mike Holmes, the deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements, said. “It’s interesting work that at some point we’ll be able to talk with you a little bit more.”

Defining the requirement is the first concrete step toward developing potentially developing a replacement A-10 for the close-air support mission, often dubbed A-X. The Air Force has been studying the idea of a procuring single-role A-X for at least a year now, hosting a joint-service summit in March, 2015, to work out options for the close-air support, or CAS, mission.

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DARPA Successfully Tests A-10 Close Air Support Strike Called in by Android Tablet

With a few taps on a specially configured Android tablet, a joint terminal attack controller called in an airstrike from an A-10 gunship, the Pentagon’s research arm announced.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as Darpa, for the first time tested the so-called Persistent Close Air Support, or PCAS, technology on an A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft from April through June near Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the agency announced this week in a press release.

The evaluations “showed that a warfighter serving as a joint terminal attack controller (JTAC) on the ground could, in seamless coordination with a pilot, successfully command an airstrike with as few as three clicks on a tablet,” the release states.

The program aims to develop easier, faster and more precise coordination between ground forces and air crews while conducting strikes against nearby targets, according to Darpa. The goal is to use smaller munitions to hit multiple or moving targets to minimize the incidence of friendly fire and collateral damage, according to the agency.

“We have shown that a flexible architecture and extensible technology toolsets are key to making groundbreaking improvements in air-ground coordination,” Dan Patt, DARPA program manager, said in the release.

The prototype system involves two components: PCAS-Ground software, called the Android Tactical Assault Kit; and PCAS-Air, an automated targeting system on board the aircraft to determine the timed release of laser– and GPS-guided munitions, according to the release.

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US Air Force Wants A-10 Replacement, has no Money for it

The Air Force wants a less costly next-generation aircraft for close air support to replace the A-10, but there is no funding available for it and there likely will not be in the future, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said Wednesday .

Given a better budget environment, the service would want a new aircraft that could primarily focus on providing close support for ground troops, carry a lot of ordnance and do so more cheaply than other aircraft in the service's fleet, Welsh said. But it is not a realistic proposal today, he said.

"We need a low-threat CAS platform in the near future, if the money will allow it," Welsh said at an event sponsored by Defense One in Washington, D.C. "It doesn't today, but we would certainly like to have something like that, that operates more efficiently than what we have today, that carries more firepower and does so in a low-threat environment."

This is the mission of the A-10, which the Air Force is targeting again for retirement. The service has said it would like to keep the aircraft around for the end of its planned service life, which is until about 2030. However, it does not have enough money to support the aircraft and its infrastructure. Other aircraft for now can pick up the slack in the mission of close air support until the F-35 comes on line.

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hmm.  How about we transfer the A-10s to the Ukrainian Air Force and outsource our CAS needs until we have a replacement.  After all, I am sure the Ukrainians will quickly have lots of experience using them.  They'd love them some белемніт/бородавочник to go rooting through the Donbass.  Then again maybe maybe we need to put together a літати козак unit modeled on the 飞虎队.

Baiting and joking aisde, the best course is to take DARPA's PCAS to the next step and make the A-10 into the QA-10 (image source).

DARPA Testing Prototype Persistent Close Air Support System With Marines

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) tested a prototype of the Persistent Close Air Support (PCAS) system for the first time during the US Marine Corps’ Talon Reach exercise.

A full-system PCAS was tested during the exercise in March in an effort to demonstrate the system’s ability to share real-time situational awareness data between air and ground. It marked the first successful integration of an automated, digital, real-time co-ordination capability into a military aircraft system, DARPA says.

The test included rail-launched munitions, digital datalinks and advanced software in support of ground forces, and utilised a USMC Bell Boeing MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft communicating with a joint terminal attack controller (JTAC) on the ground.

The system consists of two parts – PCAS-Air and PCAS-Ground. During the demonstration, a JTAC used a PCAS-Ground tablet to identify a target position near an unmanned truck and communicated this information to the PCAS-Air module inside the V-22 via a digital link added to the aircraft.

PCAS enabled both the JTAC and the aircraft’s weapon systems officer – who also had a PCAS-Ground tablet – to share real-time information, enabling them to quickly confirm the shot and execute the order, DARPA says.

The Osprey fired a non-explosive version of a specially mounted Griffin tube-launched precision-guided missile from 3.8nm (7.2 km) away to support a simulated downed friendly pilot during the exercise.

Guided by a targeting laser, the missile “hit exactly where directed” and, had it been explosive, would have destroyed the target, the agency notes.

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US Air Force may be Open to Developing Follow-on the A-10

The Air Force, under heavy pressure from Congress to keep the A-10 Warthog in the air, will hold a mini-summit with the Army, Navy and Marines to figure out the best ways to do Close Air Support, the politically sensitive mission of aircraft protecting troops on the ground.

Gen. Hawk Carlisle, head of Air Combat Command, told reporters here at the Air Force Association’s annual winter conference that the service would be looking at all manner of ways to kill enemy troops shooting at American and allied troops. Carlisle said the service would consider buying a new weapon to do CAS.

“What does the Army think? What do the Marines think? We are looking at all of that,” he said. “Another weapons program may be what we need to consider.”

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Defense Spending Bill Bars USAF From Dumping A-10

The bipartisan defense budget that passed through the House Thursday includes strict language mandating the Air Force not execute any plans to retire the A-10 Warthog. The legislation specifically blocks the Air Force from spending any money to divest A-10s through calendar year 2014.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh has said the service needs to retired older, single mission aircraft like the A-10 in order to reserve funding for newer aircraft like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is slotted to take over the A-10’s close air support role.

In service since the 70’s, the twin-engine jet aircraft is designed to provide ground troops with close air support by using its armored fuselage for protection, flying low to the ground to track and hit enemies and firing deadly 30mm rotary cannons.

Lawmakers have pushed back against any talk of the A-10’s retirement. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., blocked the nomination of the Air Force secretary, citing her concerns about Air Force’s A-10 plans and Defense Department struggles to bring the Joint Strike Fighter online.

Air Force has not formally made a decision about whether to retire the aircraft. However, Lt. Gen. Charles Davis, Military Deputy for Air Force Acquisition, made clear that budget restrictions have forced the service to consider cutting entire programs to save money.

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