A-10 gear fairing

"Tex Houston" wrote in message

"Thomas Schoene" wrote in message
ink.net...

How much of a story do you need to explain this? Placing an
antenna in close proximity to a very energetic 30mm gatling gun
muzzle seems like an obvious trouble spot. I'm slightly surprised
the RWR antennas are still up there.

You still did not explain "Avenger".

GAU-8/A Avenger. That's the name of the gun!

--�
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)

Cub Driver wrote in message . ..
On 27 Sep 2003 16:57:13 -0700, (Kevin Brooks)
wrote:

is not gonna help, now is it? Now...any evidence of this great tide of
opposition available? I have no doubt that just about *every* program
has had *someone* in the service in disagreement; but few (and I have

Absolutely. You're not paying attention:

Huh? I hate snippage, especially when it tears the substance out of a
message to the point that I have no earthly idea just *what* the heck
it is that you claim I am not paying attention to?

Brooks

the book is The Warthog & the
Close Air Support Debate, by Douglas Campbell, himself a former A-10
driver. He relates, among many other things, how junior AF officers
testifying before Congress were told in so many words to get on board
if they wanted a happy career and a comfortable retirement.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...f=nosim/annals


all the best -- Dan Ford

Juvat wrote in message . ..
After an exhausting session with Victoria's Secret Police, Kevin
Brooks blurted out:

You really need to cool your jets a bit.

(ouch)

Hey, you want to get nasty, you will get it in return, right? YOU
started down this path; I'd just as soon have continued to keep it in
the "passionate yet respectful" mode, but you seem hell-bent on doing
otherwise, so....

FYI, I was surprised to find that the level of antagonism against the
LWF was indeed more than I had thought; scroll down to the final post
below fo more on that. But in the emeantime, in keeping with your
demand that we have to be a bit testy with all of this....


Getting your panties in a wad is not gonna help, now is it?

Some times it's almost a requirement to point out the obvious...if it
takes a 2" x 4" sorry...some folks are slow, and some keep moving the
target. I may have to use a Louisville Slugger with you.

You are invited to come and try anytime you so choose; I use my real
name in these exchanges. Do folks hiding behind anonymous Usenet names
usually follow through with such threats?


Now...any evidence of this great tide of opposition available?

Ummm, have you actually been reading what I'm typing? Now you want
Congressional testimony...okay you win. There was never any opposition
to the F-4 or the F-16.

Too bad that is not what I claimed--can you conduct a debate without
twisting the other fellow's claims to such extremes?

Trest was fabricating about the F-15
supporters (above the rank Internet of aviation expert) trying to
scuttle the F-16. I have no proof of institutional opposition to
either the F-4 or the F-16...and can find no institutional opposition
to the A-10 (but I'm aware of anecdotal opposition, snide remarks and
limited roles).

Well, the proof regarding institutional bias against the A-10 is kind
of hard to refute if you recall the attempt by the USAF to kill them
off what, some thirteen years ago? Not to mention the brouha over the
Deptula memo at ACC last year? Now had you done a bit of research, you
could have presented some real evidence of the LWF disagreement (don't
worry, I did it for you; see the last source I cite below for some of
the info in that regard), but ohhh noooo, it was much easier for you
to just "go negative", huh?


"How many of those opponents to the F-4, or even the F-16, were in the
USAF, though?"

Note that the point here was that there was no tremendous
institutional opposition that approached the level that was apparent
in the case of the A-10--

Fair enough, I missed the part where you explained you meant
"tremendous institutional opposition approaching the level" vis-a-vis
the A-10. I'm pretty sure you would characterize any other poster's
alibi like this as "back pedaling."

Your vitriole is in need of a viable target. "Back-pedaling" is what
one does when he is caught putting words into his opponents statement
that were never there in the first place, and then tries to wiggle his
way out of it instead of saying, "Ooops, I misread your statement, or
did not understand your meaning"...but you would not do that, now,
would you?


Keep reading, I'll get to what you describe as INSTITUTIONAL
opposition. Since you didn't specify which institution, I'm going with
USAF.

Did I say there was "no opposition"? Nope. That would be you
trying to insert words into my mouth, I believe.

Considering your rapier wit, the question,__"How many of those
opponents to the F-4, or even the F-16, were in the USAF, though?" __
carries a certain amount of ambiguity, leaving you ample wiggle room
to either clarify or back pedal. But I digress.

