But the twin-jet A-10, an ungainly-looking, single-pilot plane with thick, straight wings and a massive, nose-mounted cannon, is out of favor with Air Force leaders — despite being vitally important to the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State. The flying branch’s top generals and civilian officials have fought for years to get rid of all 300 A-10s and divert their operators and budget to other initiatives. Meanwhile, a grass-roots effort led by current and former U.S. ground troops and bolstered by key lawmakers has protected the A-10, also known by its nickname “Warthog.”
Why the Warthog fell out of favor, and how the plane endures despite the Air Force’s eagerness to retire it, reveals deep schisms within the U.S. military as it continues its war against Islamic extremists while also retooling to deter high-tech Russian forces.
These are two excerpts from the longer article. I can't recommend reading it highly enough. More importantly, I think we (either as individuals or as a group) need to wade into this. It's absolute horseshit to get rid of the best warplane in our inventory. Keeping the ground troops safe HAS to be our highest priority.“The A-10 and the close-air support mission have always been seen as lower priorities that take money away from favored programs,” said Mandy Smithberger, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, part of the Project On Government Oversight in Washington. [“For the Air Force, it’s not an emotional issue: it’s a sequestration-driven decision,” explained General Mark Welsh, the Air Force chief of staff. “We don’t have enough money last year or this coming year to fund all of the things that we currently have in our force structure.” The Air Force said it would reassign F-15s and F-16s — and eventually F-35s — to support the ground troops.
The flying branch justified the plan to get rid of the A-10 on technological grounds. “Ten years from now, we must be a more modern Air Force,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told the Washington Post. “We have to buy new [aircraft], and we have to keep advancing the ball on technology so that we stay ahead of our potential adversaries around the world.”
The Government Accountability Office questioned the Air Force’s assertion that retiring the A-10s would save billions of dollars. “The Air Force has not fully assessed the cost savings associated with A-10 divestment or its alternatives,” the agency reported. “Our analysis found that the Air Force’s estimated savings are incomplete.”
Indeed, the brute-simple Warthog costs just $17,000 per flight hour for fuel and maintenance. An F-16 costs $22,000 per hour. An F-35 costs almost double the Warthog — $32,000 per hour. And an F-15 costs even more, roughly $42,000 for every hour it’s in the air. The A-10 is cheap.
I plan on contacting my elected officials about this. I will be sending them a polite but very strongly worded opinion on how we need to keep the A-10 flying. I hope I convince all of you to do the same.
I've always been struck that the Buck Rogers service has the A-10 and the actual ground pounding services didn't. And having an aircraft carrier variant makes sense on many different levels.
