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COIN Air Wing in the Wings

By Christian Lowe Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 11:17 am
Posted in Air, International, Policy

The Air Force looks as if it has punted the establishment of a COIN Wing (though we’ll see when the authorization process starts) based on its budget submission yesterday.

Gen. Norton Schwartz, the service’s chief of staff, had floated the idea of a COIN air wing in April last year. He told DoDBuzz at the Air Force Association conference that the wing would have to wait, but he provided no details as to how long the wait might be.

Now we have Air Force budget officials saying the so-called “light attack aircraft” would not have any significant funding until the 2012 submission, where the service will allot $172 million for the so-called COIN plane.

The Air Force did, however, take a step toward a COIN wing by ordering up 15 Light Mobility Aircraft to the tune of nearly $66 million. According to a submission to FedBizOpps, the LiMA must be able to carry a minimum of six pax and crew, operate from “austere landing surfaces” and carry a minimum of 1800 pounds with crew. The plane needs a loading door that can take litters and a 36 inch warehouse skid and have two pilot stations but be able to be flown by one pilot.

The Air Force is budgeting for these planes in FY 2011 only. And part of the idea behind the plane is to help train other air forces during counterinsurgency operations.

The Light Mobility Aircraft (LiMA) program will acquire Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) aircraft to satisfy the USAF light mobility mission requirement. These aircraft will be suitable for building partner capacity (BPC) especially in lesser developed partner nations (PN). This program supports irregular warfare efforts that help prepare PN to defend and govern themselves by demonstrating an airlift capability that is consistent with their needs for supporting infrastructure, performance, anticipated methods of employment, acquisition and sustainment costs, and multi-role/multi-mission capability.

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	BOOMER February 3rd, 2010 at 11:27 am This is nothing more than a personnel transporter, they can buy a lot more than 15 off the shelf planes for 66 mil. helos can do this job. The coin aircraft are supposed to be low altitude close air support aircraft along the lines of the P38 lightning, or aimiliar WW2 type aircraft that can take off and land from a dirt airfield, relatively cheap to buy, low and easy maintenance. AF is obviously deverting funds elsewhere on this one and its so obvious someone should be hammered for it.
	HasBeen February 3rd, 2010 at 5:03 pm Yeah, I think all they should need to do is go to Quest Aircraft and buy their Kodiak. I’d bet they could meet all the mission essential requirements and do it for less than 1/4–1/2 of their budget. And let’s see, it took me all of about 3 minutes to find their site.
	BOOMER February 3rd, 2010 at 1:10 pm Yup, just like the diver delivery sub fiasco, for the cost of what they spent on that one junk pile they developed with contractors, they could have bought 4 150′ self reliant trans ocean sub capable of twice the speed, 1000 plus foot depth, and 10 man diver lock out chamber from a dealer in florida that makes them for millionaires (and probably drug dealers) on a daily basis for a living. but no they had to do it thier way, spend 127 mil and scrapp the project after it not working for 8 years. Glad I’m just a grunt and not a brain.
	Byron Skinner February 3rd, 2010 at 1:55 pm Good Morning Folks, No body gets it the USAF doesn’t want to fly below 10K feet, they don’t want to fight and they certainly don’t want to expose their expensive pilots to “low tech” ground fire. That said, a COIN AF is already in development with the US Army who are in phase 0 of the MQ-1C Predator Warrior test in Iraq with the 1st. Cavalry Division this week. The USAF isn’t even redundant any more, it is losing missions and having find work as operation Medical Facilities, EOD’s Specialists and convoy truck drivers. Maybe they should change their name from the United States Air Force to the United States Army Service Force? ALLONS, Byron Skinner
	soonergrunt February 3rd, 2010 at 4:09 pm How long has the AF been trying to get rid of the A-10? The first attempt was in the early 90’s. This was after they tried to get out of CAS entirely in the early 1970s.
