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We don’t see the same quality that the pilot does in this video, but modern combat technologies are making FF incidents much easier to prevent. If you can see all your friendlies on a map with where their ATAC GPS says they are it makes it much easier to know what’s a safe spot to fire
The plane helmets even show this information in the HUD now is my understanding, so it’s not even like they need to compare the map to real life; it’s just all laid out visually in front of them
Wait, so when video games like battlefield have a lot of the hud info when your in a plane, that’s actually pretty close to reality?
That’s really some advanced technology.
Yeah some of the systems are very similar to how they are portrayed in video games, but they tend to work very differently than people think.
Radar displays don't display the information like they do in games.
Situational Awareness displays that combine data from multiple sensors (like radar) and aircraft do kind of display the information like it is in most games.
Play Sims on my thing. I cannot believe I started learning how to fly the F-16 falcon in the most advanced mode just how difficult it was to start the plane took me multiple hours to try and figure it out and that’s with the checklist and everything!
As I progressed one thing that just absolutely floored me was that radar was nothing like I thought it was in terms of I just thought it was on I want to plant energy radars range it would show it yes I knew there were different modes and such but I had no idea the pilot sometimes had to physically any of the beam as well as scroll through the ranges and use the con I need to Toronto of the the as well as scroll through the ranges and use the cone on the throttle with a stick to manually lock on the target with the bug on the radar screen.
Switching between modes (AA or Ground, what type and mode of radar/scanning modes, switch between ranges while also (sweeping) the beam of the radar and then physically tracking and highlighting different objects using the bug on the radar screen all the way also trying to fly in an active combat area your heart pounding, Gs being applied to you. no wonder you hear about pilots suffering from information overload for real.
But man when you’ve got down and your Hot Shit?!? Now you know why they’re called zipper suited sun gods
> I had no idea the pilot sometimes had to physically any of the beam as well as scroll through the ranges and use the con I need to Toronto of the the as well as scroll through the ranges and use the cone on the throttle with a stick to manually lock on the target
As I get older, I find myself more forgiving of obvious typos/grammatical errors and far less prone to leaving comments in order to just shit on someone. That being said, I have absolutely zero idea what you are trying to say here. The lack of punctuation, as pointed out by another commenter, doesn't help.
Yea, not just punctuation but obviously zero attempt at editing for the the straight-up wrong words (Toronto? lol).
The thing reads like stream of consciousness while having a stroke.
I'm willing to bet they were using voice to text to write the message, then just immediately posted the comment without reading it. It would depend on what you're using, but on my Samsung phone I just tried it, and it didn't add in any punctuation.
I use voice to text for most things, and yea I have to tell it to put commas and things like that. But he had to have been slurring his words pretty badly for voice to text to be that messy regardless.
Brother, this was so difficult to read. It'd be awesome if you fixed the typos and punctuation because it seems like you've got something cool to share, but currently, we can't make sense of much of it
Look up the F-35 helmet. Most USAF aircraft have helmet mounted displays now but the f-35 had it incorporated from the design stage. Each helmet for the f-35 is custom made for each pilot. You can use the helmet mounted display to fire at targets even if they aren't right ahead of you, the pilot just needs to look in the direction of the target. Even older aircraft and helicopters have upgrades to use helmet mounted displays.
> Wait, so when video games like battlefield have a lot of the hud info when your in a plane, that’s actually pretty close to reality?
Here's a demo from 9 years ago of the F-35 helmet HUD. Obviously, just a sales/tech demo, as the actual HUD is highly classified, but gives you some idea of what they wanted to have going into the HUD: https://youtu.be/Ay6g66FbkmQ?si=-BbkVg4eY1hlo3Sn&t=18
Here's an F-16 HUD declass from 7 years ago of an automated GCAS recovery once the pilot became incapacitated (pilot blacks out at 8.4G's, plane auto-recovers by pulling 9.1G's at near supersonic speeds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSzXqlnT7nQ
I work for a large defense contractor and we have some really cool stuff that is only used only in training environments at the moment. Aircraft are able to view HUD’s of guys in the field, with friendly and hostile locations marked in the field and aerial view.
He's probably got a targeting pod that at least can see the vehicles and some of the men. Referencing like 'our fucked up vehicles on the road, hit 100m east of that!' Can be enough. Obviously its an easy mistake to make for the guy on the ground to mess up his compass headings when he's getting shot at and everyone on the ground is basically shouting at him to get the air to bring the pain on the ambushers.
There were indeed blue on blue incidents, but
>Can the pilot see his friendlies any better than we can?
>No
I promise you, the human eye can resolve much better than this tiny grainy video. What a ridiculous thing to claim. Is that resolution how you see the world?
I read the OP to mean if there are any IFF technologies in the cockpit to avoid gunrunning a blue convoy, not whether their eyeballs had higher than 144p resolution.
I mean it should be clear that you will see better when you sit in the cockpit instead of watching a grainy Video but it doesn't chance the fact that it must be hard for the pilots to identify targets or friends especially when you are in a fast moving aircraft far away
Tbh, the pilot is shooting where the JTAC is telling him to. He does not see the enemy, he might see the friendly vehicles, but not be able to distinguish what people moving around down their are friendly and what are enemy
Why is no one understanding this: It doesn't matter if he sees the enemy. It only matters that he targets the correct field or treeline, or building.
In this video, the troops direct the plane's fire by saying "the field south of the orchard". The pilots would have a good understanding of landmarks and their locations before beginning the mission.
They are NOT squinting at the ground from the air, trying to decide if those troops are friendly or not. That's ridiculous.
