Talk:Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II

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Good article Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II has been listed as one of the Warfare good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
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Design team[edit]

No mention of Alexander Kartveli, its Georgian designer? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.208.214.146 (talk) 12:04, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Wrong Thunderbolt, I think.--172.190.41.54 (talk) 01:27, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Quite right. Wrong Thunderbolt. Alexander Kartveli designed the P-47 Thunderbolt. He was 73 years old in 1970, retired for many years, when the USAF issued its detailed RFP for A-X. The Wikipedia article on Kartveli lists the A-10 as one of his "projects", which is simply not true. It's possible, even likely, that Fairchild put Kartveli's name on some of the A-10 documents to pay homage to him and the Thunderbolt heritage, but he was not involved in the A-10 project. Hardwarefreak (talk) 14:08, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

No. That isn't quite correct. Most likely the A-10 Thunderbolt isn't listed in that article for no reason. Apparently Alexander Kartveli resigned from Republic Aviation in 1962 and continued working for Fairchild Hiller from 1964 till he died in 1974. [1] [2] I once read somewhere that he literaly died while he was drawing another sketch for an aircraft. Maybe it wasn't all just homage but he in fact could have been involved in creating early concepts. There is only very limited information unvealed from archives so far and some old newspaper articles and information on his engagements with aircraft can be partialy found here on the internet but it seems he was engaged in many different projects of the US airforce and also NASA. He worked as consultant on aircraft design for Fairchild. So him being involved in early conceopts and development process of the A-10 Thunderbolt is nothing far fetched at all. This is rather a very interesting story and should be investigated further. If decicive or not, if he was working for Fairchild his presence had an impact on the development of the A-10 in any case. TheMightyGeneral (talk) 18:14, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Engine nacelle angle[edit]

In section "Durability" one can read the following sentence: The engines are angled upward by nine degrees to cancel out the nose-down pitching moment they would otherwise generate due to being mounted above the aerodynamic center of the aircraft. I believe this sentence is at least confusing, but more likely wrong. The engines are behind the center of mass of the aircraft, thus their upward angle would actually increase the "nose-down" torque. If one takes a look at the inboard profile drawing one can guess a different explanation: the axis of the engine intake and the axis of the exhaust are not parallel. So the air that flows through the engine changes its velocity in an upward direction (also its speed), hence gaining momentum in an upward direction by exerting a downward force on the engine. Since the engine is behind the center of mass it results in a torque that lifts the nose of the plane. So far this is not sufficient to explain the upward angle of the nacelle, since a parallel engine with an upward angled exhaust would also work. The reason for choosing a nacelle at an upward angle and a more or less parallel exhaust (maybe bit upward directed exhaust? - hard to tell from the drawing)is probably to reduce variation of pitching torque due to changes of engine thrust.* --AemonN (talk) 21:54, 20 December 2013 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by AemonN (talkcontribs) 21:48, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

  • On second thought - the angle of the engine might be a compromise in pitching torque variation due to thrust and thrust alignment with the direction of flight.--AemonN (talk) 22:11, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

The nacelle is tilted up at its front, as is the body of the engine, but the exhaust--and therefore the thrust, obviously--is angled up at what looks to me, from the engineering drawing I'm looking at, to be angled up at pretty much the same angle as the intake end of the nacelle is tilted up. I'm guessing that the only reason for the nacelle angle is because it takes advantage of the cleanest possible airflow over the wing and into the intake, but that's just a guess.173.62.11.8 (talk) 16:20, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Reason Given For Engine Tilt[edit]

The "Durability" section makes the following statement:

"The engines are angled upward by nine degrees to cancel out the nose-down pitching moment
they would otherwise generate due to being mounted above the aircraft's center of gravity,
avoiding the need to trim the control surfaces against the force."

The engines are located above the mass-center (Mc), so if the engines were aligned horizontally, the closest approach of the thrust line would be directly above the Mc, and forward thrust would generate a nose-down pitching moment equal to thrust times the vertical offset, consistent with the current statement (and apparently based upon the following reference).