	BOOMER February 3rd, 2010 at 4:30 pm The army relies on A10’s some but mostly helos, A10’s are not as close to the fights and are not field deployable the way a true coin aircraft must be. I drive by 1st Cav every day and know of most things going on at the air field — not a thing with UAV’s. UAV’s are not that great, satalites and console warriors dont find the enemy, operators do and they are put at risk every time a UAV is used in thier area because the goat hearders caught on faster than a lot of you here and realize that if a UAV is around then so are our guys and they start hunting for them. The marines are pushing for real coin aircraft that is both carrier and rough terrain able while carrying a deadly payload old school style (WW2).
	pennst98 February 3rd, 2010 at 10:00 pm 8 years into two simultaneous conflicts and we realize (light bulb flashes) that maybe we really need some good close air support?! It’s like we forgot Normandy, Korea, Vietnam, etc.. (cough…Skyraider…cough) In my mind it’s not CAS if you’re scrambling from 500 miles away or dropping guided bombs from 10,000 feet via laser designation. While you CAN technically do this from a helo or many jets, the helo lacks the firepower and speed (also vulnerable) while the Jet is too fast and lacks the ability to manually drop ordinace. (A-10 is better than nothing, but it was built to hunt tanks.…not taliban) The gold standard was the Skyraider, if you don’t believe me go look at the specs. Nothing does it like a high weight/payload prop driven plane when you consider loiter time/availability, firepower, operational effectiveness, and cost. .
	WAR III February 4th, 2010 at 12:30 am I bet if you gave LM or boeing the blueprints to the A-10 and told them that you wanted 200 airplanes built they could and would build them. How about the “let’s put the money together and see” approach . This nonsense of prop airplanes is crazy. I am sure the Dem.s and Bush;s thug would love to set the Airforce back 50 years. In the ‘60s the CIA used wwII aircraft like P-51s in south america against rebels, I am sure that is where Mr. Gates came up with this crap of a coin aircraft !! Mr.Gates needs to realize that he is not in the CIA anymore and start running things like he is in control of a modern Military.
	CharlesHouston February 3rd, 2010 at 7:37 pm The AF has had a COIN aircraft for a while — the A-10. Byron should note that it flies considerably under 10K feet and has a titanium bathtub for the pilot, so they can survive ground fire. But no one ever had an aircraft RE-named after themselves, and no one ever made General by marginally improving an existing system. You make General by ramming a new program thru the bureaucracy and competing interests of DC. Therefore, many people will feel we need a new aircraft!! In the meantime, the new COIN aircraft has already arrived, and Byron will be glad to note its name — the Predator. Our UAVs do the COIN job pretty well and they are arriving in quantity. They just aren’t as sexy as those pointy-nosed, high flying, cool planes.
	CharlesHouston February 4th, 2010 at 2:02 am Yes, the AF has been trying to get rid of the A-10 for a while, I recall seeing a line of “A-16s” on the field at Fort Hood several years ago. They were painted in a camo to make them more palatable to the Army. And the Congress kept adding A-10s above what the AF asked for (of course the AF knew that would happen and asked for fewer A-10s). Still, the lovable A-10 has been a reliable airframe for quite a while now.
	Byron Skinner February 3rd, 2010 at 9:43 pm Good Evening Folks, The basic problem here is we are at war. Only those who fight get new toys. As Sec. Gates said the AF is not doing it part, no Christmas presents for the AF this year, just another lump of coal. If anything come of a COIN AF it will be gobbled up by Spec.Ops. who are getting extra Christmas presents. If I recall the Air Force has just loved the A-10 since it was first introduced. They dumped all of them into the ANG,some I hear still had the plastic bags over the ejection seat when delivered to the ANG, I guess that’s why they are to be flown till 2050. ALLONS, Byron Skinner
	Drake1 February 4th, 2010 at 2:47 am Someone had said a while back that they should give socom an air wing. To hell with the AF give it to socom…don’t they already fly this kind of stuff?
	TMB February 4th, 2010 at 3:44 am The last prop plane we had for CAS was during Vietnam. It was the A-1 Skyraider and it worked beautifully. Which part of using a prop plane is nonsense? They’re inexpensive, deliver accurate fire, can stay on station a long time, and some can land on dirt fields. Just because its shiny and fast doesn’t mean its “better.” You say the CIA used WW2 planes to fight rebels in the 1960s. What kind of enemy do you think we’re fighting now? You’ll also have to explain where the whole idea of using prop-driven CAS is Gates’ idea.
