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Why doesn't the US Air Support roster in CMBS have the A-10 on it?


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Apocal,

 

Great vid, but I have no idea how they were able to adjust (the Hummer screen right?) those gun runs. I couldn't see squat--in HD. "Krasnovians" is now the approved term for OPFOR. Essentially, it depicts a Soviet/Russian type force and force structure, but without coming out and calling it that, which wouldn't be PC. Strange naming practices regarding OPFOR date back to at least the 1960s, if not earlier. Should you happen to look at US infantry manuals from then, you will see line drawings of the putative opponents, whose helmets have distinctive central ridges. Per this article, the Army has/had training built around no less than five fictitious countries. Better known to history buffs is the pre WW II (beginning 1904) US joint Army and Navy color code system (p. 6 et seq. at link) for designating real world potential foes. the code served the very real purpose of avoiding diplomatic embarrassment in the event a plan leaked to the press.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

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Re: IR

 

Your thermal optics (tank/bradley optics, PAS-13, etc) cannot see things like IR chemlights, strobes, or IR lasers.  The process for each of them is different, in effect NODs/IR emitters are working on the IR "light" emitted, while thermal is receiving the heat emitted by objects.  

 

Here's the greater problem of Kosovo:

 

 

Quote shamelessly lifted from Wikipedia, but I imagine you could find the original with digging I'm too lazy to do if you care to dispute it.

 

That many bad attacks, on decoys or dubious targets is a bigger problem than weather.  Nothing outside of radar really sees through clouds especially well.  And of those 117 not actually tanks, 202 not really APCs, and 430 not artillery pieces, something was seen, acquired and dropped on to no effect.  The actually engaged targets covered the range of constructed decoys (tarps, heat source, and telephone poles apparently made up most of those), sacrificial targets (T-34s or old towed artillery left in the open) and just a lot of "we don't know what we bombed."

 

This would be the driving focus behind targeting pods, being able to tell the difference between tarps and targets if you will.

 

Modern pods still can't see through clouds, tarps, plastic bags, marijuana fields, glass, etc. That's just the way IR works. The deception effort was good, but by the later stages, we'd twigged onto the fact that their fielded forces weren't being hurt by the strikes (because they were dispersed and sheltered; IR can't see into a barn either) and shifted to hitting fixed economic targets... and still had limited success there, due to clouds interfering with every aircraft's sensors and altitude restrictions in place for the campaign. JDAMs worked fine though and that is why pretty much everything was wired for JDAM in the 2-5 years after Allied Force.

 

As for a source on cloud cover being the biggest factor, the first-hand account of Black Aces High:

During the fifty-five days of Allied Force, there was fifty percent or worse cloud cover seventy percent... The statement highlights how weather, specifically bad weather, was perhaps the Serbs' chief weapon during the Kosovo War. Clouds obscured the enemy, hiding targets from planes and satellites and allowing troop and vehicle movements to go unnoticed... Bad weather and the quick changes in temperatures it could cause could also diffuse the infrared, temperature-generated picture on the LANTIRN scope, further degrading the aircraft's ability to bomb.

 

 

Dunno, seems that day if it'd been something else or nothing at all some US Soldiers might be in better shape.  At the very least it's a system that was unable to discriminate between friendly and hostile forces as equipped, and it failed both the soldiers it was supporting, and the mission at hand.  That much is not in dispute.

 

High duration is an important attribute.  However continued reliance on the B-1 for "CAS" is a way to avoid having to address the problems with other platforms, or of CAS as a system in terms of providing continued support.

 

They'd probably have called it off if suitable air wasn't available. Christ knows they certainly do it often enough. Anyway, issues with an aircraft the size of an A-10 not being able to hang out overhead for 90 minutes at a clip aren't really a "problem," just natural tradeoffs. And the USAF is addressing that limitation, in spades: their UAV force has grown to like... three times its pre-war size or something like that? And even more are coming online?

 

 

Apocal,

 

Great vid, but I have no idea how they were able to adjust (the Hummer screen right?) those gun runs.