• Bell, Dana. A-10 Warthog in Detail & Scale, Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania: TAB Books, 1986. ISBN 0-8168-5030-5.

Since the engines are also *aft* of the Mc, rotating them upward would move the point of closest approach between the thrust line and the Mc to be farther aft, but also to be of greater magnitude, which would tend to *increase* the nose-down pitching moment. In fact, if the engines were rotated up to be perpendicular to the Mc, the moment arm would be at its maximum, which would be the actual distance between the Mc and the engines. The article says that the engines were tilted upward in order to *decrease* the tendency for increased thrust to cause a nose-down pitching moment.

That statement was puzzling for a while, but obviously the plane was manufactured with just such a tilt to the engines, and done so for a reason.

The cause of the *reduced* nose down effect is likely due to entrainment of air that impinges on the horizontal tail, which is located aft and below the engines. The downward flow over the horizontal tail caused by increased flow through the engines associated with increased thrust would tend to counteract the thrust-induced nose-down pitching moment, which is just what is stated in the article although no explanation is given in the article.

I have not read the reference, nor do I plan to purchase the book in order to get access. The way the article reads right now (WRT the engine tilt and the pitching moment) seems to be absolutely correct. The thing that is missing is an explanation as to why the engine tilt reduces the nose-down moment even though the increased lever-arm for the thrust line would tend to have the exact opposite effect.

So, I would like to see the explanation included, but I've had that comment reverted (2015-04-14), so the text may still be puzzling to the next person who reads it without taking into account the proximity of the horizontal tail. The proposed wording is the following:

"The engines are angled upward by nine degrees to increase entrained downward flow
on the horizontal tail in order to cancel out the nose-down pitching moment they would
otherwise generate due to being mounted above the aircraft's center of gravity, avoiding
the need to trim the control surfaces against the force."

PoqVaUSA (talk) 23:13, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I do have that book, but in a quick scan I can't find the statement that's quoted. I did notice that the photos and drawings show that the engine centerline slants down towards the tail. But in addition, the exhaust nozzle points downward. So it isn't clear to me if the angle being discussed is that of the engine centerline -- which indeed seems to be counterintuitive -- or the nozzle -- which seems just what you'd expect to produce a nose-down effect.
Also, while your proposed wording sounds plausible, do you have a citation for it? I don't think it would be appropriate without a reference to support it. Paul Koning (talk) 18:58, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

"Too long and excessively detailed ..." [summary-section] tag is unfounded[edit]

A few among the coterie of self-appointed guardians of the material at hand keep taking upon themselves the restoration of the baseless "Too long ..." tag. I don't find it too long nor do I find it excessively detailed; if anything it's too short from previous hack-jobs. As it is the section is pretty much the minimum amount of text required to lay out the issues and timeline at hand regarding the future of the weapon system that is the article's subject. Such information bears directly on the system's future existence; because of its relevance this material needs to be laid out in the body of the article.

Of course if subject at hand were merely an obsolete, historical aircraft then yes, I might say that describing the particulars of the irreversible demise of such a fleet of planes would be distractive, tedious and boring, but that isn't the case here.

If you find the section too long to comprehend, don't read it; others like myself who are interested in the geopolitics that weapons systems affect appreciate the (rather modest) detail and timeline and decision factors at play. It's not as if it obfuscates anything in the rest of the article - in fact it makes much of the rather tedious acronym-laden previous text more relevant. To remove or, as is more typical with the attempts at censorship disguised as editing in Wikipedia, to threaten emasculation of highly relevant material that hasn't been stated elsewhere is to potentially render the article less informative and relevant; now what would be the point of that?

Inserting a "Too long ..." tag without first putting up for discussion any alleged evidence behind it is to engage in literary goonship masquerading as editing. Since no one has discussed, much less credibly justified, the placement of this tag, I'm removing it and request that it not be replaced until a case for it has been made without objection.