	Curt February 4th, 2010 at 9:18 am Why you could, the USAF can’t for a variety of reasons, most of which come down to complying with US law and the fact they are not just buying airplanes. First, they have to hold a competition amongst available competitors (which is quite a few). Second, they have to test the aircraft, which comes out of that cost as well. When you include ability to carry ordnance, etc, that gets pretty pricy. They have to establish schools to train the various personnel on operating the aircraft and develop training material and doctrine as well as develop additional new training materials for people like airtraffic controllers. They have to pay for the first USAF personnel to be trained. And Finally, you have to aquire all the spares and pay the overhead for the program office (which can be pretty expensive when you only have 15 aircraft).
	Curt February 4th, 2010 at 9:22 am Oh, and they also have to install things like Military Radios, navigation systems, etc. and test them as well to be certified. All for 15 airframes. Lots of overhead for just 15 airplanes. $66 million isn’t that much.
	Robert T. Garross February 4th, 2010 at 8:24 am The A1 was a great bird but being low & slow makes you a easy target. The Air Force used Cessna 337 to spot targets in Viet Nam. I heard they worked great for that and compared to other A/C they are cheap. I wish I knew the answer to this one, but hay make it a high wing you can’t shoot what you can’t see..
	soonergrunt February 4th, 2010 at 2:13 pm A new COIN-CAS plane–what do we need? I’m a grunt, not an aeronautical engineer, so I think in terms of what I want the plane to do for me rather than how it should be assembled, but I do have a few ideas. A-10 is great, but the gun is too big for COIN. Very few insurgents have access to modern or semi-modern tanks. Can the gun be replaced with something smaller or is this just not doable with balance issues and such? A COIN-CAS platform should have two engines ideally. A-1 Skyraider got away with one engine because it had an air-cooled radial engine. Anything flying today will have a liquid cooled turbo-prop or turbocharged piston engine. It should have two engines for power and resilience to ground fire. While we’re on the subject, there’s no reason it couldn’t be a jet.
	soonergrunt February 4th, 2010 at 2:14 pm Further from my last– It should be capable of several strafing passes with .50 cal to 20mm, and it should be able to carry 4–6 small (500lb or less) bombs and be able to deliver these consistently within a 50m circle. 10m would be better, but we’re starting to get into high cost-long term program which will only give the AF more of a chance to kill it. It should be able to carry at least 2, better 4x19 tube Hydra-70/APKWS launcher. Essentially, I want something that can get there in a reasonable amount of time–so rough field/STOL capable? Be able to bring the rain with accuracy for a couple of passes, and be enough of them that they can cover us for as long as we need them. Any ideas as to what may be out there that fits these requirements?
	soonergrunt February 4th, 2010 at 2:15 pm obviously it doesn’t have to do all of these things at once. It would be nice, but it needs to work well at a limited mission, not be all things to all people all the time.
	John King February 4th, 2010 at 3:39 pm While the A-10 is a great hard hitter, why not just dust off the A-1 Skyraider plans? But since it makes too much sense, the Pentagon won’t buy into it. They need to “manage something”.
	soonergrunt February 4th, 2010 at 11:24 am @John King– How many A-1s are available in AMARG and how long would it take to get them into the fight?
	CharlesHouston February 4th, 2010 at 4:35 pm As always, Byron is poorly informed and makes decisions based on what he reads in People magazine. Of course all of the A-10s were NOT “dumped” into the ANG, the Active force has about 200 right now and the Reserves have not quite a hundred. And, as a proud veteran of 10 years in the Tx ANG — aircraft in the Guard actually are used effectively! Many aircraft have been delivered to the ANG directly from the production line — shows that the ANG has some priority. The ANG has more aircraft, generally, than the Reserves since they are larger. Do they have a hundred A-10s? The AF certainly prefers the pointy-nosed aircraft but they have put the A-10 to excellent use.
