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Description
| Notes: Two seat version of A-10A. | ||
| Manufacturer: | Fairchild-Republic | |
| Base model: | A-10 | |
| Designation: | A-10 | |
| Version: | B | |
| Nickname: | Thunderbolt II | |
| Designation System: | U.S. Tri-Service | |
| Designation Period: | 1962-Present | |
| Basic role: | Attack | |
| Crew: | 2 | |
Specifications
| Length: | 53' 4" | 16.2 m | |
| Height: | 17' 8" | 5.3 m | |
| Wingspan: | 57' 6" | 17.5 m | |
| Wingarea: | 506.0 sq ft | 47.0 sq m | |
| Empty Weight: | 24,959 lb | 11,319 kg | |
| Gross Weight: | 47,000 lb | 21,315 kg | |
| Max Weight: | 50,000 lb | 22,675 kg | |
Propulsion
| No. of Engines: | 2 | ||
| Powerplant: | General Electric TF34-GE-100 | ||
| Thrust (each): | 9,065 lb | 4,111 kg | |
Performance
| Range: | 2,454 miles | 3,951 km | |
| Cruise Speed: | 345 mph | 555 km/h | 300 kt |
| Max Speed: | 518 mph | 834 km/h | 450 kt |
| Climb: | 6,000 ft/min | 1,828 m/min | |
| Ceiling: | 44,200 ft | 13,472 m | |
Known serial numbers
Recent comments by our visitors
| PacMan , PA | If memory serves me correctly, The A-10 NAW, was not cut in half and new section installed, but they removed some fuel tankage and added the rear seat to the aircraft. 01/24/2015 @ 05:24 [ref: 68902] |
| Jeremy David Young Salt Lake City, UT | Where are we getting the information about 1962? Air Force Official Page says 1972. Just want to know where the info is from? 07/30/2013 @ 21:28 [ref: 67988] |
| S. DeVette Moody AFB, GA | There were TWO YA-10B's built, one is a static display at Edwards AFB, CA and the other did indeed crash. 01/18/2013 @ 08:15 [ref: 67508] |
| john goodman , BC | How many countries was the A-2 two seater flown in trying to to pitch the aircrraft.
03/12/2011 @ 06:48 [ref: 36801] |
| Werner Schulz Melbourne, FL | Only ONE A-10-B was made. It was built at the Republic Farmingdale Plant from a single A-10-A, cut in half and a new bucket was added, the project was completed in approx 30 days by a selected production & engineer crew. Was desgnated be a NATO AW/NF Aircraft It was shipped to Edwards in a Guppy and flew at Edwards, never went to Korea and crashed. 02/14/2011 @ 06:32 [ref: 36002] |
| James , FL | Just a curious question...I had a few buds who wound up on A-10 service on "Round 1 in the Sand Box" and retired before "Round 2". Their one compliment of the 'Hog was its' balance and ability to return to neutral when you dropped the stick. Did the 2 seat variant have this same quality? How did they squeeze in the second saddle...stretch the airframe or squeeze the existing components? As a retired boomer, I rarely saw A-10s (operationaly) and am highly curious about the fate of this mean beast after "Sand Box 2"...
