Fairchild A-10 Projects

TomS said:
And there's a bunch of stuff in there that makes zero sense at all and was totally outside of McPeak's lane. Like telling the Navy to give up long-range air defense? Um, how did the Air Force propose to provide air defense to forces at sea? Clearly it was not going to take over AEGIS on ships. And telling the Marines to pass all their CV/CTOL aircraft to the Navy was just meddling and would actually improve nothing. It would probably break Naval aviation, since the service would struggle to find pilots to fill those extra squadrons (one reason they are Marine-manned in the first place).
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Funny enough, the Marines have basically done just that. They still keep C130s (and IIRC fly C130s for occasional Navy stuff, too), but the only F-35s they want are -Bs.
 
FIRE FIGHTING A-10 PATENT

US5549259A
Innovative airtankers and innovative methods for aerial fire fighting
Inventor: Edward C. Herlik
Year: 1994
https://patents.google.com/patent/US5549259A/en

ARTIST'S IMPRESSIONS
- US FOREST SERVICE
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/fairchild-a-10-projects.160/post-182861
- CARLIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FORESTRY
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/fairchild-a-10-projects.160/post-182940
- AEROTECH EDWARD HERLIK
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/fairchild-a-10-projects.160/post-773917

MORE INFOS:
Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II: The 'Warthog' Ground Attack Aircraft
by Peter Charles Smith
(AIR WORLD, MARCH 2021)
 
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overscan (PaulMM) said:
Interesting link. I've attached the various scans from Fairchild press releases and brochure.
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Photo "NAWS 7" caption.

"In test, the FLIR and radar are being carried in pods mounted on the pylons.... In the production version, they would be housed within the landing gear pods."

Are there any illustrations of the planned gear noses for the NAW sensors?
 
I won a great lot of photographs of the N/AW A-10 this week and amongst them is this fantastic patch. The SSNA is for the Single Seat Night Attack version of the A-10. I can't find much about this proposed type apart from few papers that's available to purchase online.

The owl is also seen as nose art on the two seat N/AW A-10.

Does anybody have further details on the SSNA? I'll delve into my books too.
 

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I finally managed to visit Edwards AFB last week and photographed the N/AW A-10. I'm still pinching myself that I've seen it.
 

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flateric said:
Budget cuts
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That's the what, what's the why?

It says Congress, but not whether it was the House, Senate, or both. I can see them being cut in reconciliation, but then it should say House or Senate, not Congress. The last paragraph talks about House and Senate conferees agreeing on the MX and CX projects, so it seems to me as if this means they had agreed to budget for them in conference, which implies they were part of the budget bill as agreed to by both houses. It doesn't explain when or why they got cut.
 
apparition13 said:
So if 30 had been budgeted, what happened to them?
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The article says that a total of 60 aircraft were budgeted for FY81; doing the math, this was to be 30 A-10A and 30 two-seater (A-10B).

Serial numbers analysis (from Baugher at Crouze.com) shows the "as built" as:
Fairchild Republic A-10A Thunderbolt II MSN A10-0634/0693.
81-0939/0998 Originally serialed 81-0001/0060

So, without further details, the funded total of 60 aircraft was built, but all as A-10A single-seaters. There is no data to explain what happened to the "spare change" - if it stayed in the A-10 program, or was reallocated to a different budget line later in a funding "cleanup".
 
It's my understanding that the N/AW A-10 was not taken up by the USAF due to LANTIRN coming online which enabled F-16 and the upcoming F-15E to operate in the dark.

Fairchild pitched the idea of the Combat Ready Trainer to the USAF which funding was originally allocated but Congress eventually deemed that the A-10 was simple enough to fly that a type specific two seat trainer was necessary. So the allocated funds was folded back into the A-10A production.
 
Jonesy1275 said:
It's my understanding that the N/AW A-10 was not taken up by the USAF due to LANTIRN coming online which enabled F-16 and the upcoming F-15E to operate in the dark.

Fairchild pitched the idea of the Combat Ready Trainer to the USAF which funding was originally allocated but Congress eventually deemed that the A-10 was simple enough to fly that a type specific two seat trainer was necessary. So the allocated funds was folded back into the A-10A production.
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The A-10 drivers at my local airport have said that the Warthog is really easy to fly, except in full manual-reversion mode with no hydraulic support so you're pulling steel cables. Then you gotta muscle it around.
 
I've been lucky to fly the A-10C simulator at Davis-Monthan AFB and I couldn't believe the effort it took to fly the Hog in manual reversion when the Instructor Pilot flicked the switch. Kudos to the pilots that have had to do it for real after suffering an in-flight emergency.
 

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