The A-10 was not built to dogfight The Air Force's jets simply couldn't fly slowly enough to spot targets in dense jungle, didn't have the fuel to make multiple passes, and weren't resilient enough to absorb much in the way of enemy gunfire.
Gulf War and Balkans
The A-10 was used in combat for the first time during the Gulf War in 1991, with 132 being deployed. A-10s shot down two Iraqi helicopters with the GAU-8 cannon. The first of these was shot down by Captain Robert Swain over Kuwait on 6 February 1991 for the A-10's first air-to-air victory.
The A-10 proved its versatility as a daytime SCUD hunter In Western Iraq suppressing enemy air defenses, attacking early warning radars, and even recorded 2 helicopter kills with its gun - the only gun kills of the war.
Can an A-10 fly with one wing? In theory yes. As I know the A-10 was designed as way to be able to fly with a single engine and in case about 2/3 of the wing and a stabilizer is lost. But was lost A-10 with less damage…
While the Army doesn't fly CAS airplanes like the A-10 and is still technically restricted from acquiring new CAS airplanes like the A-29 Super Tucano, it's worth noting that the Army does have some fixed-wing aircraft.
The A-10 force, flying more than 8,000 combat sorties, suffered only five A-10s destroyed (a loss rate of . 062 percent). Twenty of these aircraft returned with significant battle damage, and forty-five others returned with light damage that was repaired between sorties.
The pilot, Eric Das, and Weapons Systems Officer, William Watkins, were killed. Their bodies were recovered. April 8, 2003 – An A-10A Thunderbolt II (Serial Number 78-0691) was shot down over downtown Baghdad by an Iraqi Roland surface-to-air missile. The pilot survived.
'As pretty much everyone else answering this question has pointed out… the A-10 can fairly easily destroy a tank. As can anything else slinging either an AGM-65 Maverick or an AGM-114 Hellfire. 'Even a Cessna 208 Caravan. A freakin' Cessna, can kill a tank, people.
A jet was forced to make an emergency landing at Tampa International Airport after it lost part of its wing in the air. Officials at Tampa International Airport said a Cessna Citation was at 27,000 feet near St. Petersburg when the pilot lost the left winglet and part of the wing.
The A-10 was designed for close support in low intensity conflicts during the Vietnam War, yet it came to be seen as a dedicated anti-armor platform by the early 1970s.
On 8 October 1996, 7 months after the escalation over Imia/Kardak, during an air-to-air confrontation over the Aegean Sea in the Athens FIR, a Greek Mirage 2000 fired an R550 Magic missile and shot down a Turkish F-16D.
Originally Answered: Would an A-10 do good in a dogfight? No. The A-10 is too slow and too underpowered. Yes, he can turn tightly… but he has no way to force the enemy to slow down and sit in front of his nose, and the faster, more powerful aircraft can always escape at will.
Following congressional approval, the Air Force reluctantly accepted the infantryman duct-taped to a drone as a replacement for the A-10 and insisted that they do not regret trying so hard to replace one of the only things in the United States military that worked like it was supposed to.
On 21 January 1991, an F-14B with its pilot, Lieutenant Devon Jones, and Radar Intercept Officer, Lieutenant Lawrence Slade, of VF-103 was shot down by an SA-2 surface-to-air missile while on an escort mission over Al Asad Air Base.
The aircraft can endure very heavy battle damage and is even designed to keep flying with one engine and half a wing. The A-10 cockpit is also heavily armoured, with a bathtub of titanium armour underneath the pilot's seats to protect from ground fire.
The maximum G-loads for the A-10 with a weight around 30,000 pound is +7.33/-3.0 G symmetrical and +5.80/-1 G asymmetric.
Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappearance, also called MH370 disappearance, disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet on March 8, 2014, during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
But the most incredible thing an Israeli pilot may have ever pulled off with the venerable F-15 came in 1983, when pilot Ziv Nedivi and instructor Yehoar Gal managed to land the top-tier fighter after losing its entire right wing in a mid-air collision.
Can turbulence be severe enough to cause a jet engine to break off a wing? From a practical point, no, a modern airliner will not lose a wing due to turbulence. Modern airlines are very tough and designed to withstand extreme turbulence.
The GAU-8/A precision when installed in the A-10 is rated at "5 mil, 80 percent", meaning that 80 percent of rounds fired will hit within a cone with an angle of five milliradians; this equates to a 40-foot (12-meter) diameter circle at the weapon's design range of 4,000 feet (1,200 m).
Developments in tank armor soon made tanks generally impervious to 50 caliber rounds,39 but according to the Marine Corps and other authorities, the 50 caliber can still blast through more lightly armored vehicles, such as armored personnel carriers, and thus clearly through armored limousines.
Save this answer. Show activity on this post. Using the cannon, the A-10 is capable of disabling a main battle tank from a range of over 6,500 m. While modern battle tanks have quite sophisticated armor protection (for the crew), there are many vital components with less protection.
“The lore of the F-15—its' got 104 air-to-air kills and it's never been shot down in combat,” said Lt. Col.
The Air Force has sought to retire some of the close air support aircraft for years but was blocked by Congress. The service finally got its way in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act and was OK'd to divest 21 A-10s this year. The service is seeking to retire another 42 A-10s as part of its fiscal 2024 budget.
Those bursts can shred the armor on a tank. They can also hit unintended targets. Since 2001, the A-10 has been involved in four friendly fire incidents that killed 10 U.S. troops. The next highest is the B-1B bomber, which killed five soldiers last year in one incident.