The A-10: Worse Than You Think

this video is brought to you by squarespace whether it's your new professional just a lifelong passion start your journey to website glory with squarespace check out their awesome all in one platform through the link below more on them in a bit [Music] one of the most successful weapons of the post-cold war era us air force a-10 warthog is what enemy combatants fear more than anything only one thing can kill the a-10 warthog not russia these are all quotes taken from headlines regarding the fairchild republic a10 thunderbolt 2 and aircraft which it's safe to say is rather well regarded by the aviation enthusiast community often lauded for its redundant systems and its titanium bathtub both of which apparently make it all but impossible to shoot down as well as its 30 millimeter gau-80 rotating cannon which apparently can open up tanks as easily as a can opener opens up a can of baked beans it is safe to say that the a-10 is a well-loved and highly praised aircraft but does it deserve this praise join us today dear viewer as we once again go against the grain present to yourselves contrary perspectives on another aircraft whose position in popular legacy is very much deeply ingrained as with our f35 video to which today's video is very much a part two our purpose today is not necessarily to convince you of any particular perspective on the a10 but once again to stress to yourself the great complexity of military analysis and how often these complicated matters are not given their due diligence or presented with appropriate nuance within the confines of the click bait inducing articles and headlines in which their popular image is often shaped to do this we're going to focus on two key elements of the a-10s legacy namely its canon and its combat performance both factors in which it is not difficult to argue that the a10 comes up lacking and with that out of the way let's just jump right into it shall we the a10 or ax as it was known during development was never originally envisioned to have a 30 millimeter cannon contemporary wisdom of the mid-1960s saw the 20 millimeter rounds being fired by the m3 cannon already mounted to the douglas a1 skyraider as being perfectly adequate for the task of close air support as it was able to quite happily handle soft targets while ever more sophisticated bombs and air-to-surface rockets were seen as perfectly dependable for armored targets this changed with the publication of the gun system study group's final report in september of 1969 which recommended a 30 millimeter hydraulically driven rotary cannon to be made the main armament of the ax the air force rolled with the suggestion and after some deliberations settled on the gau-8a a face value this appeared to be a great choice as in testing with its main rival the gau-9a the giu-8a could fire 15 000 rounds between major service intervals compared to the 3 000 rounds of the gau-9a had an average of eight thousand eight hundred rounds between failure compared to the 846 of the gau-9a only required 5.9 maintenance hours compared to the 24.3 of the gau-9a and fired a total of up to 42 000 rounds between barrel changes compared to the 1 500 rounds of the gu9a and what's more it fired a substantially bigger round than the 20 millimeter systems that it was replacing so it would pack more punch and well what wasn't to love as it turns out actually quite a lot because while the gau-80 was undoubtedly a better canon than the gau-9a it was pitted against in testing praise of the gau-8a in its own right is predicated upon the foundation of its fundamental premise being viable and well arguably it wasn't the shortcomings became apparent quite quickly when a trial of the new gun was undertaken on the 14th of august 1979. the trial was conducted by the combat damage assessment team who published their findings in the snappily named combat damage assessment team a10 gau-8 low-angle firings versus simulated soviet tank company array 17 aerojet the title is an essay the trial saw a gau-8 a equipped a-10 being pitted against soviet t-62s which were stowed with full ammunition loads fuel oil and dummy crews the total of 17 passes were made against the t-62s and from 957 rounds fired 93 impacts were scored on six of the seven tanks 17 of which were penetrated causing three catastrophic kills and two mobility kills furthermore two of these kills were caused by a single penetration a face value is pretty good right the test proved that the gau-8-a could kill soviet tanks and seemingly do so quite happily or did it well it turns out no no it didn't for starters all of these skills were achieved against the side and rear armor of the t-62s the 30 millimeter rounds of the gau flatly could not penetrate the frontal armor not for ones of trying however it's just that every single round that hit the frontal armor failed to penetrate bounced off and subsequently failed to ruin the day of the dummy crew within furthermore the hit-to-penetration ratio of the rounds that found their way to the t-62s was very low some would argue that this isn't a bad figure in light of the fast firing rate and decent ammo reserves of the a-10 but when a 30 by 173 millimeter round weighs over a kilogram at what point is it worth just carrying a different kind of ordnance rather than throwing heavy lumps of metal downrange for well no effect there's also the fact that this test was conducted under sterile laboratory conditions the tanks were not moving nor were their escorts firing back