	BOOMER February 4th, 2010 at 12:02 pm Not that I’m recommending this — but just to show it doesn’t have to be extragavent. mercs in Africa not too long agao were using a kit plane, it was called the bat, they were all painted black — drove like an ultralite, fiberglass bodied with a chevy turbo charged fuel injected engine and rear prop. most had either twin 7.62mm or a 50 cal. they were not intended for air combat in any way, were too small to carry ordnance but only needed a 100 yards to get in the air and were havoc on guerila groundforces. they also cost under 10,000.00 US dollars each to build. So low tech and cheap can be as if not more effective than high tech and expensive.
	mike j February 4th, 2010 at 5:47 pm Think you just about perfectly described the OV-10 Bronco. Boeing was going to offer a new-build OV-10X for the LAAR competition, but that effort apparently died.
	IMHO February 4th, 2010 at 5:57 pm If some of the ground-centric folks in these posts had their way, there would be an armed aircraft over every single dispersed squad. No one has the funding to support that, so grow up and quit blaming joint teammates for self-induced support issues. One of the major problems is that we have ZERO strategic interest in being in Afghanistan in large numbers right now. We won the wars in Iraq and AFG, we just didn’t have the brains to get out and leave them well enough alone. The only success COIN strategy has had is prolonging requirments for extended ground expeditionary forces and delaying foregone conclusions in internal disputes.
	soonergrunt February 4th, 2010 at 2:03 pm Oh, do tell–did AIRPOWER WIN THE WAR!?!?!?! And when, exactly, did we win these wars and how did we do that, cause I must have missed that part, being shot at/IEDed/mortared/rocketed a lot.
	BOOMER February 4th, 2010 at 4:14 pm IMHO — no ground pounder wants a bird overhead. The whole reason for CAS is because there are times when air support is the only support you can get, especialy during clandestine ops. We need aircraft that can be frontline so that the op envelope does not have to be so tight. It is not realistic to plan an operation expecting an operator to be able to get into position, infiltrate, initiate and extract at exact times, and be expected to do it every time. 16’s and 18’s just cannot hang around long enough at times and the operators loose the only back up they had to start with. That is why we need coin aircraft (and not UAV’s either)
	IMHO February 4th, 2010 at 9:18 pm Soonergrunt, Wow. What a perspective. Last time I checked, a joint force has fought all of our wars. Even before airpower was around, the ground forces couldn’t get to too many theaters without support from the sea. I’m not about to make any claims about airpower winning any war on it’s own, but neither ground power nor naval power have won a recent war without considerable, and sometimes decisive, airpower support. I’m not about to minimize your experiences in tactical combat. My point is there are no strategic imperatives for you to have been placed in a knife fight with an inferior enemy. As long as we continue to tie our hands (with COIN doctrine) and allow ourselves to “play down” to the enemy’s capability. We chose to stay after we toppled (rather quickly with superb joint forces) the Saddam and Taliban regimes.
	IMHO February 4th, 2010 at 9:20 pm Last paragraph should have read: I’m not about to minimize your experiences in tactical combat. My point is there are no strategic imperatives for you to have been placed in a knife fight with an inferior enemy. As long as we continue to tie our hands (with COIN doctrine) and allow ourselves to “play down” to the enemy’s capability, we’ll continue to be challenged. We chose to stay after we toppled (rather quickly with superb joint forces) the Saddam and Taliban regimes.