Funny, but no one threatens to remove the footnotes because they're "too long and excessively detailed" (though they're far longer and more detailed than the material at hand). That's because any reasonable person finding such lengthy and important documentation to be too long and detailed can just skip over it; so too can they with the material at hand.

Leaving be lengthy, detailed but relevant and factual material is preferable to censorship. We're not trying to recreate a Hemingway short story for print here; we're writing a factual report, and the material at issue is the whole reason the previous detailed and lengthy material is worth reading: there's an impending societal decision that will be based on it, and the text at issue informs and brings that discussion to a head.BLZebubba (talk) 06:15, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

The tag only asks for for the text to be summarized, not removed/censored. The "Proposed retirement" subsection is very long and and almost as long as the service history text. This is out of balance and seems to give undue weight to an event that is only being discussed at this point. Also, Wikipedia is encyclopedia, not a News service. -Fnlayson (talk) 14:26, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
The 'Proposed retirement' section is the very definition of WP:RECENTISM - Why should A-10 in 2013-2014 get ten times the total coverage given to the A-10 in the fifteen years beforehand? More detail can, and should be, given to the previous operational history, but its plain out of balance to be quoting full verse from every two-bit source that pops out as they happen on this issue. I've lost count of the number of times content was added that was repeating that which had already been said and explained in vast (probably excessive!) detail above; it was often just being lazily throw in without care. This isn't a news bulletin, not every news article coming out has been saying something unique/notable. There's no valid reason for there to be such a gargartian section on the politics of its retirement, dwarfing the coverage given to not one, not two, not even three, but separate 'five wars across 25 years: I cannot name one reason that ratio to be valid, yet that's how it stands in the article right now, hence why it needs cutting down. Some of it is barely notable, and some won't be notable in the long term (which is the perspective we're supposed to be writing in). Finally, multiple separate editors have been reinstating this tag, its hardly a narrow point of view. Kyteto (talk) 18:47, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
Your "... ten times the total coverage given to the A-10 in the fifteen years beforehand" is grossly inaccurate. But so what if it wasn't? The viability of this weapon system for the future is at least as worthy of reading as its historical performance. And where in Wikipedia's editing rules does it say that discussion of the proposed retirement of an aircraft must only be in proportion to what's already been said about the aircraft's historical use (however inadequately or melodramatically)? There's virtually nothing in the "Proposed retirement" section that's been said elsewhere in the article. I question if you understand the relevance of what's being said in this section and why it's being reported therein. Weapon systems exist only to fill a military need, and the future of that need is at least as worthy of discussion as the weapon system itself.
While I agree that much in this section may not be noteworthy in the long run, it can be removed when the time comes i.e. when the system's retirement occurs, but for now the dates and developments noted in this section are relevant to a depiction of whether it's a current viable weapon system that's being described or an obsolete one. BLZebubba (talk) 07:27, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
":::Your "... ten times the total coverage given to the A-10 in the fifteen years beforehand" is grossly inaccurate." On my screen, we currently have about ten lines of text dedicated to the Iraq, Afghan, and Libyan wars; or roughly three lines of text for a whole war. That's compared with in excess of 40 lines dedicated to the last six months of sensationalist announcements, proclaimiations, claims and counter-claims on the A-10's prospective future; a fairly trivial topic compared with its actual war service. Why should a whole war get three lines or less, but a single person's political wrangling alone on the retirement issue receive more coverage? It's simply not balanced or fair coverage. The A-10 was set to be cut and replaced with the A-16, a variant of the F-16, why should that solid retirement and replacement plan (aborted in the 1990s) get 1/50th of the coverage of what amounts of a huge amount of hot air over (right now) no definitive plan at all? Kyteto (talk) 17:26, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps lengthen the other sections or subdivide this section then? I found the details here a valuable resource and would have found the article significantly less valuable with an abbreviated section.107.5.194.31 (talk) 00:30, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

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The Proposed retirement chapter, another try[edit]