both of which in real world combat situations would only reduce the hit to penetration ratio even further what's more the t-62s being used as targets were obsolete by 99 having been replaced by the improved t-72s that the us would be facing if the cold war ever went hot and they definitely had thicker armor certainly this test would suggest that the accuracy of the gau-8a wasn't lacking but it ultimately was just one test it could well enough have just been a fluke and to really prove this point we need other tests that arrived at the same conclusions so do we have other tests i hear you cry and the answer is yeah sure we do the combat damage assessment team undertook another test on the 7th of november 1979 and published their findings in the still snappily named combat damage assessment team a10 gau-8 low-angle firings versus simulated soviet tank company array 22 aerojet so we have to use the full title every time in this test 10 m47 pattern tanks were arranged in a triangle to mimic an attacking soviet tank formation a single a-10 was used as the attacking aircraft and the pilot was under orders to take 10 passes against the column and be as trigger-happy as he pleased while he was doing so during the test the sky was clear the terrain was open each of the patterns was immobile and loaded up with lots of volatile and explosive ammunition and the pilot was allowed to take as long as he wanted to line up the ideal attack vector the conditions of the test could not have been better aligned to all but guarantee a favorable outcome for the a-10 i mean it's always as if fairchild republic orchestrated the tests themselves the pilot rationed his passes out equally and made a single attack run on each tank individually and fired 174 rounds in the process of which 90 or 51.72 percent impacted the patterns hitting eight of them and leaving two untouched of the rounds that landed on the target 30 achieved perforations significant results from which include catastrophic damage to three tanks one tank immobilized and silenced three tanks immobilized only all of these penetrating hits were against the rear of the patterns and later analysis concluded that all three of the immobilized vehicles could be made operational again in less than a day's work if this wasn't enough the report also speculated that had the targets been more modern m60 patents rather than the m47s used in the test only one would have been destroyed and had the tanks been real soviet t-62s as per the 14th of august 1979 test never mind t-72s none at all would have been knocked out these tests serve to highlight the poor accuracy of the gau-8a when it fires 80 of its rounds will land within a 12 meter diameter circle hardly laser precision what's more this is under perfect conditions and it assumes that you're not trying to hit a moving target and are firing from 1.2 kilometers away in comparison an sdb2 gbu-53 when fired from an f-35 or another aircraft with the right sensors can hit a target within 1 meter from up to 72 kilometers away and will destroy or disable vehicles within a 10 meter radius a skill radius is going to differ based on environment but you could easily expect soldiers to be incapacitated or killed at twice that all of this serves to build a clear picture that the a10 isn't as accurate and consequently as dangerous as its popular legacy would have one believe then just to rub salt in the wound the poor accuracy of the a-10 in the early days was hardly classified information either the results were so damning against the a-10 that many historians consider inaccuracy to be the reason why the a-10 failed to secure any export orders fairchild republic was certainly keen to hoover up some juicy export contracts and at one time both the uk and west germany expressed an interest in the aircraft interest but quickly waned and came to naught when the true inaccuracy of the a-10 became apparent all right we'll get back to today's video just a minute but first here's a word from today's video sponsor squarespace look it's very easy to get overwhelmed with the internet there's lots of complicated names and terms that most people don't really understand web3 blockchain seo the dark web the internet of things largely a mystery but don't let any of that intimidate you contrary to popular belief you don't have to be a web engineer to start a website you just need an idea and our friends at 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this analysis has been largely theoretical it's all well and good giving you the audience lots of juicy facts stats and figures that imply the a10 and its cannon aren't all they're cracked up to be but how about in the real world do we have any combat history to look at which prove once and for all that the a-10 is an overrated aircraft as luck would have it well yes we do as much as the cold war never went hot and the a-10 never had to square off against the soviet army there was still plenty of conflicts in which the a-10 had the opportunity to be pitted against the very soviet armor it was designed to defeat as soviet armor often found its way into the inventories of nations not on the us's christmas card list a prime example is the gulf war of 1991 during which iraq had an inventory of 1850 t-55s 100 t-62s and 100 t-72s for the a-10 to prove its metal against for those in the know first it may look odd that we've chosen to bring up the gulf war when face value the aircraft performed very well there indeed the notion that the a-10 was successful in this