A-10 on chopping block again
I remember prior to the first Gulf War, the first thing the Air Force wanted to cut was the A-10 close air support aircraft for the “Peace Dividend”, not because it didn’t work, but rather because it wasn’t sexy enough for the Air Force. But then in the middle of shutting the program down, Saddam Hussein intervened and the A-10 proved to be the star of that brief conflict. Then there was talk of cutting the aircraft from the roles before 9-11 and reality intervened again. Now, according to the Washington Times, the A-10 is facing extinction once again;
“Is the A-10 the best at close air support? Absolutely,” Gen. Welsh, a former A-10 pilot, said Friday at a Pentagon news conference. “[But] we can do it with other aircraft. Those other aircraft do other things for us.”
Supporters of the Warthog say other aircraft can perform close air support only in a “second-rate manner” and service members fighting on the ground would end up suffering the most from its elimination.
“The A-10 has proven successful in every single war we’ve fought since Desert Storm in 1991,” said Winslow T. Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Project on Government Oversight.
“In 2000, name one person who said the next war we would fight would be in Afghanistan and would be a ground war,” Mr. Wheeler said. “Anybody who says they know what the next war is going to be like and therefore we need ‘X’ and should discard ‘Y’ is a person with an agenda.”
I don’t think there is a US infantryman alive that didn’t suddenly get a warm and fuzzy feeling at the sight of the A-10 circling over his battle space. The Air Force says that they’re shifting their focus to the Pacific Rim and the A-10 doesn’t fit that shift. I guess it’s because the Chinese hordes are impervious to the 30mm cannon, and the inherent survivability of the aircraft doesn’t work over Asia. The general admits that the A-10 is the best aircraft at close air support, but he still wants to tube the system – does that mean that he really doesn’t care about giving the troops the best support he can give them?
Category: Air Force
the sound of its main gun firing rolling up the valley still warms my heart…..
“We can do it with other aircraft”.
Name one (that has been proven in combat that is).
No need for a weapons system that is proven, works well, is cost effective, makes sense, or anything reasonable. Yeah, take it out of service. Just because.
What? Ya can’t tell that was sarc?
So what are they using instead? C-130 gunships? They’re in style and those seem like they’d do about as well. They can probably stay on station a ton longer too if I had to guess.
There has been a lot of talk that the F35 could fill the close combat role, what with its VTOL capabilities. To me, such talk is stupid, even assuming that overpriced piece of shit works.
Just think of the politicians’ vacations that can be paid for with the money saved!! /sarc
@4 they only have a handful of AC-130’s and I doubt Big Blue is going to expand that program.
The A-10 has more tha nproven itself in its ground support attack role… AF wants high profile, sexy aircraft.
The Army wanted to take the A-10 off of the Air Forces hands the last time they tried dumping it, maybe it is about time for the AF to let loose its grip on fixed wing aircraft.
I’m guessing that few of you have noticed that over the last couple opf weeks more stories of military waste have been rolled out by BIG MEDIA. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence and that reporters just happen to be thinking of the same stuff to cover at the same time as every other reporter. Ditto the news wholesalers. Has nothin’ to do with slicing and dicing the military or retiree benies or anything of the sort. It’s all just a big coincidence. (Oh, and no matter that certain expenditures wasted have nothing whatsoever to do with reduced or minimized funding for personel. The public perception is what counts, not the reality.)
As for the flying tanks, pilots love ’em, the enemy hates’em, and our ground troops have always worshipped them. So, naturally, it just has to go.
@4-The problem with the AC-130 is that it works awesome against relatively unsophisticated military forces like al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but it’s only for use in a climate where you have complete air superiority. They’re horrifically vulnerable to even primitive anti-aircraft systems. To provide accurate fire, they have to fly very low and very slow. The Air Force’s rules of engagement won’t even let them into a moderately insecure airspace now since Spirit 03 was downed in the Persian Gulf War by a lone Iraqi with a MANPADS, killing everybody on board. During the initial invasion of Iraq, the A-10 was able to go into many heavily defended places the AC-130 couldn’t (like the heart of Baghdad) because it could fly low and fast. The AC-130 can’t replace the A-10.
