(January 25, 2023 at 5:56 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(January 24, 2023 at 8:20 am)Leonardo17 Wrote: Another possibility might be to have a certain cohesion in military material. Maybe they don’t want a Ukrainian army with 20 different types of assault tanks which have all a different way of working and require a different type of training + logistical support. SO it looks like it will be Leopards instead of Abrams Thanks.   

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukr...023-01-23/

Now I would ask for F-16’s if I was Zellensky (if there is no more Mig left of course)
 
The sooner this ends, the better. Russians are dying too

New Zealand would happily send some tanks, but I think ours is being washed right now.

Boru

(January 25, 2023 at 8:55 am)Leonardo17 Wrote:

(January 25, 2023 at 5:56 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukr...023-01-23/

Now I would ask for F-16’s if I was Zellensky (if there is no more Mig left of course)
 
The sooner this ends, the better. Russians are dying too

I'd add A-10s to the wish list. We've got about ~120 or so in storage.

(January 25, 2023 at 5:28 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(January 25, 2023 at 8:55 am)Leonardo17 Wrote: Now I would ask for F-16’s if I was Zellensky (if there is no more Mig left of course)
 
The sooner this ends, the better. Russians are dying too

I'd add A-10s to the wish list. We've got about ~120 or so in storage.

I said quite some time ago that a few squadrons of those flying tanks should have been sent. But does your president take his marching orders from me? He does not.

Boru

Just a question from those in the know.

A-10's are pretty much flying relics,are they not? They littereally havn't built a new machine since the 1970's?

Not that i think F-16's are the machine for ground support but, at least they are still being built, yes?

 

Cheers.

Not at work.

A little more than a month ago congress finally allowed the dod to retire two dozen planes, and they've been trying to retire the a10 (and get newer more expensive replacements) every year for years. The thing truly does refuse to die. That means that two dozen have just become available. There are 200 some odd left in service that dod would also like to shake loose. I don't think that anyone, even ukraine, believes that they're a match for functioning russian air defenses. They're still better at what ukraine wants them for than anything ukraine has, and ukraine is using worse shit to do what they'd like to be doing in a10s, if they could have some.

The f16 is a multirole, yeah, the worlds most successful multirole fighter, or so it's claimed. IMO, it's a bit like the abrams/leo thing. I'd pick the f16 over the a10 like I'd pick the leo over the abrams. Why choose though, amiright? Vlad the Miscalculator is going to keep lobbing missiles at housing block lobbys until ukraine has one of every available weapon system in the world, apparently. Weapons manufacturers will be keen on sending their stuff because you just don't get natural experiments like this very often. In one very important sense, russias various bits of military adventurism are a running product demo for their kit - and this is basically a commercial that got out of their control and may hurt their exports.

(January 25, 2023 at 6:49 pm)Peebothuhlu Wrote: Just a question from those in the know.

A-10's are pretty much flying relics,are they not? They littereally havn't built a new machine since the 1970's?

Not that i think F-16's are the machine for ground support but, at least they are still being built, yes?

 

Cheers.

Not at work.

The A-10 was produced through 1984 - the F-16 design is contemporary design, but it is not well suited for the role that the A-10 was built for. It really doesn't matter if the airframes are 40+ years old, as long as they're mission ready.

Oh. I was morethinking along the lines of "If you break an A-10. You aren't getting a new one to replace it any time soon." kind of thing.

(January 26, 2023 at 2:33 am)Peebothuhlu Wrote: Oh. I was morethinking along the lines of "If you break an A-10. You aren't getting a new one to replace it any time soon." kind of thing.

It's my understanding that the warthogs are impressively hard to break. They're designed to be able to fly with one engine, one half of the tail, one elevator and up to half of one wing missing. Not fly very well, of course, but well enough to limp back to base.

Boru

*Nods*

Hard to break does not equal 'Indestructable'.

There's been a few Youtube vids of pilots recounting bringing the damaged birds home.

Pretty sure though, that such machines are still 'Right offs' even though they stayed under thier pilots till they made it back home.

Lose an F-16? Recover the pilot and strap them into a new one comming off the lines.

Lose an A-10? Nup, there ain't no more, no more.

Unless thre's rumblings in the American halls of power to make something new? Assuming you can pry the money out of the Airforce's hands. I've seen more than a few comments about the internet about the Airforce's "Love" for the A-10.

Time will tell, I suppose.

Cheers.