Francis Urquhart
Well-known member
A little history lesson. The Air Force had one of the best CAS aircraft in the world, the mighty A-1 Skyraider, and it served immensely well. The Army loved being supported by Skyraiders, because when they needed support *now*, the Spads were there. Then the Air Force got rid of Skyraider, told the Army that their fancy fast mover jets could deliver all the support they'd ever need! Look at how accurate these new bombs are! And they're more survivable on the modern battlefield.
No, not true. See Air War Vietnam by van Staveraan. The A-1 was a great light attack aircraft right up to the time that multiple AA mounts (especially the ZU-23) and the SA-7 missile arrived in numbers. Then, the A-1 was driven off the battlefield. Casualties rose to an unacceptable level and the aircraft was withdrawn due to those excessive casualties. The actual replacement as the A-37 Dragonfly which had the jet power to get in fast and more importantly get away fast. The A-37 was a temporary fix though and it too was becoming too vulnerable for use by the time the Vietnam Was started to draw down.
Only... all those fancy new fast moving jets that were supposed to support the Army? They never did, they were too busy zooming around the battlefield playing tag with the enemy fast movers, because fast mover pilots all want to be aces and you don't get bragging rights for 'moving mud'. Or if they were available for support, you'd get one bombing run a day, maybe, before the fast mover ran out of gas and had to go back to base, then be pampered by the maintenance crews. Need a second bombing run because the first one missed, or there were more enemy? Tough luck!
That's the Army propaganda view. It doesn't hold up in reality. The problem was, and has always been, allocating aircraft to targets and locating those targets. The solution to that issue was the development of forward observation aircraft which could spot the targets and coach the jets in. That was fine, only the FACs were vulnerable to ground fire as well; the original Cessnas 0-1s were replaced by the O-2 and the OV-10 and that as replaced by the OA-37. Interestingly, the A-10 actually took over the FAC role for a while as the OA-10 (despite the difference in designation, the only difference between the A-10A and the OA-10 was tasking). The A-10 fleet doesn't do FAC work any more. I know the Marines use F/A-18Ds, I'll have to check what the USAF uses. These days, though, we tend to rely more on ground parties unless the environment is really permissive. For more details on the FAC, see Forward Air Control in Vietnam by Lt. Col. Ralph A Rowley.
That's not true. The introduction of gunships had nothing to do with the demise of the A-1. They originate from the airmobile operations trials in the early 1960s and were intended to provide close support as troops disembarked from transport helicopters. The originally intended to be carried out by the Mohawk (a twin turboprop light attack and observation aircraft but that project was discontinued and the helicopters kept the job. The significant factor was to try and keep the support aircraft (whether fixed or rotary wing) together with the transport birds. The A-1 was still a Navy aircraft at the time and had nothing to do with it. See "Close Air Support in Vietnam" for the real story.So the Army used helicopter gunships as stopgap solutions, but they were too fragile, too slow, and too vulnerable to be *the* replacement for Skyraider.
Wrong again. The AH-56 was ditched because it was unreliable, over-complex and exceptionally expensive. It was a budget-breaker and its fundamental shortcomings couldn't be fixed.Cue the AH-56 Cheyenne. The Army were going to get themselves a helicopter that had the speed of a Spad, the endurance of a Spad, could carry ordnance all day long, and would be under their control, not the Air Force, so it wouldn't be swanning around at 30k feet playing tag with MiGs while the poor grunts needed support. The Air Force *freaked out*, the Cheyenne's performance levels were up to the low end of their beloved fighters, it was a seriously sexy flying platform, and threatened their budget since for years the Air Force had been using the budget monies allocated for moving mud to instead buy more and sexier fast movers to zoom around in.
Again, wrong. A-X dated from the mid-1960s and was intended to be the replacement for the A-1. By the time it became available, Vietnam was winding down and the watchword was "No More Vietnams!" The A-X was a Vietnam environment system and stood neither economic nor political chances of survival. So, the program was recast as a tank destroyer and a replacement for the A-7.Congress refused to kill the Cheyenne, because the Army had a bloody point, the Air Force had, under Key West, committed to providing as-needed ground support to the Army and was utterly failing at doing so. So the Air Force gritted their teeth and opened up the A-X program. Voila, the A-10 is born.
Wrong again. That simply is not true. I don't know where you got this stuff from but its completely wrong.Once the A-10 was coming into service, the Air Force promised the army that they'd buy massive numbers of them to guarantee the grunts on the ground would always have air support from BRRRRTTTT. So could the Army please cancel Cheyenne? The Army, being foolishly optimistic that the Air Force wouldn't try and screw them again, did so. And the Air Force promptly tried to withdraw the A-10 and replace them with... fast sexy fast movers like the F-16. 'They can carry bombs you know, look how accurate they are? Honest, we won't zoom around at 35k feet with them instead of supporting you with them!'
The Army completely refused to bite, a major motivator for the Apache program has been to keep an in-house support option that the Air Force knows full well can be upgraded to Cheyenne levels of performance (note, Boeing is as we speak developing an Apache upgrade that turns it into a compound helicopter like Cheyenne...) They've also howled at Congress every time the Air Force tries to again kill the A-10, because no grunt in their right mind trusts that the Air Force will ever fulfill that mission without it.
Actually the AH-64 was a cheaper, less-expensive and more reliable replacement for the AH-56. Again, it started life as a troop lift support system and became a tank-killer as the Vietnam-era missions faded away. The Army demands to keep the A-10 are basically blackmail to ensure that the Air Force maintains the CAS mission. If the Air Force had designated F-16 or F-35 units assigned to CAS, the Army would drop the A-10 like a shot. That may happen in time.
Your history lesson is good propaganda, but it is wrong on every salient point. I would you read the books I've been pointing you at and you'll get a better picture of what was really going on.