I fully agree that the current chapter is highly excessive. An encyclopedia article doesn't need to document every proposal and counter-proposal, because, as already said, it's not a news aggregator. In encyclopedic sense, discussing this weapon's future doesn't mean copying the actual public discussion (most of which is hot air) - there are other websites devoted to that. Instead, I propose the following summary (I'm putting it here for discussion because it's a big change):

Opinions? Note also that grammar needs to be polished, because I'm not a native speaker, I translated this from the text I wrote for :slwiki. — Yerpo Eh? 17:14, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

A lot of the middle ground proposals point out that some airframes have been recently refurbished so I wouldn't leave that out. Hcobb (talk) 20:25, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
Didn't find many of those (but I didn't really look too hard), you're welcome to add. — Yerpo Eh? 05:43, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

http://www.airforcemag.com/DRArchive/Pages/2014/March%202014/March%2012%202014/A-10-Rewinging-Continues.aspx “If we did divest the A-10 fleet, obviously we would start with the ones that haven’t had new [wings] put on them,” Fanning said.

Seems to be a hazard of jumping into a major edit without doing the research. Hcobb (talk) 14:28, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
I don't know, re-winging appears to be an argument on both sides - "why retire the plane if we're making this effort" vs. "cancelling the refurbishment would mean additional savings". Consequently, it's of secondary importance to tactical issues. — Yerpo Eh? 16:15, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
The point of the debate is that some of the work has already been done, hence keep a portion of the fleet. Hcobb (talk) 17:57, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
It probably goes without saying that the ones not yet upgraded will be retired first (either according to the current plan or an accelerated one), but according to what I read, some high commanders want to boot the entire fleet at once anyway - the upgrade is not far along and is way behind schedule, so cutting the losses wouldn't be so financially horrible, at least not compared to savings. — Yerpo Eh? 20:10, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Can we include a mention of how the USAF has cheated on this test? http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/critics-accuse-air-force-manipulating-data-support-10-retirement/ Hcobb (talk) 20:56, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's exactly the kind of hot air I'd want to avoid in a summary. Perhaps later, if it turns out to be a crucial factor in the final decision. — Yerpo Eh? 15:15, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

This is the current situation: reduction in fleet numbers to 283 aircraft is happening now, with no relation to the retirement debate, and maintaining its service life until 2028 was a prediction before all of this, so it is not a current alternative proposal. The Air Force is trying to retire the entire A-10 fleet starting in the next fiscal year (FY 2015), and despite all the committee proposals and draft bill passages, it will not be certain until the FY 2015 Defense Authorization Act is passed and signed. According to [3] and [4], they determined that keeping the small number of re-winged planes and retiring all the rest would not save enough, and the additional savings from cancelling the wing upgrades for the rest increases savings from $3.7 billion to $4.2 billion. It is true that the A-10 has faced this argument to be replaced with fighter-bombers before, but the last time that happened Wikipedia wasn't around, so this time all information coming out has a place to go. That probably is getting to be a little excessive. It all depends on what is decided: if arguments to retire prevail, most of the information here is needed to explain the course of events; if some way is found to keep it in service for another decade or so, it will all be irrelevant and be reduced to a footnote; if some plan puts off the decision another year, we'll be back here arguing how much writing we need until another significant decision is made. Keep in mind the retirement section was a lot longer, but it was shortened before to what the first three-quarters of paragraphs are now. America789 (talk) 16:04, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