“…not because it didn’t work, but rather because it wasn’t sexy enough for the Air Force.”
I bet there are a ton of A-10 pilots who would forcefully disagree!
The A-10 is an awesome bird. I remember watching some operating around Barbers Point, Hawaii back in the day. Those things can turn on a dime!
I will buy this ugly woman a beer any day!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BecNTYPYbU
She may sound bad but she will kicj thy enemies ass!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0PgPK67jwc
And my fav Warthog clip is:
The damn f-35 is what needs canceling. The dumbfucks are trying to say the high accuracy is the same thing as CLOSE Air Support. It doesn’t matter if they can drop a JDAM the the enemy’s pee hole, you have to be able to put effective firepower on the enemy And CLOSE to friendlies where they need it! THAT is why the armored A-10 and its Cannon are so important. You can’t provide the same sort of support with bombs, guided or not.
Right, a great, proven aircraft in a ground support role that has incredible survivability due to the rugged construction and twin engines is no longer necessary. Let’s replace it with something not designed for the role that costs 20 times as much and is considerably more fragile….who in the f#ck is in charge of this sh1t?
fastest way to get the Air Farce to keep the A-10 alive? Have the Army announce they want them.
Over 27 years working in the military and “lessons learned” mean jack to them. It’s all about the mighty dollar. Ask any ground pounder about the A-10 and you get a huge “YES”. Give the project to the Army and settle this. They have fixed wing aviators that I sure would love to prove its effectiveness in combat. The Air Force just doesn’t want any thunder taken and to be proven wrong.
The AC-130 was used in/around Kandahar when I was there in 2011.
It’s all about whether the vehicle in question is sleek and sexy enough for the USAF.
The warthog is not pretty. Long nose, stubby wings, and a big, loud mouth. The warthog is what you use when you need to hit someone with the ugly stick. She just isn’t pretty enough for the chairforce.
No, the Warthog is not pretty. Neither are a lot of other aircraft. It is an effective weapons system, one which more than a few members of the “chair force” appreciate.
I must say I don’t understand this…again. I wish when I was in Vietnam we had had a platform like the A-10. The closest I experienced were the Sandies. They were low flying, slow when needed and fast enough when needed, turned on a dime and very accurate. The higher priced F-4 could do a lot of damage but was way too fast for accurate close in support. The in and out path of the Huey gunships and Cobras were pretty predictable to the enemy. Though they did a great and fearless job in my experience and I thank those crews to this day. I cannot believe the USAF is doing this again. I say let the Army take over the Warthog inventory and continue its successful mission. There is nothing else of the quantity needed, in the Air Force arsenal that can come close to the job the A-10 does so well. But then again I am speaking in logical terms. Something that seems to escape the Air Force and the DoD. The AC-130 is great at what it does. But it is a high value item to the Air Force and they will not risk them in situations the A-10 was made for. Plus there are not enough of them. The A-10 can be up and on target in relatively no time. It takes considerably longer to get an AC-130 crewed up and in the air and at target when you need them. The alternative is leaving them to linger over the target areas, which the Air Force doesn’t like. General Welsh does have an agenda and it is not in the best interest of the grunts on the ground!
Form should follow function. By those standards, the A-10 is beautiful and sexy. Ever since that summer day in the mid 1970’s when I was hitchhiking thru lovely Boron, CA in the Mojave Desert, and I heard a quickly building roar for about three seconds before an A-10 streaked over my head at what seemed about 30 feet above the ground, startled the s**t out of me, made me realize what a sitting duck a tank would make; ever since then I have been a fan of the A-10. They’ve kept the B-52’s around for a long time (original contract in 1946!) because they do the job – they should do likewise with the A-10.
@20 Well said Joe. The B-52 gets the job done and has stood the test of time. So has the A-10. I think they are both beautiful birds!
That’s the beauty of the ugly ass A-10. It was built with this role entirely in mind. It was basically built as a huge FUCKING GUN WITH A LOW STALL SPEED.