 

Generally your FAC or JTAC will radio them a (conservative) line to shoot. Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEVgBCTVLws

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Re: IR

 

Your thermal optics (tank/bradley optics, PAS-13, etc) cannot see things like IR chemlights, strobes, or IR lasers.  The process for each of them is different, in effect NODs/IR emitters are working on the IR "light" emitted, while thermal is receiving the heat emitted by objects.  

 

I'm not an engineer, nor will pretend to be.  But that's the easiest break down.  If you see "night vision" style optics at work, you'll notice while the world is now green colored, the brighter spots are still light emitters because they're giving off IR emissions. IR chemlights/strobes/lasers are just IR light only emitters, which is super sweet when working in the dark against non-night vision equipped enemies as you can do all sorts of stuff with those, but everyone with night vision equipment (even older models that usually require an IR spotlight) will see you easily.

 

Thermal optics will not see any of this because they do not have anything to do with "light" but it's all in heat emitters (you see the light bulb because it's hot, and it's warning things around it, not because it's emitting light)..  

 

Just to clarify, when we're talking about detecting "light" vs detecting "heat", we're talking about the same physical process -- in both instances, photons are being emitted by an object, and are being absorbed by a sensor. The only difference is the energy/frequency of the photons; "light" photons are more energetic that near infra red, which is more energetic than far infrared. So all thermal/optical/nv/radio/x-ray/etc sensors are doing the essentially the same thing, detecting photons, the only difference between them is the range of photon energies that they're sensitive to.

Edited by slug88
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Just to clarify, when we're talking about detecting "light" vs detecting "heat", we're talking about the same physical process -- in both instances, photons are being emitted by an object, and are being absorbed by a sensor. The only difference is the energy/frequency of the photons; "light" photons are more energetic that near infra red, which is more energetic than far infrared. So all thermal/optical/nv/radio/x-ray/etc sensors are doing the essentially the same thing, detecting photons, the only difference between them is the range of photon energies that they're sensitive to.

 

Exactly the point I was trying to make, only you did a better job of it. Thanks, slug88. Just one thing, in addition to emitting photons, objects can also reflect them, as in the case of radar (although I suppose the argument can be made that what is actually going on is that the object is absorbing the energy of the photons striking it and then re-emitting photons on the same or different wavelength...but that doesn't concern us here).

 

Michael

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Re: I'm a doctor Jim....

 

That's why I freely admitted to not being an engineer.  Regardless of the physical process, the reality is the TIS type sensors cannot see the sort of IR emitters ground forces use for IFF and target designation.  You can't calibrate them to see differently or something.  Its why the new night optics the US Army is working on are cool, it sees both the "light" and the "heat" at the same time.

 

 

 

Modern pods still can't see through clouds, tarps, plastic bags, marijuana fields, glass, etc. That's just the way IR works. The deception effort was good, but by the later stages, we'd twigged onto the fact that their fielded forces weren't being hurt by the strikes (because they were dispersed and sheltered; IR can't see into a barn either) and shifted to hitting fixed economic targets... and still had limited success there, due to clouds interfering with every aircraft's sensors and altitude restrictions in place for the campaign. JDAMs worked fine though and that is why pretty much everything was wired for JDAM in the 2-5 years after Allied Force.

 

Well aware.  And the shift in targets was more productive because the ability to hide bridges, factories etc is pretty limited to the CIA getting it wrong where the Chinese Embassy was (maybe, unless we're talking about conspiracy type stuff).  However if you're looking at the performance metrics regardless, several hundred targets were engaged with precision weapons that were not actually valid targets.  There's nothing fancy optics are going to do against weather, but improved optics will do a lot in figuring out the classic tarp or tank dilemma.  

 

The weather certainly made life harder but 120 tanks claimed destroyed comes from target engaged/believed destroyed.  The fact that a whopping three tanks were actually knocked out indicates the USAF might have had a problem figuring out what a target was in addition to finding it in the first place.