The section was shortened significantly, yes, but is still way too long. Again, not every action and counter-action needs to be reported, because Wikipedia is a collection of information, but not all information - we don't have to copy the whole public debate, we should summarize. Saying that the USAF is actively trying to retire the whole fleet for financial reasons is more than enough for now, and even if their plan goes through, it will be enough to state key events and decision makers. As it is, the section looks more like a news aggregating service. — Yerpo Eh? 16:28, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
We defiantly don't need a running commentary on draft propositions coming through Congress; we can report on them when they actually firm up - there's literally dozens of drafts, many of which would normally end up in the trash can, on a topic; if something concrete is decided or published it becomes a lot more relevant to being on this page. But we cannot cover every draft, every interpretation of a budget proposal, or the absence of any information on the subject within agiven draft; it's entirely normal for drafts to lack information on certain aspects or events as the party behind the draft might be waiting for input from other groups or individuals, or for a consensus to emerge. Hence why we shouldn't be trying to make conclusions on draft proposals and banter in article space; there's no rush, we can wait for solid events and facts to emerge. The phrase "mountain out of a molehill", and the policy WP:NOTNEWS, both come to mind. Kyteto (talk) 20:46, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Keeping the A-10 flying by grounding the USAF[edit]

http://www.dodbuzz.com/2014/06/20/house-votes-to-block-a-10-retirement/

The point here is that James is complaining that the A-10 funding is coming at the expense of USAF readiness, which just took a big hit in the last year. Hcobb (talk) 15:31, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Technically, that's not what she complained about at all - she was asking that, if this aircraft is funded, that the funding please not be diverted from readiness - there is no proclamation anywhere that the funding was to come from readiness. While I can see that bigger picture being linked to this, it's a little excessive to cover all the potential cuts due to USAF budget restrictions on the A-10 article - there are dozens if not hundreds of what-ifs on what could and couldn't be lost. It seems like it'd probably best suited to an article more focused on USAF budget issues or something similar. I cannot see one person's suggestion of where budget cuts to the USAF budget should not fall as being particularly pertinent here - regardless of how the section has become so morbidly obese as it is. Kyteto (talk) 00:01, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

USAF "cherry-picked" details about collateral damage[edit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II&action=historysubmit&diff=646972229&oldid=646505407

No reason was given for this deletion. A mistaken cut? Hcobb (talk) 00:44, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Alternative Fuels[edit]

In any discussion of the use of alternative fuels, it would be appropriate to mention that with all petroleum based fuels such as diesel fuel, kerosene, and jet fuel, the btu per gallon is in the 140,000 range. When alcohol/methanol/ethanol fuels are proposed, the dramatically reduced btu range from 65,000 to 90,000 would mean that combustion fuel nozzles might need to be increased in diameter to assure the same level of performance. During the periods of alcohol fuel use, the range of the plane would be reduced as full tanks would be carrying fewer btu.

2015 Redeployed to Europe in light of Ukraine conflict[edit]

As I had heard there was some talk of retirement I was a bit surprised to read that the A-10 was being redeployed to Europe to counter fears of a Russian invasion. Here is the link: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/a-10s-return-to-europe-to-stare-down-russia-20a0d902bd86

Not sure if this is the page to mention it, or where it would be mentioned in this article. So I leave it to those more familiar with the topic.

Wowaconia (talk) 03:59, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Fired for treason[edit]

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2015/04/10/fired-for-treason-comments/25569181/

Notable here? Hcobb (talk) 16:38, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

No - although he was not actually fired for treason just for using the word in a speech, not the same thing, and has little relevance to the aircraft. MilborneOne (talk) 16:42, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

A-10 export?[edit]

Boeing Cejas revealed plans of export Modernized A 10 for International customers. both Flightglobal [1], and Janes [2] , I already created the Export Column about the Export, and Indian Plans to acquire the A 10, with two ref Links. If anything which is not meet the guidelines of Wikipedia please delete it — Preceding unsigned comment added by SAJEEVJINO (talkcontribs) 15:16, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

References

Ayotte letter[edit]

http://www.jqpublicblog.com/deeply-disturbing-senate-demands-answers-as-air-force-attempts-back-door-a-10-retirement/

This is BLP, so I can't add it myself. As I understand it the issues are:

  • Decreased depot maintenance funding
  • Lack of aircraft for testing squadron
  • Unauthorized retirement of aircraft

Hcobb (talk) 00:35, 11 October 2015 (UTC)