For those who don’t know, here’s what ‘stall’ means:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stall_%28flight%29
To put it simply, a stall speed is the speed at which a plane will no longer maintain the altitude it has and begins to head back toward the ground. A low stall speed means that you can slow way the hell down and not lose the ability to stay in the air and in complete control of an aircraft. An A-10 stalls at ~120knots and has a top speed of ~380knots. 120 knots is somewhere around 138 miles an hour, which means that you can fly this about as fast as some street legal cars can go and still have control. When every other aircraft is so dependent on thrust for its lift, the Warthog, that ugly bitch, is dependent on good old fashioned glide ratio. It can slow down to speeds where any other aircraft might find itself nosing into the pavement and deliver a barrage of 30mm ammo from that GAU-8 while cruising along at speeds cars can reach, which is kind of important for CAS from a plane.
And the F35 is absolute garbage. The idea was stupid. I’ve talked to NO PILOT from any service, civilian work, or even commercial pilot who has though that it was a good idea. It underperforms on every level. The F22 was a far superior aircraft AND WE HAD ALREADY FINISHED BUILDING THE DAMN THING. Then it got scrapped for a ‘jack of all trades’ piece of shit aircraft.
Somewhere, some Lockheed Martin lobbyist is grinning.
Oh, and I agree on the B-52. These are two aircraft built entirely around ONE role. The B-52 was built to deliver immense loads of hell in the form of bombs. The B-52 was basically designed for the carpet bombing it saw in Vietnam. The A-10 was a plane designed entirely around a gun, the GAU-8, and with the premise of keeping that gun trained on an area or target as long as possible.
The AC-130 is a great aircraft. The A-10 is a great aircraft. Comparing the two, and expecting them to do the same job, is a little bit better than expecting a rowboat and a glider to perform the same tasks. Maybe comparing a Jeep Cherokee and a hearse would be a better analogy? Both are great modes of transportation, both could be armed, but while a casket could be stuffed into one, the other was designed to carry a casket.
Back in my days in the Army, 1960-’64, The Shiny New M-14 came along. They said it could replace 4 different weapons, using 3 different types of Ammo.
It replaced(?):
The M-1 Garand
The M-1/2 .30 Carbine
The .30 Browning Automatic Rifle
The .45 “Greasegun
Perhaps it did nearly equal the Garand, but it was longer and clumsier than the Carbine, and never ever could match the B.A.R. in accuracy and ability to sustain high rates of fire, and much longer, bulkier, than the Greasegun,
There IS NO One Size Fits All weapon, on the ground or in the air, and especially not in the area between those two, where the A-10 performs so damned well.
Typical money driven congressional decision.
I don’t think this one’s on Congress, FO. Some in the USAF have been trying to get rid of the A-10 since before it was in test flight – and especially since the late 1980s/early 1990s. They’ve never particularly wanted the bird.
@26
Remember how they tried to do the same thing with the M16? Sabotage it and screw it every way they can?
Just sayin.
I guess that squadron of A-10s at Osan Air Base is not really necessary then. /sarc
i remember doing BRM at Lost in the Woods back in ’93 when i heard the most glorious sound ever- BRRRRRRRRRRRRT!
we all had to be yelled at to go back firing but it just wasn’t the same after watching them do their gun runs downrange.
Every one of these flags is pre-positioning themselves for their post military career in the private sector. I went to plenty of Flag retirements and heard all the wives say the same thing…”now it’s our turn.”
What’s it take to buy a General? Not much, I reckon.
1 word unfuckingbelivable sorry 2 words assclowns.
The Officers union has never liked the A-10. Not from its inception, not the sexy fighter type aircraft they all see themselves being aces in. Give it to the army, and give the pilots an opportunity to switch services and see how fast the AF shrinks…
build a 1000 of them — i am sure a certain small country in the mid-east would love to blow up tanks up with them if worse comes to worse.
The A-10 is a Nam Helo crew chief’s wet dream.The A-4 Skyraider was as close as we could get to Warhog,to me this is the best close-support aircraft to date. I am sure the Marine Corps would gladly take the A-10 off the Airfarce’s hands. Joe
the f–ing air force spends more on one fighter that the Army and Marines spend on all their small arms combined. The Air Force just wants to buy big shit and not support the grunts. The A-10 is a f–ing rock star
The F-4 Phantom didn’t need guns (they said), so why would the grunts on the ground need the A-10 ?
