Most non SAM munitions barring MANPADS are not going to be the best at one shot hitting a plane as armored as the A-10. Unlike helicopters, which all non MANPADS will devistate anyway, the A-10 has a faster speed then the helicopter, and flies fast enough to escape nin radar guided munitions (FC and TT/TA for non SAMS are not the best).
You have to take into account the aspects that most don't when you look into the aspect of these things, RADARS and the like. MANPADS are also not as effective as people think they are.
The one area of things I know is ELINT and its effectiveness on American hardware, and what works best against what. it is literally my job...
They already
did in that respect. Or have you forgotten the 20 A-10 losses in Desert Storm against monkey-export Soviet ADS (and given training by said Soviets in their ADS network doctrine) manned by Arabs whose leaders 'coup proof' their own militaries than allow them to actually function?
To be fair the A-10 wasn't really designed with anything larger than 23mm(aka the standard Warsaw pact mobile AA gun size) in mind
No, that was the standard 1960s/early 1970s WARPAC SPAAG size. The WARPAC would shift to 30mm in the mid-70s, especially with various upgrade packages for the ZSU-23-4s which turns them into ZSU-30-2s (which
really started showing up in the 1980s and early 1990s). The only reason the 23mm was retained was just how prolific it was. That and the training to snipe ATGMs and other guided munitions out of the sky.
The Scorpion is at a worse place when compared to the A-10 because ot its high flying. It does not have the speed needed to survive an engagement with any SAM or enemy air force.
The issue about flying high is that it makes any SAM from SA-2 to SA-21 and all other medium to high altitude missles able to target it.
Do none of you understand how these systems work and are msde to work?
Most SAMs are made for medium to high altitude aircraft in mind. No plane the US has is able to stay out of range of SAMs....
So low flying usjng the same method helicopters use in a jet like what the A-10 does is more effective than you think.
This lie is still going around. Here's the thing for SAM-to-Plane combat: Distance is
god. The more distance between you and the SAM, the better off you'll be because of the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation. At high altitude, the SAM will have to expend a
lot of its potential energy just to get to you while you still have your potential energy. SPAAGs are only on the field because they enforce a 'no safe combat band' zone for aircraft in general. If you go low, you're going to be riddled with holes. If you go high, you'll be playing the SAM equivalent of bullet hell.
And that was with it burdened by the most restrictive ROEs ever known to aerial combat, seriously if BVR combat had been routinely allowed I suspect the K/D ratio would have been closer to 10:1. The Phantom as it turns out was a great fleet interceptor for its time that turned up being good at a lot of other stuff which is a tribute to its excellent design. Moreover the E variant fixed the whole not having a internal gun problem and it was the most produced Phantom variant.
That and it was quickly retooled into a fairly effective multi-role aircraft, even by the US.
The Tunguska is impressive... but not impressive enough. Shilka had a lower engagement time in the hand of the Red Army, mostly because the turret was lighter and could turn even faster.
And that is the rub. Tunguska is a threat to A-10, so was Shilka. It isn't an 'I Win' button.
As for the A-10 'element' that was shot down? You make it sound oh so dramatic.
It was 2 birds, the other 2 birds in the flight completed the mission. Moreover, Iraq/Kuwait was the worst possible terrain for the A-10, being fairly flat with very long sight lines. Thus while operating in a worst-case scenario, once, in the entire conflict, the Iraqi's managed to best-case the ADA side of the equation, and still only took down half the entire flight.
Scorpion is not a replacement for A-10, all it is is a COIN aircraft, a replacement for the OV-10 Bronco, but not an A-10 replacement.
Nope, in Soviet ADS, the A-10s are just duck soup. While those two systems' guns tended to go for the 'bullet hell' school of AAA (mostly because even the West couldn't get the HEPF shell to rounds smaller than 75mm without compromising the payload), those two systems were supported by various MANPADs, some of which get into the same ballpark as
Stingers (which basically 'loled' common flare countermeasures) in genuine effectiveness and the USSR had them spread
everywhere in their ADS network and infantry formations. So you'll get the situation where the A-10 either gets annihilated because of MANPAD spam
or has to drop the payload and RTB. Either way,
the ADS wins. While in the future LAMS-style systems might become a problem, they'll need some pretty crazy reaction times for NOE conditions. We're talking 'milliseconds is a long ass time' reaction time here.
My response to the OP is this: the A-10 successor isn't a strike fighter, it's a
tac bomber. It's tactical ATGM/bomb truck, think a stealth F-111 with plenty of steroids. Its job is to simply
spam missiles and various bomb packages at 10k feet where it has plenty of room to maneuver against SAMs.