 

 

 

They'd probably have called it off if suitable air wasn't available. Christ knows they certainly do it often enough. Anyway, issues with an aircraft the size of an A-10 not being able to hang out overhead for 90 minutes at a clip aren't really a "problem," just natural tradeoffs. And the USAF is addressing that limitation, in spades: their UAV force has grown to like... three times its pre-war size or something like that? And even more are coming online?

Maybe if CAS was that important to the operation, calling it would have been a good option, the B-1 certainly didn't help.  

 

The issue might not be the ability to "hang" it might be the ability to provide assets to support the mission.  So if the actual solution was multiple fighters over a period of time, then that's just what should be done instead of sending in something that's functionally blind to where friendly forces are.

 

I mean this is pretty key.  Close Air Support.  CLOSE Air Support.   The key word here that is worth remembering is "close. because close is worth emphasizing.  An A-10 or even AV-8 can actually discriminate between target and not target.  JTACs help, but again, as evidenced by Boning, if the flying thing cannot see what the JTAC sees (situational awareness) it isn't really coordination, close, safe, or a good idea.

 

UAVs are cool as long as there is no one on the ground shooting back.  And again, we're now not just talking about a platform that cannot see the IFF measures of ground forces, but now we're talking about a JTAC talking to a UAV that's sending back telemetry to Nevada.  The USAF's investment in UAVs is still a furtherance of it's super plane mode war from sky, and more utility in terms of ISR than CAS.

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UAVs are cool as long as there is no one on the ground shooting back.  And again, we're now not just talking about a platform that cannot see the IFF measures of ground forces, but now we're talking about a JTAC talking to a UAV that's sending back telemetry to Nevada.  The USAF's investment in UAVs is still a furtherance of it's super plane mode war from sky, and more utility in terms of ISR than CAS.

 

The bolded portions contradict each other.

 

Well aware.  And the shift in targets was more productive because the ability to hide bridges, factories etc is pretty limited to the CIA getting it wrong where the Chinese Embassy was (maybe, unless we're talking about conspiracy type stuff).  However if you're looking at the performance metrics regardless, several hundred targets were engaged with precision weapons that were not actually valid targets.  There's nothing fancy optics are going to do against weather, but improved optics will do a lot in figuring out the classic tarp or tank dilemma.
 
The Chinese Embassy was struck because it was being used as a retrans station for Serbs. That isn't a conspiracy theory; it wasn't even a huge secret at the time. And the improved optics are still deceived by stuff like laying plastic bags over the middle of a bridge or building a 1/4 scale model of a tank and running electrified copper wire through the edges. Pilots are fooled by this stuff too, because it wasn't like the few sorties that dipped under the weather to put Mk1 eyeball were accomplishing anything of note either.
 
 
Edited by Apocal
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The bolded portions contradict each other.

 

Not so much.  UAVs are not effective in a situation that has red air, or major anti-aircraft defenses.  They are however effective in making people in Pakistan explode, which has rather become a cornerstone of US foreign policy.  This is by far the greater priority in UAV operations and design.  In less Pakistan oriented missions they're also a very useful ISR tool, however it's worthy of note that the Army now has its own large scale UAV platforms, which is largely a reaction to the ability to better task and control something "in house" than relying on the USAF to do it when asked.  Which really is a good template for armed Army fixed wing platforms.

 

So again, not that good in a high intensity conflict (ISR yes, but a Reaper isn't going to survive a dance with any ADA platform), not really good for CAS, but great for flinging missiles at Pakistanis.

 

 

 

The Chinese Embassy was struck because it was being used as a retrans station for Serbs. That isn't a conspiracy theory; it wasn't even a huge secret at the time. And the improved optics are still deceived by stuff like laying plastic bags over the middle of a bridge or building a 1/4 scale model of a tank and running electrified copper wire through the edges. Pilots are fooled by this stuff too, because it wasn't like the few sorties that dipped under the weather to put Mk1 eyeball were accomplishing anything of note either.

 

So basically an act of war given the status of embassies.  For a retrans station.

 

I'm not as dedicated to the air war crap as some people, but that's pretty out of proportion, which is to say dropping a bomb on an orphanage because the enemy has a single rifleman on the roof.  I'm more willing to believe the standard line about a mistargeting because that at least implies a somewhat understandable error, vs a target that frankly is of limited to no value (especially given the functionality of landlines or other means of communications within Yugoslavia).

