GREAT NEWS!
Have them fly border patrol.
They are pretty vulnerable in a modern integrated air defense environment. However, we’ve tended to fight wars where such doesn’t exist, or doesn’t exist for long. And fundamentally, the Air Force has to be drug kicking and screaming to provide true close air support, which is an aspect of this vote. It’s part of why the Marines have never given up their air component.
There is nothing to replace the A-10 design. We have to keep it flying.
GOOD.
Now, re-tool and build brand new ones.
I’ve said this at least 20 times, so here I go again: the air force has never liked the A-10. The ground attack role isn’t “sexy” enough for the wing wipers. Give them to marine aviation.
CC
Every time they showed a 500 lb bomb be used in the mid east to take out a pickup truck or some other type of ground vehicle I kept wondering where are the A10s that could do that job at probably 1/10th the cost.
Glad to see we're keeping it.
The A-10 provides close combat support now.
Eventually the F-35 will provide oit by controlling drones.
THREE CHEERS for the WARTHOG & for the (mostly) AIR NATIONAL GUARD pilots that fly them so bravely.
In my day (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth!) as a MIKE PAPA, when things got “sporty”, we looked forward to the ROAR of the A10 “down in the weeds” & firing CSA fires, sometimes within 10M of our fragile bodies.
(When Combat Support MPs talk about CLOSE AIR SUPPORT, that’s what we mean.= REALLY CLOSE.)
Yours, TMN78247
If an airplane needed saving just because of looks, the A10 is it.
I know. That’s not a reasonable reason.
But God how I love their mean, butt ugly look.
Love the sound of these things. I call it “God’s Zipper”.
I remember working out in Tuscon, AZ in the late 1990s and the A-10s were constantly doing maneuvers, touch & gos, circling the area etc. around Davis Monthan AFB They would get your attention...nothing like em.
Basically, a flying tank. Not sexy enough for the Air Force brass, but the Army and Marines must love the sound of that 30mm Gatling. Its WWII grandfather was the P-47 Thunderbolt. There are stories of Luftwaffe fighters running out of ammunition trying to bring one down and the pilots ending up flying alongside and saluting. It was replaced in the bomber escort role with the P-51 Mustang, but as a heavily armored ground attack plane it was unmatched. Just like Junior.
One morning, about 25 years ago, I was skiing the slalom course on Heritage Lake, a 375 acre private lake about 30 miles west of Indianapolis. I had just gotten around buoy number 3, pulled the rope handle to my hip and started digging for buoy number 4. That’s when I got the shit scared out of me.
As I turned my head to the other shoreline to square-up my shoulders, two A-10 Thunderbolts, undoubtedly flying for the Indiana ANG’s 181st Fighter Wing at Hulman field, came ripping over the lake directly on top of me, in the middle of my field of vision and only about 75 to 100 feet off the water. I will never forget how startled I was and just how cool it was to see them in flight that closely.
Needless to say, I didn’t make it around buoy number 4.