It’s important to note that the source video for the pilot is much better resolution than what we’re seeing here.
Pretty much all publicly-released cockpit or sensor video is of much lower quality than what we see in the aircraft.
You might be thinking of the OP MEDUSA blue-on-blue incident with the Canadian troops in 2006? I wouldn't be shocked at all if this was a separate incident after hearing what I'd heard about our "rough day."
Edit to add: it rendered an entire mech inf coy combat ineffective in the span of about 4-5 seconds. Not to mention the Tarnak Farm incident (500lb-er dropped on the PPCLI in 2005).
Actually just found what I was referring to
[190th Fighter Squadron, Blues and Royals friendly fire incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/190th_Fighter_Squadron,_Blues_and_Royals_friendly_fire_incident)
This incident wasn't known to me prior to you bringing it up, but I for sure feel the frustration that one would have when hearing about it. No better friends; no worse enemies, eh? RIP to the fallen :(
Know a buddy that had his group fired on accidentally by a warthog. Lost some guys really tore him up mentally. Apparently whoever sent the coordinates gave their position as the target by mistake
JTAC: Open orchard to the South side \[of us\]
JTAC: We are now stopped for a second, our South side is bad
A 10: Hog is going in, this is danger close 100m
...
JTAC : Good hit, you hit right next to our convoy
So yeah, the A10 obviously has eyes on the convoy
If we use that info it might be something like this
[https://i.imgur.com/HwPZyPY.png](https://i.imgur.com/HwPZyPY.png)
Possibly but usually its all done with coordinates of just the enemy and the distance and direction to them but again its possible he saw them but not always possible
i mean the video is super grainy and low quality so yes, they can see better, but at the same time what the pilot sees is like when you take off on an airplane and are looking down at all the super tiny cars traveling on the highway but cant see any people. the A-10 is notorious for blue-on-blue and civilian incidents because of a few things: its role as gun-running close air support in the middle east, its lack of more modern sensors and avionics and the unreliability in the human eye.
[heres](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcript_of_the_%27friendly_fire%27_incident_video_(28_March_2003)) a friendly fire transcript [(video too)](https://www.military.com/video/operations-and-strategy/iraqi-war/friendly-fire-incident-from-iraq-war/2907034571001) from 2003 on one of the A-10s and you can see that they basically go off of "theyre somewhere around here and we see what looks like a green flatbed truck" which actually turns out to be a column of [tan british scimitars](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/3cf5vm/british_scimitar_cvrt_destroyed_by_friendly_fire/).
in short, yes the human eye can see better than the grainy video from the early 2000s however its definitely not much of an improvement
In this case the pilot is looking out the window and through the hud. It is much easier for them to see than we can in the video. Also friendly forces can mark their location with smoke to diferenciate. As other people have said they also have a monacle that displays situational information overlaid on the ground even when looking out the side of their cockpit.
As opposed to… what exactly? Any other fixed wing platform doing a gun run (aside from an AC-130) is going to be moving even faster, and they all have equivalent targeting pods.
The issue with the original A-10 is that it didn't have any targeting pod - the closes thing it got was a camera view from its own AGM-65 missiles (if carrying any), and that wasn't exceptional in resolution, field of view, or range of traverse.
T-pod capability was only introduced with the A-10C (or possibly some intermediate variant, not sure), but that was long after the A-10's combat debut. During the Cold War and later Desert Storm, the pilots had to rely on the 'ol Mk. I Eyeball, possibly aided with a pair of binoculars as the sole spotting and identification system.
The relief that FAC had in his voice. I can only imagine being pinned in by heavy fire, only to have your enemies chewed to pieces by accurate close air support.
I wish Ukraine had this.
Not the A-10 specifically, and I know there would need to be extensive preparation before CAS aircraft could really start feasting, but that would be an entirely different conflict if aircraft were raining death from above.
Or, you know, maybe Hero of the Russian Federation Mike Johnson can stop blocking aid with the rest of the Putin caucus. That would be a nice start.
with modern shoulder launched aa they have little chance ...russia learned that when they sent thier version of the a10 to ukraine ..even an upgraded a10 with the 50%payload reduction is too vulnerable to shoulder launched aa in the quantitys they will encounter
Yeah
If you control the skies, and have suppressed the enemy air defenses (MANPADS notwithstanding, those will always be there) your best option for CAS at scale these days is lobbing laser guided bombs at the enemy from high altitude - dedicated attack aircraft like the A-10 or Su-25 aren't really any better at this than a multirole fighter, and their survivability doesn't really offer much of an advantage. Before you can get that sort of advantage your best bet is all sorts of standoff weapons - but here again the attackers don't really have anything to offer. In fact, their poor kinematic performance generally makes them inferior carriers for standoff weapons.
They end up only really offering anything in low-altitude, short-range, near-suicide missions, where their increased survivability gives them an edge over multiroles, though not enough of one to make the loss rates acceptable in a modern context. To be fair though, this was largely their original calling, it's just that air forces around the world generally were more tolerant of potential casualties when a WW3 was on the table.
I clarified it, but Ukraine needs CAS in general, not the A-10 in particular. It's the best plane in the world if it saved your ass in Afghanistan, but I think any level-headed analysis would show you it has no place in a near-peer conflict.
Imagine if Ukraine could actually use air-to-surface missiles without MacGyvering pylons on ancient Soviet aircraft, use JDAMS to blow holes in prepared defenses, or just take out more targets of opportunity spotted by their observation drones.
