A-10s in Battle of Hoth

[Picard]

By act of ROB, all Snow Speeders in Battle of Hoth get replaced by equal number of A-10s (with all necessary modifications to function in the cold weather).

How does this go?

[Lucky]

By act of ROB, all Snow Speeders in Battle of Hoth get replaced by equal number of A-10s (with all necessary modifications to function in the cold weather).

How does this go?

You mean the snow speeders are replaced with A-10 Thunderbolt-II correct? Then it goes much the same for the Rebels I think. The Battle of Hoth ended in favor of the the Rebels. It was a delaying action after all.

We can't be sure how effective an AT-AT's armor really is. If the Rebels target the cockpit window, the neck, belly, and ground under the AT-AT they should do fine, but anti-armor weapons are not unknown in Star Wars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP36752mf-o

[Mr. Oragahn]

Missiles give range, but they may be totally useless against armour. If so, the close in attack the A-10s use will be impossible to apply here. One thing we see in TESB, clearly, is that not only snowspeeders are much more maneuverable than warthogs, but that never saved them from being hit at ranges superior to anything I've seen employed by A-10s.
I don't even think a warthog could withstand the kind of buffeting flak fire the snowspeeders were taking. And what use would the miniguns be anyway?
BSU-49 bombs would be a good option against the walkers, but then again the walkers can easily shoot at them, and we don't have to assume that the rebels would have any such weapons at their disposal. Not because of universe-transition problems, but because of the limits in resources they suffered of. Otherwise, it's the same story, why not use X-wings and proton torps against the walkers?

[Sideswipe]

One thing we see in TESB, clearly, is that not only snowspeeders are much more maneuverable than warthogs, but that never saved them from being hit at ranges superior to anything I've seen employed by A-10s.

That is completely ridiculous. We never see a walker shoot down a snow speeder at a mile away, not to mention 15 miles away, which is the Maverick's range. A-10's are specifically designed to kill armored vehicles, there is no doubt in my mind that they could do significant damage to the walkers. We even see a snowspeeder penetrate the armor of a walker. Every time we see blasters in use they are unimpressive compared to modern chemically propelled ammunition. Depleted uranium may even be more effective.

[359]

I don't even think a warthog could withstand the kind of buffeting flak fire the snowspeeders were taking.

An A-10 will keep flying even with one engine, one tail, one elevator, and half of one wing missing. It is also heavily armored so that can withstand 27 mm rounds and several 57 mm rounds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_ ... Durability

[Jasonb]

Big issue range A-10 has it able hit target nearly 15 mile away. A A-10 even guild the anti arm missile to it target. Allow pilot watch hit the soft spot of AT-AT. Yes Rebel limit resource if going compare them to Empire. However Rebel many time more resource must countries having include USA>

[Picard]

Missiles give range, but they may be totally useless against armour. If so, the close in attack the A-10s use will be impossible to apply here. One thing we see in TESB, clearly, is that not only snowspeeders are much more maneuverable than warthogs, but that never saved them from being hit at ranges superior to anything I've seen employed by A-10s.
I don't even think a warthog could withstand the kind of buffeting flak fire the snowspeeders were taking. And what use would the miniguns be anyway?
BSU-49 bombs would be a good option against the walkers, but then again the walkers can easily shoot at them, and we don't have to assume that the rebels would have any such weapons at their disposal. Not because of universe-transition problems, but because of the limits in resources they suffered of. Otherwise, it's the same story, why not use X-wings and proton torps against the walkers?

A-10 can tank close hit by a SAM. As for range, do we have any figures of Walker's range against Snowspeeders? GAU-8 has range of over 3 500 meters, AGM-65 22 km, JDAM 28 km (and 900 kg of explosive).

[Mr. Oragahn]

One thing we see in TESB, clearly, is that not only snowspeeders are much more maneuverable than warthogs, but that never saved them from being hit at ranges superior to anything I've seen employed by A-10s.

That is completely ridiculous. We never see a walker shoot down a snow speeder at a mile away, not to mention 15 miles away, which is the Maverick's range. A-10's are specifically designed to kill armored vehicles, there is no doubt in my mind that they could do significant damage to the walkers. We even see a snowspeeder penetrate the armor of a walker. Every time we see blasters in use they are unimpressive compared to modern chemically propelled ammunition.

Such is not true, and there's a wide variety of blasters.
Now this counts as a response to all posts mentioning missiles: we could say the same about the Rebels. We know missiles exist, that rocket launchers exist, that the X-wings might have had proton torpedoes, etc. The problem being that none was used, that no mines were placed, and that evidently, those rebels were quite short on such material.
So if you give A-10s their full long range armament, OK, it has high chances of working.

Another question being if A-10s can actually operate under such weather conditions?

Depleted uranium may even be more effective.

Or may not. Thermal properties are different than sheer material strength against sudden alterations produced by local forces.

[Mr. Oragahn]

We can take a look at the thickness of the plating as Luke hooks himself to the belly of an AT-AT. It seems about as thick as the arm of Luke in that orange suit. We're probably looking at 13 to 15 centimeters or armour on the sides, and the legs, less armoured, were able to take the fire from defense cannons meant to actually take down tanks.
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/dvd/zs ... 2belly.jpg
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/dvd/zs ... 3belly.jpg

There is also the very strong likeliness of a form of a basic polarized shielding, which might trigger missiles away from the hull, enough to dramatically lower their efficiency by a huge degree.

One could question the use of flak mode on snowspeeder cannons and consider the flashes to be related to forcefields of some sort, but that's a big can of worms and I generally often side with the flak burst on that one.