 

So either the CIA/USAF is stupid enough to knowingly cause a major international incident over a target with minimal utility, or it's merely dumb enough to make the same sort of targeting mistake that it has done on many occasions (for which I cannot really fault them given the fluid nature of building occupants, and issues identifying "a building" in a city full of them.  

 

 

 

 And the improved optics are still deceived by stuff like laying plastic bags over the middle of a bridge or building a 1/4 scale model of a tank and running electrified copper wire through the edges. Pilots are fooled by this stuff too, because it wasn't like the few sorties that dipped under the weather to put Mk1 eyeball were accomplishing anything of note either.

 

So what you're telling me is the USAF is effectively useless against ground targets. Good to know the future enemies of America can look forward to losing three or so tanks for every hundred and twenty bombs dropped on things that might be tanks.

 

Why should we bother funding the USAF for CAS missions at all then? You're painting a picture of platforms that couldn't find targets to save their lives, cannot tell friendly troops from hostile ones, and increasingly are using platforms that are not survivable, or well adapted to CAS.  By your own examples and statements the USAF is unable to engage ground targets effectively, and is failing to fulfill it's obligations to the Army under the Key West agreements, and by that logic should yield the CAS mission, and associated funding to other agencies more inclined to do the job right.  

 

Hyperbole aside it's still possible to trick the human eye.  But targeting pods go a long way in increasing the ability to discriminate target from not a target (as anyone who's looked through earlier generation thermal optics vs modern thermal optics will tell you), and they mysteriously receive a lot of funding and research priority after 1999.  Perhaps this is just unrelated events, but there seems to be a connection between "we just blew up a lot of Serbian plywood" and "we are acquiring new optics systems"

Edited by panzersaurkrautwerfer
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Not so much.  UAVs are not effective in a situation that has red air, or major anti-aircraft defenses.  They are however effective in making people in Pakistan explode, which has rather become a cornerstone of US foreign policy.  This is by far the greater priority in UAV operations and design.  In less Pakistan oriented missions they're also a very useful ISR tool, however it's worthy of note that the Army now has its own large scale UAV platforms, which is largely a reaction to the ability to better task and control something "in house" than relying on the USAF to do it when asked.  Which really is a good template for armed Army fixed wing platforms.

 

So again, not that good in a high intensity conflict (ISR yes, but a Reaper isn't going to survive a dance with any ADA platform), not really good for CAS, but great for flinging missiles at Pakistanis.

 

I agree, I'm just saying that isn't a big-war USAF thing. And those are CIA drones bombing people in Pakistan, for the most part. USAF big-war stuff is all orientated around China; if it can't defeat A2/AD threats, it's a non-starter for seriousface air war. And the increase in the size/influence of the drone community drives the air war centric types (to the extent they still actually exist anyway) up the wall.

 

 

So basically an act of war given the status of embassies.  For a retrans station.

 

I'm not as dedicated to the air war crap as some people, but that's pretty out of proportion, which is to say dropping a bomb on an orphanage because the enemy has a single rifleman on the roof.  I'm more willing to believe the standard line about a mistargeting because that at least implies a somewhat understandable error, vs a target that frankly is of limited to no value (especially given the functionality of landlines or other means of communications within Yugoslavia).

 

So either the CIA/USAF is stupid enough to knowingly cause a major international incident over a target with minimal utility, or it's merely dumb enough to make the same sort of targeting mistake that it has done on many occasions (for which I cannot really fault them given the fluid nature of building occupants, and issues identifying "a building" in a city full of them.  

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/17/balkans

 

Not exactly a closely-guarded secret. And the USAF didn't decide to hit the embassy; when the CIA calls in a hit, the military chain of command isn't involved. I don't know why someone decided communications with their army were a target worthy of consideration instead of just sticking to economic targets that brought pain to the population, but decisions of that nature are well above my paygrade. As for being an act of aggression, uh, yeah, that tends to happen when you actively aid one side during a war.