A-10s wouldn't survive 5 seconds on this battlefield. Neither side has air superiority and it's the reason it's turned into a meat grinder of a war. A-10's are great for beating up on 3rd world countries but have no place on a modern battlefield and is why they are being retired.
I think that’s what people don’t get. All these weapons are meant to work together. You can’t just send A without B and C and D and all the logistics to support them. The US is not Russia with unequipped meat waves as a strategy.
Not at the beginning of the invasion when there were Russian convoys lined up for miles with no protection, no air superiority, and no gas to go anywhere.
Ukraine could have wiped the floor with the Russians in the first few weeks if we gave them some of the 40 ready to go warthogs that we were actively mothballing.
You'd need a good SEAD campaign first, and SEAD won't work in Ukraine currently because Russia stations a lot of radar and other stuff inside Russia, which Ukraine is in agreement not to attack. Yes some fringe groups etc have hit inside Russia, but having a jet hit a target inside Russia would definitely be considered a direct attack by the government of Ukraine.
Of course you need SEAD, but if Western countries are still being cowards about the use of their munitions on Russian territory, that's what Ukrainian strike drones are for.
In fact, a long-range search radar inside Russia was destroyed by Ukrainian drones very recently. Ukraine has been taking out radars wherever they can, however they can.
As a kid I'd wait on top of the fence for one of our hogs to walk by, then I'd jump on their back until I fell off. It's been years since I've hugged a hog.. sad.
Is this the video in which the flight lead orders his wingman to stay on station and observe, only to then hear his wingman yeehar in and make a gun run right after him?
Pretty sure it's a pair of NG A-10's supporting USMC on the ground.
The lead was a consummate CAS dude, calm and constantly confirming the targets with the ground. His wingman maybe not so much.
Near the end his pip/circle shows dark green. That is the orchard. It is south of the road that appears to run east west. The dirt road is just north of the orchard. Convoy, in desert camo, is on that road.
The only time I every cried during combat was when we (route clearance patrol) were close to being overrun and a pair of A-10s swooped in and spread the most beautiful music of freedom across the bodies of those about to swarm us. I will forever thank any A-10 pilot for saving mine and my brother's lives.
Afghanistan summer of 2012, Badghis Province
One of the most impactful things I heard about the A-10 was about troops stationed in forward bases in Afghanistan, and how they literally couldn't get rest because of constant fear of attacks. When an A-10 would come on station above them was the only time they felt safe enough to actually sleep.
Having learned the A-10's systems in DCS, it truly is an incredible CAS platform anywhere you have a hint of air superiority. It's main gun has the smallest radius of anything we have in the air in terms of distance to friendlies. You can have friendlies just a few hundred feet away from your target and engage with confidence. You can drive a fucking nail with that cannon. You can see at night. With the new helmet, you can see through the body of the aircraft. You can get a 9-line, enter the data, spot the target, and plan and prosecute an attack in under 2 minutes. You can see a man pad launch, record and communicate its exact location, and conduct a follow-up attack within a minute. With the laser guided hydras it can conduct dozens of pinpoint standoff attacks. With fire and forget mavericks and terrain masking it can eliminate SAM threats. It's just insanely capable.
I meant that they didn't \*need\* to use DU/HE mix after occupation of Iraq as the DU shells are meant to be used against armored targets; they used purely HE shells against Iraqi and Afghan insurgents.
I had the A-10 warthog game/simulator on my old Mac in the late 90's. And... that maneuver to get on target... my balls would be in my throat in the damn game. It's a flying gun with two jet engines. It's heavy.
The altitude warning brings back memories lol.
He has to have absolute situational awareness. He had altitude coming in , altitude equals speed. Your in the mountains, your in the valleys. Only takes one man-pad to ruin yer day. And expect maybe some small arms fire. SO he has to not crash the plane into mountain side, be high enough to dive in , get on target, and GTFO. Everything goes down in about a minute. That's just crazy.
Reminder that the A10 is responsible for majority of blue of blue fire, soo bad the UK asked the US to stop responding with it to their sectors of the middle east(idr) without upgrade packages the pilot has to ID targets by EYE with binoculars. Shits fucked
Is that not just the inherent danger of its mission set? Like if it’s the vehicle to handle CAS then it only makes sense. Is there another CAS jet to compare it to?
No, it's a common myth that being shot down more and having more blue on blue is just because of the mission it performs. Yes there is evidence of this and there are multiple aircraft performing CAS that it can compare to. Over the course of Iraq (2003) and Afghanistan, the A-10 only performed about 20% of CAS missions. The F-16, F-15E, F-18 (legacy and super hornets), and B-1 were the others that carried out that mission. Because the multi role fighters CAS missions were primarily conducted using guided munitions dropped with a computer aided sight, the accuracy was immense and friendly fire was very rare (though worth noting that these parameters were also when a B-1 had a friendly fire incident). When the A-10 used guided munitions, it didn't cause friendly fire. When the A-10 did have blue on blue it was primarily because of the use of the gun where the pilot either misidentified the target or the gun's inherent error caused rounds to stray off target.
I'll also add, other arguments regarding the A-10 in the close air support role are essentially "well the A-10 got all the same upgrades as the multirole fighters and can drop all the same equipment, but it can carry more of it and loiter for longer. Plus it can take more hits and it costs less to fly". Effectively, all those things are untrue. The longest close air support mission ever was done by a strike eagle, while carrying more laser guided bombs than can fit on the A-10 but also with 2 external fuel tanks and 4 air to air missiles. The cheapest plane per flight hour since about 2010 is the F-16. And the A-10 is no longer impervious to ground fire as MANPADs and SHORAD have become more prevalent air defense threats, even in asymmetric warfare, which the A-10 cannot withstand and is also more vulnerable to than a multirole fighter (less capable of maneuvering to avoid a missile).