conflict has firmly penetrated the common zeitgeist and all you have to do is google a10 gulf war and you will be met with a stream of copy and paste articles which describe all manner of click-inducing feat such as the destruction of 23 iraqi tanks in a single day and the supposed destruction of 908 sim tanks in total if however one analyzes these various claims and reports critically it becomes apparent that the performance of the a-10 in the gulf war was not nearly as laudable as first appeared the first problem is that the aforementioned 987 destroyed tanks figure credited to 165 a-10s is fudged to such a high degree that it can be considered all but total nonsense misreporting and misattribution of tank kills during the gulf war was prolific and systematic contemporary analysts routinely rejected claims of kills by other attack and close air support aircraft and credited them to the a-10 instead and consequently scores were falsely attributed to the a-10 leaving its kill count grossly inflated depending upon who you asked the culture of false attribution was caused either by an internal bias in favor of the a-10 by contemporary analysts so ingrained that they simply didn't look into kills deeply enough assuming that they must be the handiwork of the a-10 or an active conspiracy within the united states air force to protect their image after investing so much of their time and energy into promoting the a10 as a viable weapons platform further evidence for the disappointing performance of the a-10 comes from its losses the fact that this supposedly durable and resilient aircraft with its famous titanium tub and structural redundancies that supposedly make it one of the most survivable warplanes in the sky had a hell of a habit of falling out of the sky when it got shot at for starters of the 21 aircraft that were lost by coalition forces after being hit below 12 000 feet the very height the low and slow a10 is supposed to excel at 12 were a-tens so worried was the u.s senior leadership about the losses the a-10 was suffering that in mid-february 1991 it was completely pulled from the heavily defended north of iraq and relegated to the south of the country where resistance against aerial assets was significantly lighter in addition the a-10 also completely stopped making daytime sorties and was restricted only to nighttime operations where again resistance would be lesser other aircraft often operating in similar or identical roles as the a-10 such as the f-111 f-16 and tornado all managed to achieve similar kill ratios to the a-10 without suffering anything even approaching comparable losses similarly in the iraq and afghanistan wars there's a mark difference between the popular conception of the a-10 and reality one only has to look elsewhere on this very website to bear witness to the popular zeitgeist surrounding the a10 in these conflicts with searches on the matter being dominated by such carefully considered and thought-provoking titles as awesome a10 thunderbolt 2 compilation a10 warthog sound compilation all caps awesome 18 water gun comparison part 2 and perhaps the most subtle of all simply entitled i got spit all over my beard in reality meanwhile we see the inaccuracy of the a-10's 11th hour jury rigged cannon in the procedures of the men and women it is sent to help which is run and take cover due to the damned inaccuracy of the thing not only did this weaken the pressure on the enemy combatants to whom the a-10 gave a nice little reprieve for inserting a fresh magazine and catching a breather but shockingly it took the taliban the whole of maybe five minutes to notice this pattern and begin running for cover themselves rendering the close-air support of limited utility anyway the unfortunate fact of the matter is that the a-10 was designed to kill tanks and it can barely do that and even when bodged into the role of close air support it isn't much better compare that to the f-35 the plane that the a-10 advocates love to malign when flying a close-air support mission the f-35 can get there three times faster and actually be relied upon to hit the enemy when it arrives as with the right sensors it can hit to within 1 meter of a target from up to 72 kilometers away and it will destroy or disable vehicles within a 10 meter radius there is simply no competition between the two proving that the a10 is worse than you think [Music] look having addressed the major downsides of the a10 namely that it is neither as accurate nor as survivable as its popular legacy would imagine hopefully it's now apparent even if you completely disagree that assessing the success of a military aircraft such as the a10 is not a black and white matter there are layers of nuance and complexity in the evaluation that go far beyond that which can be accurately described within the confines of a short copy and pasted click bait article as with our f35 video the purpose of today's video is not necessarily to convince you of any particular opinion regarding the video subject matter rather this video is a thought exercise intended to encourage us all to be more critical when rendering our verdicts on a military aircraft with that in mind let us know your opinion in the comments below do you think that the a-10 is overrated or does it fully deserve its reputation [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 727,424

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Id: jBzNKS-1ztU

Length: 18min 10sec (1090 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 10 2022