When Pigs Fly
They’ve been flying for some time now and people seem to like them a lot. The concern for some time has been whether or not the A-10 a/k/a the Warthog will be mothballed or kept in service.
For anyone who has heard that rapid-fire ‘brrrrrrrrrtttt!’ from a Gatling gun, you’ll be relieved to know that your beloved tank-bustin’ Warthog gets to stick around for a few more years.
http://www.defensenews.com/a10%20retirement%202021
If the discussion revolves around whether to mothball the flying shark, or replace it with a different form of close air support (CAS), the general tendency seems to be moving in the direction of a family of air support for ground forces, which has already been found to be effective.
In my view, as a taxpayer, I’d question the need to move away from something that works, especially since money is limited at this point. Remember, the CiC has to persuade Congress that his programs are more important than funding some daydreams.
Meantime, USAF Chief of Staff GEN Goldfein wants off-the-shelf stuff, not experimental airframes. He sounds like a practical sort.
Category: Military issues
I don’t know how this will play into the mix:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a25078/f-35-red-flag-war-games/
Unh huh….you sure that’s not The Onion or Duffelblog?
http://i.imgur.com/seh6p.gif
Popular Mechanics usually doesn’t do much spoof stuff, and they quote/link to Aviation Week (link is down right now, though).
Reading the article it seems encouraging. I can see how the F-35 and the A-10 could coordinate to do some major hurt on the bad guys.
Well being one of the resident AF guys here, and seeing as how in 1984 I was first introduced to the A-10 in Tech School because they had a 30mm round in a display case, I was amazed that there was an aircraft that could shoot so many of those so quickly and with such deadly accuracy.
WOOOOOOOOSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
BBBBUURRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!
Motherfkckers!!!!
(Not responsible for instances of spontaneous Morning Wood)
What a great way to start a morning! My secret dream years ago was to cross-train to pilot and fly the A-10, but women weren’t allowed to fly anything except transports then.
GEN Goldfein’s daughter and my son went to school together, so I’ve met him and spent a little time talking with him. Seems to be a pretty down-to-earth, no-nonsense guy.
That first minute is something I bet few want to see on a battlefield. “damn, he missed me! Oh, shit. Here he comes again.
MY GOD!!! How I love those things, even one flying overhead will scare the living shit out of you! They are my favorite ever plane! I live close to the Avon Park Bombing Range, I really get a boner when the come flying by at full throttle! The AF would be nuts to ever give up those wonderful planes!!!
“Takes a lickin’ and keeps on ticken”.
What other aircraft can get hit like this and still survive.
If they make a plane this tough and this difficult to destroy, then aside from its range, it makes no sense to abandon it.
^^+1
If it ain’t broke, DON’T FIX IT!!
“But…but…but…we gotta mess with something to justify our existance!”
The fact that neither the A-10 nor AH-64 can survive very long in a non-permissive environment has nothing to do it, natch… :/
(yes, I agree that the procurement system is broken and the GOFOs need to quit killing usable systems to “save money.”)
Best video/description of WHY it was created ever. Yea. Pigs can fly. Love the Warthog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofoX2YsSJi0
Don’t look at the lyrics, but that song alongside some of those vids are cool enough to rate a link.
Glad these guys are on OUR side. First time I saw one was a Yakima Training Center. The evaluator had told me to stop the tank, pop smoke, and we were dead. It seemed to me that the damned thing actually had to pull up to fly over my dead (for the moment) M60A1.
Whats that thing sergeant? Son that’s an A-10, youre deader than hell, not that you could have done much. I looked around and saw three other plumes of smoke going towards the sky…damn.
Same way I feel about an F-15 Eagle when they fly over low…and when they hit the afterburners..
oh the insta-wood…
DAMNED GLAD we have them in OUR arsenal!
I can’t find it (but I didn’t try hard either) but there was a picture of a Hog in Gulf 2 that was shot up BAD, yet the female pilot got back to base safely. Amazing plane.