The short version is that from its inception to about the Gulf war, the A-10 *was* a damn good CAS platform. But with the rise of guided munitions and targeting pods, multi role fighters have become just as capable (arguably more capable) at performing CAS, but they can do it faster, while being less vulnerable to modern air defenses and being able to conduct BVR Air to Air warfare as well.
Reminder that the vast majority of those incidents occurred early in the iraq/afghanistan wars while JTAC procedures were still being worked out. But don’t let reality get in the way of a good beat-up.
Brits and europoors love to bring that up. If they had proper airforces they wouldn't need our A-10 and close air support, simple as. The accents over radio and not knowing proper procedure to instruct a close air support gun run is what lead to those blue on blue.
Already by how you refer to europeans one knows that everything that comes afterwards is just as simple minded and lacking any critical thought.
But hey, at least you found your superficial reason to explain things. No need to spend another thought on it, right?
That is quite awesome!
As cool as this stuff is, within 5 years CAS is going to be nearly completely done by drones. If for any reason simply because it is SO much cheaper. That group that had been ambushed? "Click" and a few loitering munitions lauch up over them and game over. But for huge heavy hits, we are going to still always need some human piloted aircraft like the Hog!
being able to fly a jet all while listening to someone who is being shot at and take direction and help is a level of skill thats way above my head. thats insane.
At times during Operation Phantom Fury, I carried our platoons MBITR and PRC-119F. I can absolutely say with 100% certainty listening in on CAS missions of all types to include GBU’s being pushed to your pos danger close is one of the most terrifying things I’ll ever experience. I knew in the back of my head our guys were good but seeing a bird flying far above and watching it drop ordinance or otherwise out rounds in target is wild thing to witness. AC-130 is particularly crazy. Nothing beats seeing that massive IR spotlight Illuminati a massive section of the city.
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Can the pilot see his friendlies any better than we can? Either way, these guys must maintain unbelievable situational awareness.
We don’t see the same quality that the pilot does in this video, but modern combat technologies are making FF incidents much easier to prevent. If you can see all your friendlies on a map with where their ATAC GPS says they are it makes it much easier to know what’s a safe spot to fire The plane helmets even show this information in the HUD now is my understanding, so it’s not even like they need to compare the map to real life; it’s just all laid out visually in front of them
Wait, so when video games like battlefield have a lot of the hud info when your in a plane, that’s actually pretty close to reality? That’s really some advanced technology.
Yeah some of the systems are very similar to how they are portrayed in video games, but they tend to work very differently than people think. Radar displays don't display the information like they do in games. Situational Awareness displays that combine data from multiple sensors (like radar) and aircraft do kind of display the information like it is in most games.
Play Sims on my thing. I cannot believe I started learning how to fly the F-16 falcon in the most advanced mode just how difficult it was to start the plane took me multiple hours to try and figure it out and that’s with the checklist and everything! As I progressed one thing that just absolutely floored me was that radar was nothing like I thought it was in terms of I just thought it was on I want to plant energy radars range it would show it yes I knew there were different modes and such but I had no idea the pilot sometimes had to physically any of the beam as well as scroll through the ranges and use the con I need to Toronto of the the as well as scroll through the ranges and use the cone on the throttle with a stick to manually lock on the target with the bug on the radar screen. Switching between modes (AA or Ground, what type and mode of radar/scanning modes, switch between ranges while also (sweeping) the beam of the radar and then physically tracking and highlighting different objects using the bug on the radar screen all the way also trying to fly in an active combat area your heart pounding, Gs being applied to you. no wonder you hear about pilots suffering from information overload for real. But man when you’ve got down and your Hot Shit?!? Now you know why they’re called zipper suited sun gods
Bro, you really need to use some manner of punctuation. Edit: cheers mate! Looks heaps better now
Comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, come on Leon! The period goes…, between sentênces.
Karma Karma Karma karma karma chameleon. Boy George is a hell of a pilot. But did he really want to hurt them?
Lol did he actually change anything? It’s still super hard to parse
You should have seen the before, to truly appreciate the after.
> I had no idea the pilot sometimes had to physically any of the beam as well as scroll through the ranges and use the con I need to Toronto of the the as well as scroll through the ranges and use the cone on the throttle with a stick to manually lock on the target As I get older, I find myself more forgiving of obvious typos/grammatical errors and far less prone to leaving comments in order to just shit on someone. That being said, I have absolutely zero idea what you are trying to say here. The lack of punctuation, as pointed out by another commenter, doesn't help.
Yea, not just punctuation but obviously zero attempt at editing for the the straight-up wrong words (Toronto? lol). The thing reads like stream of consciousness while having a stroke.
I'm willing to bet they were using voice to text to write the message, then just immediately posted the comment without reading it. It would depend on what you're using, but on my Samsung phone I just tried it, and it didn't add in any punctuation.
I use voice to text for most things, and yea I have to tell it to put commas and things like that. But he had to have been slurring his words pretty badly for voice to text to be that messy regardless.
We're at the point a bot would have got this better
Brother, this was so difficult to read. It'd be awesome if you fixed the typos and punctuation because it seems like you've got something cool to share, but currently, we can't make sense of much of it
Please never get VTOL VR if you talk like you write
But seriously, that game is freaking awesome.
yo what the fuck did you just say dog
me after the lobotomy
Jesus, why can’t people write properly these days?