	IMHO February 4th, 2010 at 9:30 pm Boomer, I’m not disputing the need for some type of slow attack a/c. They’re cheap and easy to acquire when needed, but your point about not wanting birds overhead belies a very narrow perspective. The reason you feel you don’t need birds overhead is because there have always been our (US) birds over your head and not enemy birds over your head. Regular US forces have not been attacked by an enemy aircraft since 1953.
	soonergrunt February 4th, 2010 at 11:51 pm Whether we like it or not, when we win a war comes the aftermath. Failed states result when there is no effective government. That’s what happened in Afghanistan in the first place to allow the Taliban to take over, which of course allowed a safe haven from which Al Queda could operate. Leaving aside whatever anyone thinks of the invasion of Iraq (nobody wants to open that can of worms in an aircraft debate) once we invaded, we became responsible for the place on more than just a legal level. This stuff has to be done right or we’re going to have more problems from Iraq and Afghanistan like Afghanistan before, and that means in both of these cases, a COIN campaign.
	elgatoso February 5th, 2010 at 5:56 am I read somewhere they are trying the Super Tucano
	Musket 104 February 5th, 2010 at 10:32 am Help me with the “field deployable’ aspect. For this or any other weapons delivery platfrom, it has to have gas, bombs, rockets, missiles — that means some kind of base, runway, maintenance, etc. The Marines advertised “ground loiter” for the Harrier. Has ground loiter ever been used in real combat? all this “low and slow in the weeds” is good if the bad huys have AK’s, give them a MANPAD — the game has changed. Without countermeasu slow attack aircraft will soon be a dead attack aircraft There have been light attack planes existed since the Fletcher FU-24 back in the 50’s (A-37, Turbo Mustang / Piper Enforcer, OV-10, etc). Basically one trick ponies.
	soonergrunt February 5th, 2010 at 3:49 pm Well, we’re not looking for a all-things-to-all-people approach here, so a cheap, reliable one-trick-pony will do nicely. To my knowledge, ‘ground loiter’ has never been used operationally. Having said that, a STOL aircraft that could operate out of smaller bases like Jalabad, AF would be very appreciated. That puts it much closer to the fight (in RC East, in this case) than Bagram, but still has a hardened airfield with modern (enough) facilities from which to work.
	IMHO February 5th, 2010 at 4:52 pm Musket–Good points. These light attack aircraft, and attack helos for that matter, can’t operate well in a contested air environment. It depends on what the enemy’s capability is and the phase of the fight. STOVL is inherently complicated and inefficient for a fixed wing aircraft. Harries are giant heat plumes when it comes to IR missiles. While the F-35 variant should be much better in that regard, the STOVL requirement is one of the major reasons why the jet is behind schedule and over budget. Operational utility can’t justify the need for STOVL in a stealth realm; the only real driver is the need to operate from a Marine Amphibious Assault ship without a catapult.
	William C. February 5th, 2010 at 6:00 pm I get the impression Byron just hates the USAF and wants nothing more to see thing flying nothing but Predator UAVs.
	mike j February 5th, 2010 at 6:29 pm So the argument against prop planes is basically “We can’t afford these things, they’d be totally useless in every situation except the one we’ve been fighting the last eight years.” There’s no logic in it at all. If there’s no logic, then the argument is being made for other reasons.
	William C. February 5th, 2010 at 6:48 pm Yet those OV-10s were doing observation and reconnaissance work and not CAS. If these things are going to be doing CAS they need a good degree of armor protection. The enemy may not have many MANPADs to use but they will gladly spray their rifles and machines guns in the air which can still bring down a light aircraft.
	mike j February 5th, 2010 at 7:32 pm That’s wrong. Marine/ Navy Broncos did plenty of CAS, USAF did less. Combat loss rates for this aircraft were not excessive. Do you need the data spoon fed to you? Go read the article.
	@tc399 February 5th, 2010 at 8:57 pm The navy doesn’t fly OV10s. The navy is the taxi service for the Marine Corps. The Air Force is the High-altitude support and observance branch of the Marine Corps. The Army spends the money the Marine Corps should have. I’m having a pretty good time with this!
	@tc399 February 5th, 2010 at 9:02 pm The navy doesn’t fly OV10s. The Navy is the taxi service for the Marine Corps. The Air Force is the High-altitude support and observation service for the Marine Corps. The Army spends the money the Marine Corps should have. I’m having a pretty good time with this! I wonder if I am convincing?