My department runs fixed-wing and choppers for fire suppression (choppers also do rescues). I remember the last time the Air Force tried to get rid of the A-10s, we said we would take them as air tankers. They thought it would be a good excuse to retire them all (though we would take a dozen at the most), and we’ve used lots of military airframes over the years; TBM Avengers, C-119s, O-1 Birddogs, most recently Hueys, OV-10s, and S-2s. In order to be effective in wildland firefighting, a tanker needs to be able to perform really well low and slow, especially in rough topography, and be engineered to withstand the shock of jettisoning 10 tons in flight. This is why that damned DC-10 sucks at it, and why (thank God) that 747 abortion hasn’t done much. The A-10 seemed like a perfect fit for the job…until the Air Force tried to test it with the GAU-8 removed. It. Wouldn’t. Fly. The A-10 is not a plane with a gun in the nose, it’s a gun with a plane attached to the back of it. Without that ginormous, God’s-Wrath-firing gun up front, it’s apparently aerodynamically unsound. They even tried sticking a lead block in place of it, still didn’t work. It became clear very quickly that the A-10 does not have a purpose that doesn’t involve blowing shit up. And as I understand it, it blows up more shit, faster, better, for longer, without missing, and without hitting anything you don’t want dead, while laughing maniacally at whatever hits it (right before turning around and bestowing the Darwin Award upon the idiot dumb enough to try), than anything else known to man. I know they claim the F-35 can do it too, but common sense would seem to disagree. I’m no expert on either airframe, but I’ve seen plenty of pictures of an A-10 with a 3rd-world army’s worth of firepower hanging under each wing, plus God’s Own Boomstick in the nose. F-35s are supposed to carry their payload in internal bays to maintain stealth and aerodynamic qualities, right? So unless… Read more »
Sitting here at hot base in Afghanistan, we had A-10’s overhead everyday–hearing that gun go off was always a smile bringer. :))
@34 Absolutely, give ’em here! *sigh* Aw, who am I kidding? Our generals are just as in love with the JSF (that’s “Joint Strike Fiasco”, mind you) as all the other brass. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool techie, but the JSF is a flying Bradley. They (the politicos pushing things, not the poor engineers) are so fixated on making it do everything that they’re blind to the fact that is does everything poorly. What happened to “Use the right tool for the job”?
OK…give the CAS mission to the Army (ala Marine’s) and transferA10s to the Army. Then watch the USAF outrage. This is pure politics.
Beretverde: as I understand it, that’s precisely what was proposed when the A-10 was first developed – and after Desert Storm.
The A-10 is a flying machine gun, right? It’s purpose is to shoot up enemy positions and equipment, not engage in dogfights (unless it has to). It carries a high load of ammunition on a mission. Also, it’s as tough as nails and hard to kill. Is that correct?
The F-35, on the other hand, is a fighter jet that can carry a couple of bombs in its belly if there is room, but it real purpose is air-to-air dogfights. Correct? It’s also thin-skinned and can easily be shot down by a good fighter pilot.
Well, logically, the stronger, more maneuverable and more versatile A-10 can do more in a short time and is less vulnerable than the more glamorous F-35 (and more expensive), which is very sleek and pretty.
It’s kind of like the difference between a Mack truck and a Ferrari. They both serve a purpose, they both have their uses, but one costs a whole lot more than the other and has a limited field of use. Unless I see real-world videos of the F-35 pulling off the Warthog stuff, I think I’d stick with the Hog. And put some tusks on that snout.
man the brass is stupid. can we just put the e-7s in charge?
and only the ones who do what their branch does. (crewchiefs for af, infantry for army/marines, and… whatever it is the navy does…)
@43 I agree, put the NCOs with ground experience in charge. When I was a new boot, an E-9 told me, “the Officers are the head of the military but the NCOs are the backbone. But don’t worry he said, you guys are right below us”. Took me about a year for what he said to sink in.
