Sorry A-10 Fans, Stopping the Russian Army Convoy in Ukraine Isn’t as
Easy as “BRRRRRRT!”
A-10 Pilots Say Why Stopping the Russians Outside Kyiv Is a Very Dangerous
Mission.
In every war, some images become iconic.
So far in the Ukrainian war, the MAXAR satellite photos of Russian vehicles lined up for “40 miles” along the PO2, T1019
and T1011 highways north of the Hostomel Airport outside
the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv have made headlines around the world.
The photos of highways clogged with Russian invasion forces have prompted armchair experts on social media to post memes of the A-10 Warthog with “BRRRRRRT!” scrawled across them. The Facebook “experts” suggest a few A-10s could just roll in and use their GAU-8 30mm cannons and AGM-65 Maverick missiles to decimate the Russian vehicle column. “That’s what I told my wife!” one of the posts read.
But according to current A-10 pilots, there’s only one problem, “It’s not that easy”. An Air National Guard A-10C Thunderbolt II pilot told TheAviationist.com. “It has to be a pretty permissive environment for us to just roll in and do a gun run. That doesn’t happen much anymore.”
Another popular meme that you can see online these days.
Even before the Russians crossed the border into Ukraine, defense and aerospace analyst David Axe wrote in Forbes magazine that, “If Russia invades Ukraine, its front-line air-defenses will be the most dangerous in the world”. Axe went on to say in his January 10, 2022 article, “If that Russian army rolls in, a whole lot of additional MANPADS and SAM vehicles will come with it. They, combined with longer-range SAMs on the Russian side of the border, could force the Ukrainian army in Donbas to fight without the benefit of any aerial support”.
While some of Axe’s analysis hasn’t been entirely accurate – the Ukrainians have gotten some combat aircraft in the air- they have already suffered the loss of one of their most celebrated combat pilots, Col. Oleksandr Oksanchenko, who was shot down in his Sukhoi by a Russian S-400 Triumph surface-to-air missile (SAM) near Kyiv on Friday, Feb. 25, 2022.
And even though recent upgrades to A-10C
Thunderbolt II have improved its targeting and communications capabilities, the
A-10 was built to fight a very different war than the one we are seeing now in Ukraine.
The
A-10 was originally conceived to offset a massive imbalance in the number of
tanks between the Soviet-backed Warsaw Pact and the NATO alliance.
Strategists anticipated a huge flood of
Russian tanks pouring through the Fulda Gap in Germany. At the height of the
Cold War, the A-10 was intended to moderate that imbalance by providing a
dedicated tactical anti-armor asset that could kill Soviet tanks. But although
the A-10 was heavily armored with a titanium tub surrounding its cockpit, its
prospects for survival even in the Soviet air defense era were poor due to a
concentration of effective, highly mobile anti-aircraft weapons systems
perfected by Russian suppliers in the real-world testing grounds of the Vietnam
War and the many Arab-Israeli wars.
In his 1993 book, “Warthog: Flying the A-10 in the Gulf War”, author William H.
Smallwood wrote about the dangers A-10 Thunderbolt II pilots faced when
performing close air support missions over Iraq:
“I myself figured that, knowing the number
and kind of SAMs [surface-to-air missiles] the Iraqis had, that if we ever went
to war, 20 to 25 percent of us were not coming back.”
Smallwood wrote about one of his
experiences in Iraq:
“I rolled in and as I was strafing the
target I started taking AAA [Automatic Anti-Aircraft fire]- heavy AAA. I was
diving at about a 60-degree dive angle – and this was my near-death experience.
I saw what appeared to me to be a fireball come by my canopy. It was either
heavy AAA going by or a missile…”
An A-10 Thunderbolt II of the Michigan Air National Guard.
Going
back as far as the Vietnam conflict, the Republic F-105 Thunderchief, a supersonic aircraft designed for high-speed medium and low level
nuclear strike missions, suffered withering losses over North Vietnam, a
country protected by a Soviet designed air defense network. According to
researcher Rebecca Grant of AirForceMag.com, “The cumulative totals were shocking: The Air Force lost 40 percent of
its total production of F-105s to combat in Vietnam.” And it was nearly as bad
for the iconic F-4 Phantom II. Grant writes, “Approximately one out of every
eight F-4s ever built by McDonnell Douglas—for all services—was destroyed in
Vietnam”.