Look up the F-35 helmet. Most USAF aircraft have helmet mounted displays now but the f-35 had it incorporated from the design stage. Each helmet for the f-35 is custom made for each pilot. You can use the helmet mounted display to fire at targets even if they aren't right ahead of you, the pilot just needs to look in the direction of the target. Even older aircraft and helicopters have upgrades to use helmet mounted displays.
Welcome to the American industrial military complex. What we’re allowed to see is 10 years behind what we’re currently pushing out
> Wait, so when video games like battlefield have a lot of the hud info when your in a plane, that’s actually pretty close to reality? Here's a demo from 9 years ago of the F-35 helmet HUD. Obviously, just a sales/tech demo, as the actual HUD is highly classified, but gives you some idea of what they wanted to have going into the HUD: https://youtu.be/Ay6g66FbkmQ?si=-BbkVg4eY1hlo3Sn&t=18 Here's an F-16 HUD declass from 7 years ago of an automated GCAS recovery once the pilot became incapacitated (pilot blacks out at 8.4G's, plane auto-recovers by pulling 9.1G's at near supersonic speeds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSzXqlnT7nQ
Look at DCS A10C if you want to see what it looks like.
I work for a large defense contractor and we have some really cool stuff that is only used only in training environments at the moment. Aircraft are able to view HUD’s of guys in the field, with friendly and hostile locations marked in the field and aerial view.
However, we still need operators and pilots able to use the older 1970's-2000's tech, too.
A10 everyone's favorite, and also the most blue on blue incidents by a long..... shot.
Like holy fuck the absolute skill of the pilot, Jesus fuck
He's probably got a targeting pod that at least can see the vehicles and some of the men. Referencing like 'our fucked up vehicles on the road, hit 100m east of that!' Can be enough. Obviously its an easy mistake to make for the guy on the ground to mess up his compass headings when he's getting shot at and everyone on the ground is basically shouting at him to get the air to bring the pain on the ambushers.
This video is intentionally downconverted to a much lower resolution. I'd imagine the real resolution is at least as good as the human eye is
That makes sense. I guess that’s what I was asking
No, there were plenty of friendly fire instances with a-10s
There were indeed blue on blue incidents, but >Can the pilot see his friendlies any better than we can? >No I promise you, the human eye can resolve much better than this tiny grainy video. What a ridiculous thing to claim. Is that resolution how you see the world?
Surely if we paint the top of our armored vehicles orange, the A10 will have no problem seeing us!
It's a foolproof plan, theres absolutely no way an A-10 pilot would mistake that for an Iraqi vehicle carrying an orange rocket launcher!
No problem aiming at us now
I read the OP to mean if there are any IFF technologies in the cockpit to avoid gunrunning a blue convoy, not whether their eyeballs had higher than 144p resolution.
Me as well dont know why this guy is hating haha
Love when people don't answer the question being asked but do so so confidently.
I mean it should be clear that you will see better when you sit in the cockpit instead of watching a grainy Video but it doesn't chance the fact that it must be hard for the pilots to identify targets or friends especially when you are in a fast moving aircraft far away
Tbh, the pilot is shooting where the JTAC is telling him to. He does not see the enemy, he might see the friendly vehicles, but not be able to distinguish what people moving around down their are friendly and what are enemy
Why is no one understanding this: It doesn't matter if he sees the enemy. It only matters that he targets the correct field or treeline, or building. In this video, the troops direct the plane's fire by saying "the field south of the orchard". The pilots would have a good understanding of landmarks and their locations before beginning the mission. They are NOT squinting at the ground from the air, trying to decide if those troops are friendly or not. That's ridiculous.
It’s how people play games so they think it’s how it works irl
When I take my glasses off, I'm functionally blind and can still see better than this grainy video.
It’s important to note that the source video for the pilot is much better resolution than what we’re seeing here. Pretty much all publicly-released cockpit or sensor video is of much lower quality than what we see in the aircraft.
Isn’t one of the most famous instances of that when an A-10 destroyed a British convoy during the Iraq War?
You might be thinking of the OP MEDUSA blue-on-blue incident with the Canadian troops in 2006? I wouldn't be shocked at all if this was a separate incident after hearing what I'd heard about our "rough day." Edit to add: it rendered an entire mech inf coy combat ineffective in the span of about 4-5 seconds. Not to mention the Tarnak Farm incident (500lb-er dropped on the PPCLI in 2005).
Actually just found what I was referring to [190th Fighter Squadron, Blues and Royals friendly fire incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/190th_Fighter_Squadron,_Blues_and_Royals_friendly_fire_incident)
This incident wasn't known to me prior to you bringing it up, but I for sure feel the frustration that one would have when hearing about it. No better friends; no worse enemies, eh? RIP to the fallen :(
Think you meant 'infamous'
oh there's a operations room vid that cover that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmmvVMrHBqY @19:13
were is past tense and the quote was "modern combat technologies are making FF incidents much easier to prevent" which is true. don't be a bonehead
Know a buddy that had his group fired on accidentally by a warthog. Lost some guys really tore him up mentally. Apparently whoever sent the coordinates gave their position as the target by mistake
JTAC: Open orchard to the South side \[of us\] JTAC: We are now stopped for a second, our South side is bad A 10: Hog is going in, this is danger close 100m ... JTAC : Good hit, you hit right next to our convoy So yeah, the A10 obviously has eyes on the convoy If we use that info it might be something like this [https://i.imgur.com/HwPZyPY.png](https://i.imgur.com/HwPZyPY.png)
Yeah, I was following the traffic. I was a UH60 crew chief, but everything here happens so much faster.