 

 

So what you're telling me is the USAF is effectively useless against ground targets. Good to know the future enemies of America can look forward to losing three or so tanks for every hundred and twenty bombs dropped on things that might be tanks.

 

Why should we bother funding the USAF for CAS missions at all then? You're painting a picture of platforms that couldn't find targets to save their lives, cannot tell friendly troops from hostile ones, and increasingly are using platforms that are not survivable, or well adapted to CAS.  By your own examples and statements the USAF is unable to engage ground targets effectively, and is failing to fulfill it's obligations to the Army under the Key West agreements, and by that logic should yield the CAS mission, and associated funding to other agencies more inclined to do the job right. 

 

Aircraft did a lot better during OIF since there was mostly clear weather, it is a pool-table flat desert across much of the country, for CAS we had observers telling them where to exactly where to drop and, for interdiction tasks, an opponent that obliged our aircraft by actually trying to maneuver large units on the map instead of sticking all their real gear inside of barns and leaving them there until the war ended. Oh, and we had JDAMs on literally everything by then, which are pretty much the ultimate in customer service: the only thing you can screw up are the coordinates or fuzing.

 

And the USAF is pretty good with CAS when told where to hit and what to hit them with. Marine air's lack of blue-on-blue is as much an artifact of some of their aircraft being objectively horrible at CAS (Harriers, not even once) and there being far, far more Air Force aircraft in the CAS business. I think Marine Hornets have only performed around 12% (or less) of the CAS missions in Afghanistan and Harriers somewhere south of 5%.

 

The friendly-fire incidents are exceptional, especially when  compared to the bad old days of having slow-moving, good visibility aircraft... that strafed and bombed the living **** out of friendlies on such a regular basis some squadrons would work over the same (friendly) unit more than once in a single operation. And still wildly over-claimed the number of tanks they knocked out.

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I think we're sort of going metal on metal here.  I doubt you'll stop being a zoomie infidel or some kind, and I will not abandon the true faith of the Green Machine.

 

As a sort of weirdo peace offering, the USAF is not that bad at CAS, and it is much better than most military forces.  I will simply contend I feel the same people, more closely managed by the Army would be more effective at the Army support mission.

 

If that meant the USAF 303rd Fighter Squadron would fall under direct command of somesuch division/Army for operation Maple Storm when we annex British Columbia, then I'd be good.  An Army Air Force would be pretty good too. 

 

So just to wrap it up:

 

 

 

I agree, I'm just saying that isn't a big-war USAF thing. And those are CIA drones bombing people in Pakistan, for the most part. USAF big-war stuff is all orientated around China; if it can't defeat A2/AD threats, it's a non-starter for seriousface air war. And the increase in the size/influence of the drone community drives the air war centric types (to the extent they still actually exist anyway) up the wall.

 

Still seems pretty airpower as an end vs a means to me.  And speaking as a grounddude when I have the same capability organic (Shadow, Gray Eagle) to my organization it does not really feel much like support.

 

 

 

Not exactly a closely-guarded secret. And the USAF didn't decide to hit the embassy; when the CIA calls in a hit, the military chain of command isn't involved. I don't know why someone decided communications with their army were a target worthy of consideration instead of just sticking to economic targets that brought pain to the population, but decisions of that nature are well above my paygrade. As for being an act of aggression, uh, yeah, that tends to happen when you actively aid one side during a war.

 

Does not make a heap of sense though, and several other news agencies have investigated the accusations and declined to pursue for lack of substantiation.  

 

CIA will get stuff wrong, but unless it had a really good reason to blast the Chinese embassy, and specifically the Chinese embassy because it was the Chinese Embassy it seems really flimsy.  I heard some crazytalk once it'd been to destroy NATO hardware that had been captured and was being prepared to be flown out in diplomatic bags.  This seems more likely than the retrans, but again, there's terribly little evidence for either situation, while there's a fair amount for wrong building.

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I think we're sort of going metal on metal here.  I doubt you'll stop being a zoomie infidel or some kind, and I will not abandon the true faith of the Green Machine.

