Popular Mechanics; A-10s to stay
Poetrooper sends us a link to the Popular Mechanics article which reports that the Air Force has “fired up” the depot line to keep the parts flowing for the venerable A-10 Thunderbolt. The Air force had planned to shut down the program in 2018, but with no real replacement in the pipeline for the A-10’s close air support role, the aircraft has been revived.
The Hawg isn’t going anywhere.
“They have re-geared up, we’ve turned on the depot line, we’re building it back up in capacity and supply chain,” AFMC chief Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski recently told Aviation Week. “Our command, anyway, is approaching this as another airplane that we are sustaining indefinitely.”
Air Force maintainers are also preparing to replace the wings of the A-10 fleet, tapping a $2 billion contract originally awarded to Boeing in 2007, which was intended at the time to keep the fleet flying until 2028. Some corrosion of the planes has been seen at the depots, but Pawlikowski says this is to be expected, especially on an aircraft that has been in service since 1977.
Grunts everywhere (except ISIS grunts) rejoice.
Category: Air Force
ABOUT DAMN TIME THEY PULLED THEIR HEADS OUT OF THEIR COLLECTIVE ASSES
Oh and for those of you needing a little pick-me-up……(no little blue pill)
“You should seek immediate medical attention for any A-10 attack that lasts longer than 4 minutes.”
Or maybe not a doctor but a priest (mullah?)
A Warthog attack that lasts longer than 4 minutes? Unless you want Last Rites, ain’t a priest on the face of the earth gonna be able to help you.
For any reason, ain’t a mulla on the face of the earth can help you, regardless.
One last A-10 related item….you can shoot the HELL out of them and tear big chunks out of them and this little lady fought back and brought this bird home.
Badass of the week, indeed.
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/kimcampbell.html
And the Soldiers take a collective sigh knowing their butts will be covered for a little while longer.
Maybe they will finally scrap the F-35 program and put money into tried and true war fighting platforms. You know, something we can actually win a war with.
For sure the best close combat support plane ever built! These things are the best ever!!!
Thank goodness! These things are the BEST CAS weapon system ever. It’s too bad they can’t land on a carrier because the Marines would love to have them. Little bit ugly but they have that “don’t get on my bad side” look – just like a lot of Marines I’ve served with! As long as they can finally get USAF pilots to spot the differences between a BMP and an AAV-7 I’m all for keeping these things forever!
An A-10 could be retrofitted for carrier landings and takeoffs. It’s just mechanics.
While it could be theoretically and ‘mechanically’ possible to modify the A-10 for carrier operations, and it would be great to have A-10s supporting Marines from carriers in a conceptual sense, numerous major airframe, avionics, procedural, etc., changes would be required. These changes would take a great deal of time, and they would certainly not be cost effective by any stretch of the imagination. In my opinion, it would be better to design a new carrier-based aircraft with A-10 attributes from the ground up, rather than try to modify the current A-10 for carrier operations. For starters (and this list is by no means complete), the following would be required at a minimum in order to modify the A-10: – Major overall airframe redesign/rework to strengthen the ENTIRE aircraft in order to withstand the repeated violent shocks of catapult launches and arrested landings. – Reinforce the nose strut to accommodate a launch bar. – Reinforce the main landing gear struts and wheels/tires to withstand the impact of carrier landings. – Install a tail hook that could withstand the repeated stresses of carrier arrested landings. – Redesign the wings so that they can be folded in order to facilitate aircraft parking on the flight deck and in the hangar bay. – ‘Navalize’ (harden) the avionics so that they are compatible with shipboard operations. – Make the entire aircraft as corrosion-resistant as possible. (Salt water and aircraft are not friends.) – Ensure that all A-10 aviation ordnance (including rounds for the gun) are certified HERO safe for shipboard operations. If not HERO safe, it would need to be modified to make it so, or left ashore. – Ordnance handling, loading, and arm/de-arm procedures must be modified to comply with Navy shipboard requirements. – All aircraft operating, maintenance, and logistics procedures/requirements would have to me modified to meet Navy shipboard requirements. – All A-10 ground support equipment must be modified for shipboard use. This list could go on and on, but I think that I’ve made my point. Love the A-10, but I don’t see it ever operating from the carrier. Too difficult… Read more »
Not to mention the real estate on the carrier. To put a dedicated ground attack aircraft on the bird farm would require removing organic aircraft already optimized for a multi-mission role, or specialized aircraft needed for force projection and ship self protection.
Excellent point.
The A-10 wouldn’t bring much to the fight if the Carrier Strike Group had to defend itself.
Todd O:
‘As long as they can finally get USAF pilots to spot the differences between a BMP and an AAV-7…’
Are you referring to the tragic Blue-on-Blue incident involving the AAV-7 from Task Force Tarawa in An-Nasiriyah, Iraq on 23 March 2003?
Yes. I served with a radio operator who was in 1/2 during that fight. (This was in 2005 after he was transferred to 10th Marines HQ Battery where I was the commo.) He certainly was holding a serious grudge which I suppose is completely understandable, all things considered.
As to the incident, the AAVP7 has such a unique silhouette it is a wonder how they mistook them for anything but an AAVP7. That being said, however, I have never been in the position of an A-10 driver in battle looking at little specs on the ground where everything is on fire and having to make a split second decision to fire or not. The fact that blue-on-blue incidents were not more prevalent is indicative of the very high quality of fighting men and women in the air.
Oh YEA!!!!!!!LONG OVERDUE! So, where did this dose of common sense in the Pentagon come from?
But…but…but what about the F-35 Does It All, Flies Everywhere, Can’t Be Shot Down Platform?
As far as I know, except for a useful purpose like say, target practice, the F-35 is still being “tested” to work out ever more bugs. Little things like, Nav System malfunctions, control surface failures at sub-performance speeds. You know, little kinks here and there. What a money pit.
While I am all for keeping the A-10, replacing parts on air-frames is a daft policy. Identical to Depot Level Maintenance on Tanks. It is so much cheaper to replace them that the turds that passed the repair policy should be shot for treason..IMHO. Imagine a budget proposal where the costs can be shown to be 10X greater to repair than replace. Additionally, you could keep the line up with all the inherent jobs, associated parts lines, etc…shear insanity.
Haven’t you figured out that the bottom line isn’t about helping the troops, it’s about stuffing someone’s pockets? Someone is making a load of money on this, or it wouldn’t be happening.
Eisenhower explained this rather in the 1950s…
This:
Sanity prevails in the puzzle palace? Hoodathunkit?
It’s good to see we are doing something right with our military. We need this air craft if we get into a fight with a military power that has tanks.
The hostility to the A-10 is a product of intellectual incest in the Air Force’s top leadership. When you and all your peers are fighter pilot-jocks with raging hardons for pointy-nosed, supersonic thoroughbreds, it’s easy to forget that the realities of ground warfare demand workhorses like the A-10… And that calling a quarter horse a “multi-role quarter horse” does not make it a Clydesdale.