@39 Don’t buy into the stupid “Pentagon Wars” movie, the Bradley is a lot cheaper than F-35 and could at least do its job right out of the box, has put in decades of good service and with upgrades will potentially remain competitive for years to come. The chairforce nimrod who wrote that knows nothing about the IFV concept. I suspect he and hollywood were a lot more worried about making the Army look bad than any sort of procurement reform.
@42, the theory is that surface to air missiles have taken a quantum leap in effectiveness since the A-10 was introduced. So, when going up against things like the S-300 the Russians have, the A-10 is very vulnerable.
In other words, she can take a punch but she’ll end up taking a lot of them – whereas the stealthy F-35 won’t have to take a punch at all. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the F-35’s stealth will stand the test of time either.
That’s the theory. It’s not one I personally agree with. As was pointed out, nobody knows what the next war will look like. Removing a proven, effective tool from your arsenal in favor of new and shiny isn’t smart, IMHO.
@40 $& 41: Last time the USAF tried to kill the A-10, the Army tried to take them but only as reconniassance birds (which is the same thing that happened with the OV-1 Mohawk, BTW – another aircraft that could fly low and slow and was originally designed as a Close Air Support – CAS – aircraft.)
The reason the Army couldn’t put them in a CAS role, BTW, goes back to an agreement between the Army and Air Force that I think was signed in the 1950s? (somebody help me out here.) Bottom line is that in order to prevent duplicatino of effort, there are certain activities that are restricted to one service or the other.
For example, have you noticed that the Air Force doesn’t have any attack helicopters? My understanding is that that’s because the agreement prohibits the AF from having rotary wing aircraft with guns that fire forward (AF Helos can have guns that fire to the side or rear, for self-defense.)
Similarly, the Army is not allowed to have armed fixed-wing aircraft at all, as that is an Air Force mission.
I think the reason for the agreement was, as I said above, to keep the Army and Air Force from spending R&D dollars for competing platforms that do the same thing, but what it really shows (in the opinion of this retired Army guy) is that the division between the USAF and the Army is an artificial one.
If I was the King of the Universe, the first thing I’d do is peel off the tactical air force and put it under Army command (basically everything that used to be called “Tactical Air Command.”) The USAF would continue to exist and would have the Air Defense mission, the ICBMs, Military Airlift, and Strategic bombers, but everything that is supposed to fly over an active battlefield would be under the USAAF, where it should be. That would include, BTW, AC-130 Spectre gunships as well as C-130 transports that drop paratroopers.
martinjmpr: that would be the Key West Agreement, 1948, which set the roles and missions for the USAF. There have been numerous discussions since as to whether or not it’s still needed.
My understanding was that the Army originally said, “If you don’t want to do the mission, then forget Key West; it’s outdated. We’ll take the mission, the A-10 assets – and the budget and personnel that support them”. The USAF balked, and the Army then backed down to “we’ll take some for recon only”. The USAF still was worried enough to retain the A-10 and the mission in its entirety.
That may or may not be what actually happened. But it does match my knowledge of how inter-service politics often play out.
KenWats: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
That was virtually the identical argument used in the 1950s regarding why the generation of USAF/USN aircraft being designed for the 1960s didn’t need guns. (The argument then was that future air combat would be beyond-visual-range engagements via radar-guided AAMs.) The same reason was also used as justification regarding why those same aircraft did not need to be able to maneuver particularly well in a dogfight. When Vietnam heated up out, we (flying A4s, A8s, F105s, and F4s) nearly ended up losing our azz initially to older MIGs (MIG-19s/MIG-21s) that had guns and could maneuver.
The A-10 has always been vulnerable (to a degree) to both SAMs and ground fire. That’s one reason that relatively low cost was an A-10 design criteria – specifically, so we could buy enough of them to cover anticipated combat losses. The bird was designed back when people realized that losses were a fact of war, and were to some extent unavoidable.
Yeah, that sounds cold. Sorry, but the “gods of war” don’t care.
Until we quit denying that harsh truth, IMO we’ll keep tying to build gold-plated “silver bullets” at a ridiculous cost.
Politics will always win out over common sense.