 

I am not and have never been in the Air Force. I don't even like the Air Force as an organization and think most of their big war ideas are ****ing retarded.

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We're having a similar discussion on the Baloogan Campaign Chat (currently down, since Bal is moving to his new job, but check back in after the weekend). As said before, the primary weapon the A-10 would use in a high-threat environment with a properly-equipped adversary would be the AGM-65 series of weapons which gives it some measure of stand-off capability against SHORAD such as the SA-15, the SA-19, and the SA-22. However, both the F-16 and the F-15E also employ this weapon as well. We'll also see the proliferation of even longer-legged PGMs come ~2017 like the SDB II and newer block JSOWs (potentialy dispensing CEM and BAT/SFW submunitions) with the 2-way common data-link, maybe even with the JASSM in due course, so theoretically FACs can uplink new co-ordinates for the weapon with about as much precision as we had with organic CAS aircraft of yore. About the only thing you probably lose is the "put the fear of god" factor of the GAU-8 opening up.

 

I think there's a common misconception that the USAF loathes the A-10. If they could help it, they'd love to keep them (most institutions, military or otherwise, are loathe to give up capability). But as long as they have other missions that need to be fufilled (nuclear deterrent, electronic/information warfare, satellite and UAV operations et al.) and Air-Sea Battle and the A2/AD dilemma gain primacy, something has to give.

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Now that the game is out you can do some testing against ground AA threats. See what happens when you overfly a map with Strella, manpad or Tunguska on it. The manual did state, though, that a postulated long range AA missile threat is keeping your fly-boys from operating at an untouchable height above the battlefield. Only the biggest drone, I think, is untouchable.

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Well, 2 Apache's in the game for me found that they did not last long vs a well equipped enemy.

 

So, between a A-10 and a Apache. Which would realistically have a better chance vs a Sam ?

 

Now my two choppers did manage to make a few attacks in and did dodge a few Missiles.

 

but they did not fire more than 5 missiles to get the job done (so that is my first game experience with them)

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I usually don't commit aviation until I'm fairly sure the ADA threat is low. If I just burned out some 2S6s then I'll pull down the CAS. Otherwise I'll hold off.

Also I'll use mortars or 155 mm airburst to keep manpads down in the target area.

Oh, that all is fine if you have it. But I knew it was out there, I was being overrun and time was running out. So I used them , they did some damage and they were shot out of the sky.

Plus the sams came from the other half of the map from where my air was focused. Hard to protect them when you are on the wrong end of things.

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When an aircraft takes fire they'd just go "LOL NOPE" and cease their attack in reality, I imagine.  If they manage to dodge missiles and all they'll probably have ejected their external stores and be RTB.  The SAM had won, in it had prevented the strike.

 

Hopefully things like Missile-launch warning systems and aircraft performing standoff-style attacks are accounted for, or are possible to choose in scenarios. 

Edited by Nerdwing
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Back to the orig. issue of this thread. just read in the paper today that the A-10 will not be phased totally out til 2019. So you can start the campaigning to get them in the game.

 

I am sure they will be adding the US Marines to the game, so that would be a good time to add the A-10 and make you all happy.

 

Plus with how well the Russian planes in the game are using their 30 mm , sure lets get the A-10 in there. Who cares if they are missile bait.

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It's hard to see A-10 surviving at the front line in real modern war but then again it's the same thing with helicopters. Somehow I doubt US would be willing to use them against Russians as they seem to be somewhat embarrassed that they can't retire them because of their usefulness and there isn't even A-10s based in Europe anymore as far as I know. Wouldn't still mind seeing it in the game though :D I doubt F-35 will ever be able to fill A-10s shoes as CAS aircraft.

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I may well be that the A10 is nearing he end of its' useful life but it may still be in service in 2017

 

http://www.wired.com/2014/12/a10-warthog-isis/

 

However, modern SAM capabilities would likely make it vulnerable on the battlefields of Ukraine. However there are apparently serious issues with the F-35.

 

It would be good if BF included both types of aircraft in a future module.

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