01/14/2009 @ 16:46 [ref: 23489] |
| Winfan , CA | One is now sitting in front of the Edwards AFB museum. 08/08/2007 @ 04:59 [ref: 17516] |
| Bobby Joe Baghdad, OTH | Wow, just woke up from reading Kurt's post. I have not seen/missed his ramblings/meanderings in quite some time. To save all of you alot of time, I edited his thesis down to - there was a two seat A-10, nobody bought it 04/06/2007 @ 04:16 [ref: 16111] |
| Kurt Plummer , CO | Some things to note:
1. The A-10B only came about only after the N/AW program failed and the N/AW itself was a cover for an attempt by Fairchild to bring smart systems (and more powerful dry F404 engines) to the airframe to make it exportable. First customer was supposedly Malaysia, interested in a Sea Control variant with Penguin and Harpoon to nip a budding piracy problem in the nub. That said, the A-10B was a good idea if for no other reason than that it let you do check rides in a tub instead of hauling out two single seaters for the mission. Would've saved about 5-6 million per year, per TFW, and only needed a handful. Period AvLeak articles showed that the type could 'still have it's stick removed and the rear cockpit missionized' and that was that because all the money was fastjet programmed around the ETF/DRF and LANTIRN and Ft. Worth would have no competition for any sale, foreign or abroad. In trade for shutting the shoestring effort down, the mongrel dogs in the USAF leadership 'promised' that the A-10 would be added to the list of LANTIRN users. Even though it was known at the time that the primitive cockpit and lack of a proper databus and automated flight controls would never make that practical. 2. The Trumpeter (and soon Hobby Boss) N/AWs are anything but accurate. Not only do they NOT include the unique WX-50 and Ferranti-105D radar and FLIR/Laser pods; but they also have major airframe features appropriate only for the prototype aircraft which is to say the tails are about 12" too tall and the cockpit armor doesn't extend far enough and the main canopy is not a conventional, one-piece clamshell, as it would have been on the production birds. Further to this, a service N/AW would have had it's radar integrated in whatever gear sponson (Starboard?) didn't have the refueling receptacle and we would have likely used either Pave Tack or a purpose built pod on the centerline. As I recall, the prototype lashup FLIR was for a TOW TI sight and a British laser ranger/designator out of a Harrier GR.3 and while it worked, it wasn't the best for resolution, collimation or 'reliability' (NIH). Lastly there was a gimballed/stabilized LLTV pod in the space formerly taken by the Pave Penny (now in the FLIR/LTD) spot tracker so that the pilot wouldn't lose HUD nav when the WSO stole the FLIR away and this is also not modeled in any of the kits. Without these mission avionics and hardware mods, no kit of the N/AW is anything but a model of the prototype after the N/AW hardware was stripped for the A-10B testing. 3. The A-10 was completely worthless for it's 'intended' (post-Vietnam) role in Europe. No INS, no autopilot, no TISL when it first went overpond, no computing guns, poor radio setup. No missile approach warning or IRJam, ever. And engines that had to be run at high power with the brakes partially cracked because the TF-34s were underpowered to begin with and took forever to spool and the airframe was so badly overweight vice the initial AX spec anyway. A real POC, considering the weather conditions expected to be flown in. In fact, the A-7D was yards and miles superior to both the Hawg and the F-16, especially after hours, simply because it had the radar to do pencilbeam mapping with T/A overlay and it had the gas to run multiple pylon stores at 400 knots. 'And no more', which meant it couldn't be mistaken for a fighter by either a Red Baron wannabe or a mission planner looking to steal sorties. The N/AW went some way to fixing the navproblem at least, given it had the A-7D HUDWAC, a working INS, and moving map as an option. The WX-50 was in fact a /weather radar/ (for a clue, the 150 series was the company name for the APG-66 and the 200 was the APG-68) but had just enough contour read to break you out of clouds and away from powerlines, if the backseater helped. Kind've like the early Pave Low system. The FLIR was good, for what it was, and in those few instances where you had line of sight weather conditions, the type would have probably made a decent FAC-A to replace the OA-37 and OV-10. The big problem with the whole idea was that that, at night, it didn't matter if the FAC had sight of the target because the majority of bomb droppers didn't have an ATHS modem or a TISL to run the updated target mark in to weapons release. Even as the USAF, halfway through the 'Assault Breaker' (WASP, LAD, Pave Mover, Paveway IV) munitions programs intended to provide massed antiarmor capabilities on a smart-missile:dumb airframe basis of point and click utility, instead chose not to field any of it. This meant that the N/AW would have been largely a laydown airplane or low angle bomber (think B-57), working alone with conventional bombs because it was too slow for LGB work and we had just cancelled AGM-65C and sent AGM-65D back to the laboratory. From whence it would not return until 1986 with the Blue Dragons out of BW, about 4-5 years after N/AW shut down. CONCLUSION: By 1991, the realization that the LANTIRN program was itself a complete joke and near total failure was only just beginning to dawn on the USAF but not withstanding this, the 'sky knights don't ride double or below 500 knots' community, along with the strength of the Texas Congressional delegation, had ensured that even the F-15E was being cheated of production orders even as Fairchild had long since closed the Farmingdale line and moved onto greener pastures. Last I heard, they were building Do-328s for Daimler... The best thing about the A-10 was and is it's variable, stable, weapons carriage capabilities and a N/AW with a 12 round WASP pod on stations 4 & 8 would have been an awesome tank killer. KPl. 03/04/2007 @ 01:57 [ref: 15752] |
| Bulldog , TN | They ruined one of the best arcraft in the U.S. Air Force. The A-10 is supposed to be a single person aircraft and they rined it and they ruined the sleek profile. 08/22/2005 @ 11:16 [ref: 11055] |
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