And remember, these losses were to early
Soviet Bloc air defense systems supplied to the North Vietnamese and almost
always crewed by North Vietnamese, although intelligence suggested Soviet
“advisors” also played an active role in the air defense of North Vietnam.
In the post-Vietnam era, U.S. strike
doctrine improved exponentially with the introduction of “stealth” or low radar
observability when the F-117 Night Hawk, the “stealth fighter”, was introduced.
For a decade, the F-117 “stealth fighter” operated with near-impunity against
sophisticated Soviet-bloc air defenses during precision, low observable
strikes. In December, 1989, during Operation Just Cause in Panama, U.S. F-117s
dropped laser-guided bombs next to a Panamanian barracks as a diversionary
strike. And in the F-117’s greatest performance on January 17, 1991, the
stealth fighter brought “shock and awe” to downtown Baghdad, Iraq in the
opening hours of Operation Desert Storm.
But even this temporary immunity to
Soviet-designed air defense systems was fleeting. On March 27, 1999, the
Yugoslav 3rd Battalion of the 250th Air Defense Missile Brigade shot down a USAF F-117 Nighthawk with an S-125 Neva/Pechora surface-to-air missile (SAM) outside
Budanovci, Serbia in Yugoslavia. Russian air defense doctrine had achieved
parity with U.S. stealth technology.
It’s important to understand that the A-10 Thunderbolt II first flew a half century ago in early 1972. It wasn’t until almost a decade later in 1981 that the F-117 flew for the first time. In fact, it could be argued that the Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II actually has more in common with its WWII namesake, the propeller-driven Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, than it does with the current low-observable F-35 Lightning II that can strike a vehicle column with impunity from a distance using precision stand-off weapons.
And
while the cost of hitting a $10-20,000 USD Russian truck with a $25,000-plus
precision guided JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) seems high, remember, it
costs between $5-million and $10-million USD to train a U.S. Air Force pilot.
Consider that 31 years have passed between the first flights of the WWII P-47 Thunderbolt and today’s A-10 Thunderbolt II. But 34 years have passed between the first flight of the A-10 Thunderbolt II and the current F-35 Lightning II. And, during this entire time, the Russians have been perfecting the capability to shoot down western aircraft at test sites in Russia and real-world battlefields from Cuba to Africa, the Middle East, Indo-China and the Arctic.
So, while we all love the A-10 Thunderbolt
II, she is better off in the asymmetrical global war on terror than she is in
this new super-power slugfest in Ukraine, even though that reality ruins a lot
of social media defense experts’ memes.
Tom Demerly
is a feature writer, journalist, photographer and editorialist who has written
articles that are published around the world on TheAviationist.com,
TACAIRNET.com, Outside magazine, Business Insider, We Are The Mighty, The
Dearborn Press & Guide, National Interest, Russia’s government media outlet
Sputnik, and many other publications. Demerly studied journalism at Henry Ford
College in Dearborn, Michigan. Tom Demerly served in an intelligence gathering
unit as a member of the U.S. Army and Michigan National Guard. His military
experience includes being Honor Graduate from the U.S. Army Infantry School at
Ft. Benning, Georgia (Cycle C-6-1) and as a Scout Observer in a reconnaissance
unit, Company “F”, 425th INF (RANGER/AIRBORNE), Long Range Surveillance Unit
(LRSU). Demerly is an experienced parachutist, holds advanced SCUBA
certifications, has climbed the highest mountains on three continents and
visited all seven continents and has flown several types of light aircraft.
Tom Demerly
is a feature writer, journalist, photographer and editorialist who has written
articles that are published around the world on TheAviationist.com,
TACAIRNET.com, Outside magazine, Business Insider, We Are The Mighty, The
Dearborn Press & Guide, National Interest, Russia’s government media outlet
Sputnik, and many other publications. Demerly studied journalism at Henry Ford
College in Dearborn, Michigan. Tom Demerly served in an intelligence gathering
unit as a member of the U.S. Army and Michigan National Guard. His military
experience includes being Honor Graduate from the U.S. Army Infantry School at
Ft. Benning, Georgia (Cycle C-6-1) and as a Scout Observer in a reconnaissance
unit, Company “F”, 425th INF (RANGER/AIRBORNE), Long Range Surveillance Unit
(LRSU). Demerly is an experienced parachutist, holds advanced SCUBA
certifications, has climbed the highest mountains on three continents and
visited all seven continents and has flown several types of light aircraft.
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