[ryao]

I think this is a waste of money compared to what the A-10 gives people. Bullets are cheaper than explosives and can be manufactured in far greater quantities. Winning a war is pyrrhic if the victor is impoverished by the price of all of the ammunition. :/

Anyway, the original complaint here is about the F-35, not the F-16. No matter how much you think of the F-16, the F-35 is being pushed into this role and it is just not fit for it. I do not think the F-16 is fit for it either, although it is certainly more fit than the F-35.

[Manuel_D]

Bullets are cheap. And so are MANPADS and other short range air defenses. But airplanes are expensive. So are pilots. That's why close air support has shifted towards dropping guided munitions to minimize exposure to short range air defenses. Losing more planes because you want to save money on munitions is a net greater expense than dropping precision munitions. A laser guided bomb costs about $20,000 less than the operation cost for one hour of an f-16's flight time [1]. This idea of precision munitions being prohibitively expensive for CAS is just a wild fantasy.

The f-35 can mount as much external stores as the f-16. The only way it's unsuitable in a CAS role is the fantasy world where modern close air support involves strafing targets.

1. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a41956551...

[ryao]

Use the external mounts on the F-35 and it loses its low radar profile that you seem to think is important for CAS.

By the way, MANPAADs are pricy in comparison to bullets.

> Contrast this with the cost of an infrared guided MANPADS available on the black market for $5,000 to $250,000.18

https://media.defense.gov/2019/Apr/11/2002115503/-1/-1/0/37M...

They are comparable to the precision guided munitions in cost. That makes sense considering that they are precision guided munitions.

[Manuel_D]

MANPADs are still way cheaper than the aircraft they shoot down. You're also shooting a lot more shells to down an aircraft than missiles. On the order of thousands.

Most short range air defenses are infrared guided, radar cross section is not relevant there.

[ryao]

They do not often shoot down A-10s. Also, they are big and bulky, so troops cannot carry very many of them. If you want to reason about this, you would need to know how many MANPADs are fired per A-10 downing. I imagine it is quite a large number.