McCain Blasts AF for Trying to Mothball the A-10

According to a couple of analysts' reports on Russian armor, there aren't that many operational Russian tanks to worry about; Iraq's tank force was comparable in numbers, and the newer Russian tanks make up a minority of those not mothballed. Russia would be lucky to scrape together some 2,500 or so, maybe 3,000, and those would have to be parsed out over a larger front than Hussein had to deal with. Europe can field a larger tank force than Russia can. How do you allot A-10's to sectors in that scenario? Logistically it would seem to be a bigger pain in the ass than it would be worth, given the alternatives.

The main reason the A-10 had so many kills in Iraq had to do with its relatively small front and short distances and open terrain, making it such a turkey shoot for the A-10's. Such a scenario would be a rarity now. I love the A-10 myself, but it's now just a another Congressional pork football, and needs to be retired, imo. Other technologies supersede it. There aren't many theaters of operation left where it would make much of a difference.

 

I don't think the Europeans without the Americans, Canadians, British and Turkish could field as many tanks as the Russias. Given the geography of Europe and the very different tanks and tank models. Sure the Germans are ok, but that is about it. The French tanks aren't upto much.

I guess you are right long-range bombs, attack helicopters, other tanks and infantry weapons are more effective. Fighting is also unlike to get bogged on the Central European Plain. However the next war will likely not take place their.

 

Well, certainly nobody expects Russia to come pouring our of the Fulda Gap anymore. Thankfully that worry is now over with. But they still need to maintain a strong military presence in order to avoid Finlandization by Russia.

And no, the real reason for the success of the A-10 over Iraq was the almost complete and total air dominance of the US from day 1, to the almost complete lack of any kind of ground to air missile threat from Iraq. That is what allowed them to fly virtually unchecked over enemy airspace.

 

You are comparing apples to oranges. In WW2, the only war in which conventional strategic bombing was really used, it eventually proved very effective once appropriate targets were found. The attempts to destroy Germanys aircraft and ball bearing production were unsuccessful, but once their fuel production facilities were targeted this was highly effective. It pretty much grounded the Luftwaffe for the remainder of the war and almost immobilized the Wehrmacht. In the Pacific there is no telling how effective it was or wasn't because the subs had already strangled Japans industry anyway.

 

Conventional strategic bombing was also used in Vietnam, and it wasn't anywhere near as effective as close air support, and more bombs were dropped on Vietnam than all the bombs dropped by all the nations in WWII.
Strategic bombing has never been as effective as tactical bombing, for a reason, tactical targets are identified precisely, strategic targets are always a bit vague.
Half the bombs dropped by the B-17s and B-24s during the war landed more than a mile from the target. Even at the end, when targeting fuel production, it was the advances of the Soviets that cut off fuel production, more than the strategic bombing.
Now it did help, but a greater focus on close air support, would have been more effective.

 

A couple of books came out a while back that revises the standard view that British and American bombing in WW II wasn't effective. Don't recall the authors off hand, so I'll try to dig that info up. According to them, the studies by scholars like Galbraith and other claiming they were ineffective were narrow and incomplete, and based almost entirely on a couple of campaigns early in the war along the Ruhr and Rhine, without taking into account the entire theater, and while the Germans went underground, this in itself cost resources and time to do, and then keeping supplies running to those factories were indeed crippled by bombings. Interesting studies and revisions.

Certainly virtually wiping out Hamburg's factory district early in the war, for instance, had an drastic effect; it would be ridiculous to claim otherwise. Many of the Nazi leadership didn't think the Reich would be able recover from just that one raid alone given the irreplaceable machinery, tools, and infrastructure it obliterated..

 

No, it was not, because the actual strategic targets (munitions factories, refineries, etc) were not located in North Viet Nam but in Russia and China. The air campaign in Viet Nam was an interdiction operation which attempted to cut the transportation links which the Vietnamese needed to move the material to the front. Given the topography and terrain of North Viet Nam, and the level of technology available at the time, this was never going to be very successful.

Define 'effective'. And there is nothing 'vague' about an oil refinery or a tank factory.

Irrelevant. It doesn't matter how many bombs miss the target, so long as enough hit the target to destroy it. This may not be very efficient, but hardly anything in war is.

'Despite its successes, by the spring of 1944 the Combined Bomber Offensive had failed to severely damage the German economy or significantly interrupt production of a vital item. The Oil Campaign was the first to accomplish these goals. The US strategic bombing survey identified "catastrophic" damage. Of itself, German industry was not significantly affected by attacks on oil targets as coal was its primary source of energy. And in its analysis of strategic bombing as a whole the USSBS identified the consequences of the breakdown of transportation resulting from attacks against transportation targets as "probably greater than any other single factor" in the final collapse of the German economy.

Several prominent Germans, however, described the Oil Campaign as critical to the Third Reich's defeat. Adolf Galland, General der Jagdflieger of the Luftwaffe until relieved of command in January 1945, wrote in his book "the most important of the combined factors which brought about the collapse of Germany," and the Luftwaffe's wartime leader, Hermann Göring, described it as "the utmost in deadliness." Albert Speer, writing in his memoir, said that "It meant the end of German armaments production." It has been stated to have been "effective immediately, and decisive within less than a year." Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch, referring to the consequences of the Oil Campaign, claimed that "The British left us with deep and bleeding wounds, but the Americans stabbed us in the heart."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_Campaign_of_World_War_II

 

You left out the part where the Soviets kicked their hindquarters....

 

No, Adolph Galland, Albert Speer, and Erhard Milch left it out.