Ah...so you WOULD back pedal in such a fashion! Geeze, why don't you
sit back, have a cold one, and consider that you have misinterpreted
my statement (how, I don't know, as the words were not that
ambiguous). And I reserved my "rapier wit" until unleashing it on you
in this message. It was a freakin' *question*, for gosh sakes, posed
in response to your claim that this great swell of internal opposition
to these other programs existed--that you chose to take it to an
extreme of supposedly inferring that I was claiming there was
absolutely NO opposition is a bit strange, and rather illogical.


Here's some "facts" for you Buckwheat, regarding USAF institutional
opposition to the A-10.

Ah, now to the use of name-calling, eh? Gee, you are really racking up
the maturity points here...


"In addition to the F-X air superiority, the Air Force laid plans for
the A-X close-air support aircraft. In June 1966 General McConnell [
CSAF] directed the Air Staff to make analyses of what areas of close
air support were not being filled to the Army's satisfaction....There
was a need of a follow-on Air Force close-air-support aircraft since
it was already evident that the A-7 was too costly and lacked desired
CAS performance capabilites. In September 1966 General McConnell
directed immediate and positive action to obtain a specialized A-X
air-support aircraft for the 1970s."

So the proposal gets rolling in 1966...in 1971 Secretary Seamans [Sec
AF] tells the Senate Appropriations Commitee,

"We are going through an important aircraft development phase in the
Air Force with the A-X [A-9 vs A-10 competition], the B-1, with the
F-15, and with AWACS, and feel it is not a time to procure large
numbers of additional aircraft."

In 1971, outgoing Commander of Tactical Air Command, "General [William
W] Momyer had earlier opposed specialized aircraft, but in 1971 he
conceived that military requirements must be rationally developed
from the future threat toward Europe...The promised intensity of
conflict in Europe, Momyer concluded, established 'a requirement for a
large number of airframes and tend[ed] to emphasize specialization."

17 Jan 1973 Defense Systems Acquisition Review Council selected the
A-10 in the A-X prototype competition.

Also 1973 the Yom Kippur War began to change the viability of the A-X
as planned, at least in some minds.

"A Joint Chiefs of Staff [note Kev, not just USAF] survey team agreed
that a lesson to be learned from the Yom Kippur War was that a
close-support airplane needed to attack at high speed, needed excess
thrust for maneuverability to avoid SAMs and sustain high speed, and
needed a computer-aided bombing system for an accurate first-pass
delivery. Another point raised by the JCS team was that airborne FACs
in slow-moving planes could not have survived in such an intense
air-defense environment "

Guess what the INSTITUTIONAL Air Force response was to the JCS
conclusions? Glad you asked...

"The Air Force's response to these assertions was that there was a
trade-off between speed and relative invulnerability (ability to take
hits) in an aircraft. Speed made it more difficult for a pilot to
acquire a target. Thus this trade-off was being reflected in the A-X
(now the A-10) close-air-support plane. The finding on the
survivability of an airborne FAC was additional support for the A-10,
since it could --unlike a faster aircraft-- find its own targets."

"General Robert J Dixon, Commander of the Tactical Air Command,
expressed his insight in to the Yom Kippur War in a rebuttal to the
generalization that missile defenses brought an era where tactical
aircraft could no longer survive over a battlefield. His judgment was
'less startling but more credible.' Tactical air power would need to
'control the air-space, suppress the defenses, operate as combined
arms team."

[please nod your cranium if you understand "operate as combined arms
team" implies support of the Army]

In November 1975, former CinC USAFE General David C Jones said, "In a
war in Central Europe, the intial and principal task of Allied Air
Forces must be to assist friendly forces in halting the Pact ground
offensive. This requires that NATO air power become immediately and
heavily engaged in close air support operations, while attaining local
air superiority as necessary. Less immediate critical objectives, such
as achieving theater-wide air superiority, must await a REDUCED NEED
FOR CLOSE AIR SUPPORT."

I could go on regarding the USAF A-X versus the USA Cheyenne versus
the Harrier debate, or the 1977 proposal for a FAC-X (two seat A-10)
proposed by the USAF. In none of these can you find your so-called
USAF institutional opposition to the A-10.

I can also point to quotes by USAF Leadership flat out saying the
Light Weight Fighter should not even make it to the prototype phase.
And I can quote CinC USAFE saying CAS is a vital mission, but a
swing-LWF vice single mission jet would be a better option based upon
force structure costs. This applies equally to the single purpose
RF-4. I'm also ignoring the disparity between NATO's the US concept of
how to stop WP armor. (Hint: We included the A-10).

Of course none of this applies because I'm certain you will re-define
what exactly institutional opposition is, or specify some time twenty
years after the A-10 entered the inventrory as proof of "institutional
opposition."

My, you are quite sure of what I will have to say in advance, huh?

