A-10 Cockpit And Walk-Around Tour With A Warthog Weapons Instructor

I'm here with Trippin from the 66th Weapon Squadron and he's going to give us a tour of the A-10. So, Trippin, just to start, the first thing I see is the nose gear. It's off to one side. What's that about? So, the A-10 was built in a very unique way. The wheel is actually offset to allow for the gun to be on the central line of the aircraft. Okay. We're going to come back to the cockpit a bit later on. So, if you just come around here onto the main undercarriage. So, when it retracts, the tyre, the wheel bit still sticks out. Why is that? Yeah. So, the A-10 was built entirely around survivability. So, one of the neat features about the A-10 is actually the wheel will jut out of the strut just a bit so that you can actually land with the gear up and not cause too much damage to the aircraft itself. So, that's in case you have a malfunction or something like that. Exactly. These are new wings on these jets. Any particular detail on the wing that we can talk about? Does it make for a stable ride? Are they thicker? Is there anything in that that helps out because you're at low level a lot? Yeah, absolutely. So, that gives us a really good turn performance down low. It also allows us to have some endurance and a pretty good turn rate as well. Great. Okay. And just moving along on the wing, we've got the lightning targeting pod. This is what we use to help us find and fix targets out there as well as help guide some precision guided munitions. So, it's a very capable targeting pod and we can carry that as well as the sniper pod. The sniper doesn't seem to be being used by the A-10 as much these days. Is there just a reason behind that? Yeah, I think it's just based off of the patterns that we've developed over the last 10 to 20 years using the lightning pod. It's a very advanced targeting pod and we developed TTPs with it, so we're more familiar with the lightning pod specifically. Can we talk about the wing tip here, Trippin? Because there's a few things I can see here, maybe like those boxes underneath and there's also something like a missile approach warner or something there. What are they? Those are built to carry chaff as well as flare and we carry a lot of those buckets just because one of our primary missions is to be low and slow. And more buckets means more defensive measures, which means more survivability down low. And we do have some indications from the cockpit that are provided by those sensors, so it allows us to be able to throw a rack and things like that. Great. Thank you. Let's move on around here. One of the unusual things about the A10, just looking on this trailing edge here, you have the split ailerons to give you speed brakes. Yeah, speed brakes. The roll rate of the A10 is excellent. One of the design features for that is to have survivability and the ability to roll. Those massive ailerons are what provide us the authority to be able to make that roll rate happen. Additionally, those ailerons actually open and become speed brakes, so they articulate fully to allow us to be able to slow down. Behind you, we've got a great look at the engine, the TF34s here. They're mounted up high. Is there a particular reason for how they're mounted? Yeah, 100%. They're built to allow us to do austere landings and austere field operations. You can see the engines and the other side of the fuselage is coated in dirt, actually from yesterday. The engines themselves look pretty clean, and the reason for that is it keeps it away from the debris and the rocks as you're performing austere landing operations. Is there a shielding thing as well from infrared weapons? Is there an element of that? The actual engine itself is mounted away from the fuselage to allow itself to potentially take battle damage or be on fire and not damage the rest of the fuselage, but it is mounted away from the actual jet itself. Now we're down the back end of the A10, we've got these twin tails. What's behind that design feature? Everything in the A10 is built to be double or triple redundant in some cases. The intent behind the rudders is to have some redundancy, so you could potentially even fly with only one rudder. And not only that, but the hydraulics being totally in op, so they're controlled by wires and hydraulically assisted. So in the case that you do lose one or hydraulics to support those rudders, you could still continue to fly. This aeroplane is fairly well tooled up here, so we've got sidewinder as well as we've got on here on the wings, and it shows the variety of stuff you can carry. Yeah, so we've got LAO-88 with AGM-65s on it. Additionally we have the rest of the weapon stations which are currently empty, but we do have an AIM-9 here on station one, along with an AIS tracker pod. And there's a rocket pod under there as well, what's that called? Yeah, it's the 131 rocket pod, it allows us to carry things like APKWS, Willie Pete rockets, HE rockets, things like that. Brilliant, thank you. Now we're at the cockpit, the front end of the A10, this is kind of the business end of the A10. You're going to give us a cockpit tour in a minute, but just about the design around