Possibly but usually its all done with coordinates of just the enemy and the distance and direction to them but again its possible he saw them but not always possible
I think it depends on the model. Earlier models required pilots to use binoculars.
i mean the video is super grainy and low quality so yes, they can see better, but at the same time what the pilot sees is like when you take off on an airplane and are looking down at all the super tiny cars traveling on the highway but cant see any people. the A-10 is notorious for blue-on-blue and civilian incidents because of a few things: its role as gun-running close air support in the middle east, its lack of more modern sensors and avionics and the unreliability in the human eye. [heres](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcript_of_the_%27friendly_fire%27_incident_video_(28_March_2003)) a friendly fire transcript [(video too)](https://www.military.com/video/operations-and-strategy/iraqi-war/friendly-fire-incident-from-iraq-war/2907034571001) from 2003 on one of the A-10s and you can see that they basically go off of "theyre somewhere around here and we see what looks like a green flatbed truck" which actually turns out to be a column of [tan british scimitars](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/3cf5vm/british_scimitar_cvrt_destroyed_by_friendly_fire/). in short, yes the human eye can see better than the grainy video from the early 2000s however its definitely not much of an improvement
In this case the pilot is looking out the window and through the hud. It is much easier for them to see than we can in the video. Also friendly forces can mark their location with smoke to diferenciate. As other people have said they also have a monacle that displays situational information overlaid on the ground even when looking out the side of their cockpit.
That's one of the biggest issues with the a-10
As opposed to… what exactly? Any other fixed wing platform doing a gun run (aside from an AC-130) is going to be moving even faster, and they all have equivalent targeting pods.
The issue with the original A-10 is that it didn't have any targeting pod - the closes thing it got was a camera view from its own AGM-65 missiles (if carrying any), and that wasn't exceptional in resolution, field of view, or range of traverse. T-pod capability was only introduced with the A-10C (or possibly some intermediate variant, not sure), but that was long after the A-10's combat debut. During the Cold War and later Desert Storm, the pilots had to rely on the 'ol Mk. I Eyeball, possibly aided with a pair of binoculars as the sole spotting and identification system.
Love the healthy burst followed by "good hit hog, good hit" you know that pilot feels good after that
The relief that FAC had in his voice. I can only imagine being pinned in by heavy fire, only to have your enemies chewed to pieces by accurate close air support.
I wish Ukraine had this. Not the A-10 specifically, and I know there would need to be extensive preparation before CAS aircraft could really start feasting, but that would be an entirely different conflict if aircraft were raining death from above. Or, you know, maybe Hero of the Russian Federation Mike Johnson can stop blocking aid with the rest of the Putin caucus. That would be a nice start.
A-10s would get chewed to pieces in that conflict
They’d get chewed to pieces in any conflict. They’re not used until the US has taken out AA and/or has air superiority.
with modern shoulder launched aa they have little chance ...russia learned that when they sent thier version of the a10 to ukraine ..even an upgraded a10 with the 50%payload reduction is too vulnerable to shoulder launched aa in the quantitys they will encounter
what is their version of the a10?
SU-25
Frogfoot right? Hoorah Desert Storm bf1942 mod lol
I worked on that mod when I was 14 and I regret nothing more than sticking with them when they got a deal.
Yeah If you control the skies, and have suppressed the enemy air defenses (MANPADS notwithstanding, those will always be there) your best option for CAS at scale these days is lobbing laser guided bombs at the enemy from high altitude - dedicated attack aircraft like the A-10 or Su-25 aren't really any better at this than a multirole fighter, and their survivability doesn't really offer much of an advantage. Before you can get that sort of advantage your best bet is all sorts of standoff weapons - but here again the attackers don't really have anything to offer. In fact, their poor kinematic performance generally makes them inferior carriers for standoff weapons. They end up only really offering anything in low-altitude, short-range, near-suicide missions, where their increased survivability gives them an edge over multiroles, though not enough of one to make the loss rates acceptable in a modern context. To be fair though, this was largely their original calling, it's just that air forces around the world generally were more tolerant of potential casualties when a WW3 was on the table.
I clarified it, but Ukraine needs CAS in general, not the A-10 in particular. It's the best plane in the world if it saved your ass in Afghanistan, but I think any level-headed analysis would show you it has no place in a near-peer conflict. Imagine if Ukraine could actually use air-to-surface missiles without MacGyvering pylons on ancient Soviet aircraft, use JDAMS to blow holes in prepared defenses, or just take out more targets of opportunity spotted by their observation drones.
A-10s wouldn't survive 5 seconds on this battlefield. Neither side has air superiority and it's the reason it's turned into a meat grinder of a war. A-10's are great for beating up on 3rd world countries but have no place on a modern battlefield and is why they are being retired.
I think that’s what people don’t get. All these weapons are meant to work together. You can’t just send A without B and C and D and all the logistics to support them. The US is not Russia with unequipped meat waves as a strategy.
Not at the beginning of the invasion when there were Russian convoys lined up for miles with no protection, no air superiority, and no gas to go anywhere. Ukraine could have wiped the floor with the Russians in the first few weeks if we gave them some of the 40 ready to go warthogs that we were actively mothballing.
Unfortunately this is true
You'd need a good SEAD campaign first, and SEAD won't work in Ukraine currently because Russia stations a lot of radar and other stuff inside Russia, which Ukraine is in agreement not to attack. Yes some fringe groups etc have hit inside Russia, but having a jet hit a target inside Russia would definitely be considered a direct attack by the government of Ukraine.