I found it: http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Stories1/001-100/0016_A-10-battle-damage/story0016.htm
Campbell flew that plane by wire, literally. When the plane is that tough, and still airworthy despite being shot to pieces, it should not be abandoned for something prettier.
I like GEN Goldfein’s attitude.
That ought to be demoralizing to all the goat-lovers.
Great job.
That reminds me of pictures of the old B-17’s landing back in England back in WWII, it was amazing those planes remained in the air! BZ to the young lady, she did a great job in flying a brick!
Before and in the early stages of WWII the Soviets briefly experimented with “flying tanks.”
OTOH, we actually BUILT and deployed one!
The Sturmovik was hardly an experiment, especially considering it is the most-produced military aircraft in history.
I will grant that the Il-2 wasn’t in the same league as the Hog…
Trivia question: what other Republic aircraft enjoyed the nickname of “Hog?”
These critters all had that nickname:
Republic F-84 Thunderjet
Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II
Lockheed C-130 Hercules
Bell UH-1 Iroquois
Ol’ Poe was once the primary target of a pair of Hogs from England AFB in the early 1980’s out in Western Louisiana while driving down a long, straight stretch of rural highway. Unknown to me they came in low and slow behind me so that my first hint of their presence was the concussive blast of air and sound as the first went over followed quickly by the second. Then they circled back and made a second run. Even though it was just for fun, it was an eerie feeling knowing that if it had been the real thing, yours truly would have been a very dead Poe.
https://youtu.be/OAe68x3hDh0
Woulda scattered your shit from hell to breakfast!
At my previous address, the A-10s from Selfridge ANG base used it as a waypoint when they flew their training missions. Many times, I do believe they even came over below the minimums set for their training.
The pilots waved, waggled the wings and, once in a while they’d do a 360, before setting off for home. Loved the sound of that thing flying over, and watching it.
I had the opportunity to Hear Gen Goldfein speak at ADAB shortly after he took the position of Chief of Staff AF. He is very practicality minded and has been a breath of fresh air in the wake of the now retired Gen Welsh.
If he succeeds at his stated top 3 priorities it will go a long way towards making the AF capable and healthy again.
My Unit did Convoy Security while I was in A-stan and A-10s were a very welcome sight to see when we were guarding a Convoy from Point A to Point B, just the sight of them made Hadji stay quiet and keep hiding behind his berm.
And yet the B52 Stratfort has been operating since the 1950s. Often imitated (B1, B2 bombers), never duplicated.
And TPTB want to replace the A10? Silly wankers.
A-10 Warthog, always a crowd pleaser!
I think that a lot of the fans pushing the new f-35 Do everything are missing the big picture. Many battlefields don’t require the latest and greatest and it would be a waste to use the new fighters over it when they could be used somewhere else to better effect.
I had the dubious pleasure of riding my motorcycle through the northern Nevada desert close to their flight path years ago, busy listening to my stereo. You want to have the ever loving crap scared out of you, be riding along, minding your own business and have one of them come down close to the highway and buzz you! Then he wagged his wings once he was past me far enough, and off he went. I’d spent 20+ years on the flightline at Fairchild AFB, and trust me, it didn’t do squat for preparing me for that little shakeup. There’s a reason why they call them “Low, Slow and Close to the Ground” birds!!
Before my years with Dustoff as a flight medic, I was (right after AIT) assigned as a medic to a 155 ARTY unit with the Big Red One. True story’ REFORGER 79, in the woods somewhere near Wurzburg, I found (what I thought) was a quite place to take a wiz….silence, solitude. Half way through “draining the the main vain” above my head, no more than tree top level an effin A-10 THUNDERBOLT 2 (WARTHOG) shatters the silence and scares the bejesus out of me. I swear I didn’t hear it until that SOB was right over my head. As I walked back to the TOC with piss all over my field pants, I said to myself: self, I’m glad that SOB is on our side.