Actually, I was a bit surprised to see that the F-16 faced more
internal opposition than I had earlier thought existed (see, it is not
that hard to admit that kind of thing--you ought to try it sometime).
But, as I said before, I still don't see that opposition as being
anywhere in the league of what the A-10 faced during its genesis, not
to mention *throughout* its career (how many times has the USAF tried
to kill the F-16?).

You spend all of this time and effort now trying to what, portray the
A-10 as the USAF's "fair princess"? But just yesterday, our exchange
included, (me): "I don't recall the opposition against the F-16 as
being anything like
that that the A-10 faced early on", and (you), "I agree..." leaving me
in a quandry as to exactly just *what* was the point of all of this
info you have now spouted?

A somewhat different account...

"Yudkin was a bit of a rebel within the Air Force. The establishment
generals (who, by the early '70s, were still dominated by the
nuclear-bomber crowd) hated the idea of the A-X for the same reason
they hated the close-air-support mission: It had nothing to do with
the Air Force's bigger, more glamorous roles. Yudkin couldn't even get
the Air Force R &D directorate to work on the project, so he set up
his own staff to do it. The A-10 rolled onto the tarmac in 1976. The
brass still hated the thing. It survived only because of pork-barrel
politics, it was built by Fairchild Industries in Bethpage, Long
Island, home district of Rep. Joseph Addabbo, who was chairman of the
House appropriations' defense subcommittee. The plan was to build 850
of the planes. By 1986, when Addabbo died, Fairchild had built just
627, and the program came to a crashing halt."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2081906/

And supporting that thesis we have a more professional analysis from a
NDU paper on the very subject of USAF antagonism to the A-10...

"The demise of the Cheyenne precipitated a move by USAF senior
leadership to kill the A-X program. General Ryan, McConnell's
successor, kept the A-X program on track. There is little doubt that
congressional interest in the A-X also played a part in keeping the
program moving."

And...

"The A-7 was a minor threat to the A-10 program compared to the
persistent undercurrent of opposition that followed from the USAF
"high-tech" fighter faction. The program subsequently struggled for
the next several years against subtle attempts to delay and discredit
the A-10. The opposition made an indirect attempt to stop A-10
production in 1975 in a program cancellation recommendation to the
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Installations and Production."

And...

"Fairchild and its congressional allies also fought an annual battle
against USAF initiatives to cut yearly production
numbers.34Ultimately, the A-10 program remained under pressure well
into the Reagan era."

And...

"There is a fair amount of evidence to indicate that the USAF did not
plan to use the A-10 for any other purpose than to kill the Army's
Cheyenne program--to keep the Army out of the CAS mission. It also
appears that the USAF "high-tech" culture would not have pursued the
A-10 once the Cheyenne was no longer a threat. But by the time this
happened, the program had picked up enough Congressional and OSD
support to resist the dominant "high-tech" USAF culture and their
congressional allies."

And, in a rather good summary...

"In the end, the USAF procured the A-10 because it got a fighter force
expansion it wanted. The inter-agency process was ugly; but it worked
out for the small A-10 lobby and in later combat operations. The Air
Force just had to take some ugly and slow airplanes with the deal."

www.ndu.edu/nwc/writing/AY03/5603/5603P.pdf

You might want to peruse this National Defense University/National War
College paper, as it seems to provide "the rest of the story" (as Paul
Harvey would have said) to accompany those wonderful examples of "USAF
support" of the A-10 program you provided. Or are you going to claim
that the NDU/NWC folks rank somewhere below those "internet" folks you
were commenting about...?

Now, since you will probably again resort to name calling, etc., as
your response, I'll make it easy for you--you can have the last word
in this debate, and I am sure it will be as underwhelming as your
earlier childish rants to "Buckwheat", whoever he is in this case.

Brooks

"Tex Houston" wrote in message
...

"Thomas Schoene" wrote in message
ink.net...
"Tex Houston" wrote in message

"TJ" wrote in message
...
The Mike Badrocke cutaway drawings still have the ILS in the nose
(an early manufacturer concept), but this was moved to the
starboard gear fairing due to Avenger vibration. Info straight from
the guys who fly and fix 'em.

TJ

Say again type of vibration. There has to be a story here somewhere.

How much of a story do you need to explain this? Placing an antenna in
close proximity to a very energetic 30mm gatling gun muzzle seems like
an
obvious trouble spot. I'm slightly surprised the RWR antennas are still
up
there.

You still did not explain "Avenger".

Tex

I never replied. The response was from Thomas. The 30mm goes by the name
Avenger.

http://www.hill.af.mil/museum/photos/coldwar/gau8.jpg

TJ