	@tc399 February 5th, 2010 at 9:05 pm The Air Force already owns 550 Cessna 172 and 182 airframes and gave them to the Civil air Patrol which is now a 501©(3) but is being used to do things decidedly un-civilian. Granted, a glass cockpit 182 isn’t an OV10 and isn’t going to come screaming out of the clouds firing rockets…but I have seen Piper Cubs come screaming out of the clouds firing rockets and Some CAP 182s are sporting predator pods under their wings. http://www.suasnews.com/2009/10/92/there-are-not-… 182s are flown as military aircraft in ten countries. So we have those and we have OV10s and we still have some Skyraiders..and for a cheap thrill, we still have a lot of A4s rotting at Davis-Monthan. Why not use what we already paid for and have sitting out there?. I may be biased. If we need something new I think a small, fast airplane with laser illumination and sensing capabilities would work nicely and my choice, from having flown all of these is a Vari-Eze. I understand that it does not meet ANY of the specifications but maybe the specifications are wrong. A beefed-up Vari-Eze is almost invisible to radar, as hard to hit with groundfire as a hummingbird, and could EASILY carry ordinance. And it flies like a P51 on steroids. If you remove the pilot, you can buy hundreds of them for the cost of a few Predators. We have to stop wasting money we don’t have. We have simple solutions available but no way to implement them over the influence of lobbyists.
	William C. February 5th, 2010 at 9:22 pm I don’t know what data there is on the subject of OV-10s during Desert Storm, but I do know that we have lost too many helicopters over the years to small arms fire. I’m not saying it needs to be a P-47, but whatever we select should have some better armor than a layer of Kevlar in the pilot’s seat. We have effective IR jammers and methods to throw off whatever SA-7s they will be firing, but 14.5mm anti-aircraft MGs can’t be fooled so easily.
	mike j February 5th, 2010 at 5:21 pm Air and Space mag has an article on the OV-10 in the latest issue, it’s online too: http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/Lege… Suggest you go read about that “one trick pony” and watch the short video too (seeing is believing). As to your assertion about MANPADs, two OV-10As were shot down with them in the Gulf War, one crew member was killed. The –10A did not have IR strobes or suppressed exhaust. OV-10Ds had that equipment, none were hit. A CH-47 recently survived a “complex attack” with MANPADs by using a laser IR jammer. Make of that what you will.
	mike j February 5th, 2010 at 10:33 pm The environment you’re talking about resembles Vietnam more than anything else. The USAF lost 47 OV-10s in combat from ’68-’73. They lost 82 O-2 Skymasters from ’67-’72. Anecdotal, but these aircraft were doing the same mission. Let’s throw in the A-1 Skyraider; 150 USAF combat losses from ’64-’72. Vietnam by all accounts was AAA hell. Helicopters and fixed-wing are apples and oranges. Consider the advancements in sensors and precision weapons. Also, the OV-10 does have armor plates. The armed recon/ CAS mission is not as dangerous today as you’re imagining. This is probably moot anyway. The OV-10 apparently didn’t make the cut for the LAAR, Boeing no longer appears on the interested vendor list on the FBO site. I also think the USAF is foot dragging with the hope that they’ll cancel this before they have to see one dime spent that could go to the F-35 etc..
	WAR III February 6th, 2010 at 12:48 am The Airfore should put the “blue force tracking” equipment displayed on digital maps in the cockpit of their A-10s (and all aircraft) the prevent shooting “freindlys”
	TMB February 6th, 2010 at 5:19 am Pretty sure they already do. What’s that got to do with the article?
	soonergrunt February 6th, 2010 at 3:56 pm ( If you remove the pilot,) I think you just nailed the source of the Air Force’s opposition to just about everything that doesn’t cost millions of dollars. Look at Army vs. Air Force loss rates on Predator/Reaper. The Army almost never loses them. AF loses them quite frequently. The primary reason for this is that the Army lets the plane fly and land itself and simply operates the surveillance/targetting systems and the AF tries to ‘pilot’ the plane. The Army hasn’t lost a single RQ-9 to a landing accident, while almost all of the AF RQ-9 mishaps have occured during landing.