the cockpit and the ladder and the way this all works here. There's a famous story about the A10 cockpit, the bathtub thing. Yeah, absolutely. So it's encased with titanium, additionally some of the vital components of the A10 are covered with titanium just to allow for survivability again. But it is a fairly spacious cockpit and a protective one at that. And unusually in as much as, well maybe the F-35, but built in ladder, you don't have any external steps for the A10 do you? Yeah, absolutely. Everything is built for austere operations, so you can land in the airfields, you can drop the ladder yourself, you can get out and you can button up the jet if you need to by yourself as well. So it's built for totally independent austere operations if required. One of the things that we didn't talk about on the other side was the old paved penny pod. Remember that used to sit down there as well? Long gone, but some jets flew with just the mounting point for the paved penny pod. What did that do and what's that been replaced by? Yeah, so that was one of the ways that we were able to help with target acquisition. That capability has been moved to the little lightning target pod. Got it, that makes sense. So let's go and talk about the ultimate thing on the A10, the gun. Yeah, let's do it. Trippin, we're at the front end. We've got to talk about this, the GAU-8 30mm Gatling gun. This is a fearsome weapon and it's kind of the centrepiece of the A10. Is it true that the A10 was built around this weapon? Yeah, absolutely. The GAU-8, it's a general electric gun and the fire rate is roughly about 70-80ish rounds per second, so 3900 rounds per minute. It's a fearsome weapon for sure. When the A10 first came out, this was the centrepiece, but over that time you've got targeting pods, you've got smart weapons, things like that. Has reliance on the gun changed or does it maintain its position as being pivotal in the A10's arsenal? So it's still a really, really important part of what you do. Yes, absolutely. Every mission. The counter drone mission is now really important as well, if I could just ask you about that maybe. Is the gun used in that mission? It definitely can be. It's a very capable both air-to-ground and air-to-air weapon. We here at the weapons school and training A10 wingmen and flight leads and instructors absolutely train to both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions like that. So Triffin, this is the cockpit of the A10. Tell me what we've got here. On the throttle itself, you've got a radio switch which goes in four positions. So forward, aft, down and up, which means you've got four radios that you can go ahead and listen to and control. So managing your radios and managing that situational awareness can be pretty challenging at times. As we move forward on the left side of the console, we've got our IFF control as well as our YASAS and our control switches here for our flight controls. Our AR switches as well as our fuel gauges are up here. And then as we move around the cockpit itself, the armament panel is how you actually arm the gun as well as the rest of the weapon system. So you can see here's your master arm and your gun arm switch. You have your MFCDs, your left and your right MFCDs, which is how we do situational awareness as well as targeting in the A-10. And then you have your primary flight instruments, so your ADI and your HSI. And to be honest with you, we haven't updated it because it works still. Your engine gauges are over here on the right side of the console. Your fuel gauges are over here on the right side. And it allows you to be able to toggle between to tell between your main, your wing, and your external fuel tanks. And as we move over to the right side of the console, you can see your navigation systems, how you input waypoints, as well as your oxygen systems over here on the right. Your power switches are up here. And then as we move down on the right side of the console, you can see more of your lighting for the cockpit as well as the exterior of the aircraft and your ILS and TACAN back here. And obviously you've got the HUD up there as well. And you've also got the Scorpion helmet there. So can we just have a quick talk about the HUD and then we'll talk about the helmet? Yeah, absolutely. So the heads-up displays are one of our primary means for employing weapons. So once again, fixed reference sight for how you can use the gun, which allows you to be able to shoot the gun even in a degraded environment. And the helmet here that you've got on your lap, this is the Scorpion helmet. Can you just explain a bit about that please? Does it show you other aircraft in your formation? Yeah, absolutely. It also allows you to cue and move your targeting pod. So wherever you're looking, you can go ahead and slew your targeting pod to. What other symbology are you seeing in there? So you can actually see targeting pod imagery in the monocle? Yeah. It's only on one eye though. It's just on your right eye by the look of it. Yep. Does that mean you've got to do different things with different eyes? No, it's pretty seamless. It just overlays it. Your brain gets used to processing the image.