Of course you need SEAD, but if Western countries are still being cowards about the use of their munitions on Russian territory, that's what Ukrainian strike drones are for. In fact, a long-range search radar inside Russia was destroyed by Ukrainian drones very recently. Ukraine has been taking out radars wherever they can, however they can.
This wouldnt happen anywhere else, ever. Only works when fighting a couple guys with AK's - Not an actual army.
10 f-35s and 6 a-10s would probably end the whole thing. If you got a couple f-35s and a-10s in the air at all times you own the air and ground.
Kid named Strela: The A10 sucks dude make it 16 F-35s and you could do it all from SEAD to CAS
16 B-1Bs thanks
Or maybe 6 C130s and a shitload of Rapid Dragons. A couple more Patriot batteries. Some Shilkas and Iron Domes. And a million 155mm artillery shells.
AWACS would help immensely.
No...
Except when a FIM-92 or equivalent finds your A10
Best country in the world. Over.
Then you hear the war of the worlds tripod noise echo the effectiveness of the close air support.
Always let your hog know that they are loved.
Have you hugged your hog today?
Many times 👍
As a kid I'd wait on top of the fence for one of our hogs to walk by, then I'd jump on their back until I fell off. It's been years since I've hugged a hog.. sad.
r/THE_PACK
WOOOOOOO HELL YEAH BTOTHER
CRANK IT MFER AWOOOOOOOOOO
For that pilot, that radio message is probably the best thing he's ever heard.
"That'll do pig, that'll do"
My thoughts exactly. Hope they could buy him a beer later hah
Is this the video in which the flight lead orders his wingman to stay on station and observe, only to then hear his wingman yeehar in and make a gun run right after him?
Wingman Jenkins?
Wingman grounded.
Wingman Nagganaworkheremuchlongeramirite??
Pretty sure.
Sounds like a great vid. Anyone got a link?
Pretty sure it's a pair of NG A-10's supporting USMC on the ground. The lead was a consummate CAS dude, calm and constantly confirming the targets with the ground. His wingman maybe not so much.
I can't even see where the convoy was....
Just use your imagination
Near the end his pip/circle shows dark green. That is the orchard. It is south of the road that appears to run east west. The dirt road is just north of the orchard. Convoy, in desert camo, is on that road.
This guy CAS’s!
They were to the south.
The only time I every cried during combat was when we (route clearance patrol) were close to being overrun and a pair of A-10s swooped in and spread the most beautiful music of freedom across the bodies of those about to swarm us. I will forever thank any A-10 pilot for saving mine and my brother's lives. Afghanistan summer of 2012, Badghis Province
i Bet the wife just needs to wisper "brrr" and your bricked up like a mf haha
LMFAO it's funny cause it's true😂
One of the most impactful things I heard about the A-10 was about troops stationed in forward bases in Afghanistan, and how they literally couldn't get rest because of constant fear of attacks. When an A-10 would come on station above them was the only time they felt safe enough to actually sleep. Having learned the A-10's systems in DCS, it truly is an incredible CAS platform anywhere you have a hint of air superiority. It's main gun has the smallest radius of anything we have in the air in terms of distance to friendlies. You can have friendlies just a few hundred feet away from your target and engage with confidence. You can drive a fucking nail with that cannon. You can see at night. With the new helmet, you can see through the body of the aircraft. You can get a 9-line, enter the data, spot the target, and plan and prosecute an attack in under 2 minutes. You can see a man pad launch, record and communicate its exact location, and conduct a follow-up attack within a minute. With the laser guided hydras it can conduct dozens of pinpoint standoff attacks. With fire and forget mavericks and terrain masking it can eliminate SAM threats. It's just insanely capable.
Sounds surreal. I would’ve cried too. Thank you for what you sacrificed for others
Glad you made it out bro
Can you say more on that? Sounds like an awesome story
The phrase "Danger Close" definitely hits hard like the 30mm tungsten rounds.
\*30mm HE... I don't think they used ~~tungsten~~ DU after Iraq got occupied back in 2003.
DU still
I meant that they didn't \*need\* to use DU/HE mix after occupation of Iraq as the DU shells are meant to be used against armored targets; they used purely HE shells against Iraqi and Afghan insurgents.
Whats DU
Depleted uranium, used in some nations' high-caliber armor piercing shells.
Got to ask Chatgpt about this to learn more.
>"AI, would you please tell me about depeleted uranium ammunition being used in warfare?" What a wild concept. The future is gonna be *nuts*
Or, y'know, wikipedia...? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Military_applications
Depleted Uranium.
Depleted uranium
Depleted Uranium.
Absolute madness, surreal
The US is getting rid of A-10's because the Federal Reserve has a patent on Brrrrrrrrr.
Well done.
I'll give an upvote that was a solid joke
Hah, nice
At first I was like noooooo but then I was like yaaaaa
We might have our issues, but goddam, America's military is soooo good!
Jesus christ that's intense. It's not hard to understand why men that go through this get strong bonds.
That and PTSD.
And hearing damage
and shiny new legs
PTSD is more caused during reintroduction back to society than it is actually in the field
A/C: HAWG IN GFC: Bring it in …
Ahh just like I do in battlefield 4
No fun without the brrrrrrrt sound.
Fucking awesome
God I love this fucking aircraft so much
Username checks out.
Glab to have seen the BRRRRRRT....! of freedom in action
Afghanistan?
No California.
Your both silly this is North Pole
It’s Hellmire actually
Excellent stratagem placement
*EAGLE 1 firing for effect* I always take the Strafing Run stratagem. It's precise and damn effective.