	projob66 February 7th, 2010 at 3:39 pm The Air Scouts dont even let the A-10 guys park on the same apron at Nellis.… They make them park way the heck down and out at the end.. The A-10 was never near sexy enough for the Air Scouts. Remember it did not initially have all the extra weight that made it a pretty slow big target, as opposed to just a big target. And really this aircraft is a good air superiority, low threat, road recce shoot em up aircraft. They even made it do under the weather Lantirn Maverick stuff.… It has earned its kind of rough gruff ‘Warthog’ nomenclature and reputation despite the best efforts of the Air Scouts to divorce themselves from this unsexy, ugly duckling, in their eyes, aircraft. They need to get real..
	projob66 February 7th, 2010 at 3:44 pm CAS is always the toughest mission. Always. The only service and REALLY the only service that does good CAS oncall is the Marine Corps. They practice it everyday and their ground and air controllers are aviators and at least went through basic grunt school with the grunt officers. IMHO.
	projob66 February 7th, 2010 at 3:49 pm exactly what I was thinking. sounds like the OV-10 to me.…… smoke away.….!!!!
	Usetobe February 7th, 2010 at 6:58 pm I would like to comment on the substance of Byron’s posting, but there is none. Byron is not serious, just a trite little rock thrower. I suspect Byron knows less about military affairs than most grade school children as his postings provide no insight, analysis or information, merely juvenile graffiti on an otherwise interesting site
	Trophy February 7th, 2010 at 7:01 pm The Air Force stopped trying to get rid of the A-10’s sometime about four years ago… someone finally got a clue up above. The fact that they finally commissioned the aircraft’s major upgrade in 2007 to the A-10C with (HOTAS being the biggest upgrade) shows the Air Force’s commitment to the airframe, as they extend it’s planned service life to 2028. It’s no doubt that the Air Force USED to be the red-headed step-child of the fleet that they tried to get rid of several times. But now it’s earned it’s respect, love and place in today’s Air Force. I’m sure someone’s gonna say the Air Force only wants to keep the A-10 just to save face from losing it to the Army/Marine Corps… I can only shake my head.
	mike j February 7th, 2010 at 10:49 pm I think they only got a clue when they realized that it’d be like 10 or 15 years before they saw a significant number of new tactical aircraft. They want it because they have no choice.
	Usetobe February 8th, 2010 at 12:31 am “COIN” a/c may be more about a low tech a/c used to build partnerships (BPC) with poor countries vs an a/c for over-watch/fire of every squad. I pass off the vitriolic blather on the AF & the grunt as good natured ribbing or stupidity. The AF supports the current fight & the NMS If the AF were to only support grunt equities, then who combat/deter high-end foes? How about the advantages of space assets? nuclear deterrence? Would grunts gain air superiority & global strike? How well would grunts perform w/o command of air & space? Never happen? you are right provided the AF funds it’s portion of the NMS. Dominant aerospace power requires investments.If we rebalance our millitary to a COIN force; we jeopardize our ability to win fights that threaten the existence of our nation.
	Curt February 8th, 2010 at 10:42 am Good point. As initially articulated by Gen Schwartz, the idea of a “COIN” wing is to support security assistance with other nations. It was not about supporting the US Forces, although that might be a side benefit. The idea of an armed trainer is useful because the trainers are cheap, easy to fly and maintain, and can add useful additions to low tech airforces. A dual use trainer/light attack aircraft, like a “AT-6″, is used to build capacity, add limited air support at a reasonable price, and serves as a stepping stone to higher performance aircraft for countries like Iraq or Afghanistan. Problem with any dedicated COIN or CAS aircraft is that it is not suitable at the primary purpose of the “COIN” wing, which is security assistance and training.
	BOOMER February 9th, 2010 at 8:15 am In the interim we already have a good platform in service right now that will fit the bill for a CAS for our guys. Make the Osprey modular so that once it is in country you can mount a couple of GAU’s out the side and you have an instant MINI SPECTRE GUN SHIP. All that is needed is to splice in cables for the power supplies and mounts for the weapons. They can hover for hang time time and are fast. TOO expensive for a real coin craft but will give them a dual purpose role more so justifying thier cost.

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