Posted on 09/01/2018 4:08:30 PM PDT by huldah1776
More than a third of the service’s Warthogs risked retirement without new wings.
It's official: The U.S. Air Force will buy new wings for aging A-10 Warthogs that risked a one way trip to the boneyard. The Air Force has made clear its intention to keep the A-10 flying after concerns surfaced that the service was taking advantage of the issue to get rid of the iconic close air support plane.
Earlier this month, a Pentagon official in charge of the A-10 program announced an effort to re-wing 110 of the jets “was not going to happen.” Of the 280 A-10s still in U.S. Air Force service, 173 have received new wings to keep them flying into the 2030s. The original re-winging contract with Boeing was for 242 sets of wings, but the contract ended when it was no longer cost-effective for the company, and the Boeing production line is closing later this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
If we can scare up some wings, what’s keeping us from a complete assembly line with platform upgrades? These planes aren’t much more complex than a Subaru.
Be as big as an A-10 or NEVER get off the ground.
The tub is made of Titanium. Lighter and stronger.
It’s made of Titanium.
You beat Me to it !
3D printers!
Seen concrete Mk 83 and Mk 84’s used with JDAM furniture for surgical “lower” collateral damage wet work..... guess a inert blue bomb could have been used but “concrete” has a certain fragmentation feature when it hits that a inert “metal cased” bomb only provides with its HE filler.......
Cleared and rendered safe ordnance / UXO submunitions in the burned bodies so our and host nation mortuary affairs could bury the crispy critters left .... after about 2 days we were released by saudi and kuwaiti EOD ....... A-10 devastation with F-16 icing ....... lots of V118 lawn darts used on the escaping looters in that picture .
These ...... from cluster bombs .
For the men on the ground in Afghanistan the Warthog was, as one Army Ranger put it “Like having your big brother show up in a street fight’’.
ping
I still recall some air Force talking weiner back twenty or more years ago stating that they would replace the Warthog with the f-16 because “the Warthog was designed to take hits, the fighting falcon was designed to avoid them!”
Wish I could find that specific article, I tried.
It struck me back then as being short sighted and wrong headed on CAS.
The airforce seems to, like a drunken belligerent, keep returning to that idea as if this time it will work.
And, flew CAS like bombers, delivering ordnance from greater than 5-10k AGL feet it appeared. I suspect they had orders not to go below a floor.
Our Marine pilots scared the shiite out of me, how low they would come in. The A-4 guys were the worst.
Aw heck, F-16 20mm would be the ticket with all that soft skin stuff.
A Blue is a Training round is it not?
The tooling for the A10 is being cared for lovingly.
Would be a shame to get rid of the Warthogs after keeping the Buffs around for so long.
Awww. That’s so sweet! Blurry monitor, too. Former boot mom.
Although my Marine didn’t get to see the A-10 in action. I asked. come to think of it. Why not, Mattis? Man down, under fire, bleeding out. Medic evac can’t come for an hour. We lose him.
Can any Marines explain why they weren’t given support? Before ROE were changed, too.
Follow the money? The F-16 is fun to watch and I love it’s design but the Hog is like a Gunny Sgt, not pretty but the best.
Who owns the mfg companies? It’s the tippy top brass that would make those decisions, eh? I have a feeling Trump + Mattis may have had a hand in this decision to re-wing. Neither would like to make the calls to family, especially Mattis.
From ABC:
When Gen. James Mattis retired from the Marine Corps in 2013 after a 41-year career, he planned a cross-country route back to his home state of Washington from his friend’s country cabin.
“The route he chose was dictated by the Gold Star Mothers he had to visit along the way,” says his longtime friend, retired Marine Maj. Gen. Michael Ennis, who first met Mattis in 1972, when they were both new officers. “He spent almost two weeks on that cross-country drive, zig-zagging to get to as many as he could to personally talk to them.”
“He personally wrote hand-written notes to every parent whose son or daughter was killed under his command,” said Ennis. “He cares deeply. He also works very hard to keep his Marines from being killed unnecessarily.”
Ennis described Mattis, who is a contender to be Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, as a “classic warrior” who “fights to win.”
“He cares deeply about those who serve under him and the parents of those who die under him,” Ennis added.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gen-james-mattis-close-friend/story?id=43718969
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