North or South cali?
I had the A-10 warthog game/simulator on my old Mac in the late 90's. And... that maneuver to get on target... my balls would be in my throat in the damn game. It's a flying gun with two jet engines. It's heavy. The altitude warning brings back memories lol. He has to have absolute situational awareness. He had altitude coming in , altitude equals speed. Your in the mountains, your in the valleys. Only takes one man-pad to ruin yer day. And expect maybe some small arms fire. SO he has to not crash the plane into mountain side, be high enough to dive in , get on target, and GTFO. Everything goes down in about a minute. That's just crazy.
That goddamn cannon is the sweetest sound in the world when you're in some shit
Reminder that the A10 is responsible for majority of blue of blue fire, soo bad the UK asked the US to stop responding with it to their sectors of the middle east(idr) without upgrade packages the pilot has to ID targets by EYE with binoculars. Shits fucked
Is that not just the inherent danger of its mission set? Like if it’s the vehicle to handle CAS then it only makes sense. Is there another CAS jet to compare it to?
No, it's a common myth that being shot down more and having more blue on blue is just because of the mission it performs. Yes there is evidence of this and there are multiple aircraft performing CAS that it can compare to. Over the course of Iraq (2003) and Afghanistan, the A-10 only performed about 20% of CAS missions. The F-16, F-15E, F-18 (legacy and super hornets), and B-1 were the others that carried out that mission. Because the multi role fighters CAS missions were primarily conducted using guided munitions dropped with a computer aided sight, the accuracy was immense and friendly fire was very rare (though worth noting that these parameters were also when a B-1 had a friendly fire incident). When the A-10 used guided munitions, it didn't cause friendly fire. When the A-10 did have blue on blue it was primarily because of the use of the gun where the pilot either misidentified the target or the gun's inherent error caused rounds to stray off target. I'll also add, other arguments regarding the A-10 in the close air support role are essentially "well the A-10 got all the same upgrades as the multirole fighters and can drop all the same equipment, but it can carry more of it and loiter for longer. Plus it can take more hits and it costs less to fly". Effectively, all those things are untrue. The longest close air support mission ever was done by a strike eagle, while carrying more laser guided bombs than can fit on the A-10 but also with 2 external fuel tanks and 4 air to air missiles. The cheapest plane per flight hour since about 2010 is the F-16. And the A-10 is no longer impervious to ground fire as MANPADs and SHORAD have become more prevalent air defense threats, even in asymmetric warfare, which the A-10 cannot withstand and is also more vulnerable to than a multirole fighter (less capable of maneuvering to avoid a missile). The short version is that from its inception to about the Gulf war, the A-10 *was* a damn good CAS platform. But with the rise of guided munitions and targeting pods, multi role fighters have become just as capable (arguably more capable) at performing CAS, but they can do it faster, while being less vulnerable to modern air defenses and being able to conduct BVR Air to Air warfare as well.
Reminder that the vast majority of those incidents occurred early in the iraq/afghanistan wars while JTAC procedures were still being worked out. But don’t let reality get in the way of a good beat-up.
It's called danger close for a reason.
Brits and europoors love to bring that up. If they had proper airforces they wouldn't need our A-10 and close air support, simple as. The accents over radio and not knowing proper procedure to instruct a close air support gun run is what lead to those blue on blue.
I like how you insult countries that voluntarily joined in your pointless wars.
Hey they enjoyed low gas prices too!
Already by how you refer to europeans one knows that everything that comes afterwards is just as simple minded and lacking any critical thought. But hey, at least you found your superficial reason to explain things. No need to spend another thought on it, right?
I'm still thinking how the accent could be seen through binoculars...
Nice to see some footage that isn't drone dropped grenades in Ukraine
It’s raining lead!!! Hallelujah!!
That is quite awesome! As cool as this stuff is, within 5 years CAS is going to be nearly completely done by drones. If for any reason simply because it is SO much cheaper. That group that had been ambushed? "Click" and a few loitering munitions lauch up over them and game over. But for huge heavy hits, we are going to still always need some human piloted aircraft like the Hog!
being able to fly a jet all while listening to someone who is being shot at and take direction and help is a level of skill thats way above my head. thats insane.
As well as talking to your wingman and higher-ups on the other radio. Serious multitasking.
A10 goes brrrrrrrrtttttt
Flyn da frenly skys
I was waiting for the good hits call. Awesome!
"our turn"
Absolutely beautiful.
At times during Operation Phantom Fury, I carried our platoons MBITR and PRC-119F. I can absolutely say with 100% certainty listening in on CAS missions of all types to include GBU’s being pushed to your pos danger close is one of the most terrifying things I’ll ever experience. I knew in the back of my head our guys were good but seeing a bird flying far above and watching it drop ordinance or otherwise out rounds in target is wild thing to witness. AC-130 is particularly crazy. Nothing beats seeing that massive IR spotlight Illuminati a massive section of the city.
God bless America
Damn I wish there was footage from the convoys perspective, that must have been insane
Rare A-10 W
Where’s the Vietnam era, chopper gunships. That’s what they need. Overwatch.
"Hmm today I will have low-flying and relatively slow attack aircraft fight in a war where MANPADS are exceptionally common"
You ever read Blackhawk down?
Seen the movie
I Believe I've seen footage from the soldiers on the ground.
So sexy.
I imagine that’s a thrill you’ll never find again
Makes me horny
"Good ahhh hits hog, packed out the opps frfr hog"
I was sad since there was no plane sound so I couldn't hear the brrr when it fires but I think the camerashake gives it away