Posted on 01/21/2015 12:39:22 PM PST by McGruff
With a roaring engine, 30-mm. cannon and nose painted like a toothsome, snarling beast, the A-10 Thunderbolt sends ISIS fighters scattering like cockroaches on the Iraqi desert plains, but the legendary fighter plane pilots call the "Warthog" may be fighting for its own life.
The venerable plane, first built for destroying Soviet tanks, has been on the chopping block since the sequester of 2011 mandated steep cuts in the Pentagon budget. Although the planes haven't been built in more than 30 years, the Defense Department believes it can save maintenance costs by phasing them out. Air Force brass believes newer, faster aircraft like the F-16, F-15E, and, eventually, Lockheed Martins F-35 fighter can do a better job of the Warthogs mission of providing close air support to soldiers on the ground. But supporters say Islamic State fighters are finding out the hard way what they have said all along.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Not the OV-1 Mohawk in Vietnam. That was Army fixed wing.
It was designed to go up against the Soviets, and theirvADA wasn’t something to be ignored.
An F-16, mud hen, or F-35 would have been turned into a flaming ball of wreckage instead of RTB with this sort of damage:
http://warthognews.blogspot.com/2011/06/from-archives-10-80-0258-from-172nd.html?m=1
There was the A-10 flown by Capt Kim Campbell that was shot up over Iraq and was able to RTB with no hydraulics.
There was another from Desert Storm that had a huge hole blown through the wing that again the pilot was able to RTB.
Uh in WW2, there was no “Air Force”, it was the ARMY Air Corps.
Fairchild Republic has been out of business since the '90's. The Hagerstown plant where the production A-10s were built has been closed for over 30 years. The subcontracting companies that made the parts have long since crumpled under the weight of Pentagon procurement and the dust has blown away.
The only thing that is keeping them flying is that the aircraft was built simple and strong, for field repair and fast turnaround, without, oddly, all the Captain Midnight fly-by-wire the pilot/procurers so dearly love. Control is siamesed hydraulic systems, with a manual backup.
Consider this. The aircraft is designed to fly with one engine, one tail, one elevator, and half of one wing missing. However, there is no way there will ever be another A-10C built.
The AC130 is cool, here is a video of one taking out some jihadis:
AC-130 Spectre Gunship in Action!: http://youtu.be/YVXBHNvpTcg
That’s why the troops call them “The Hand of God”:
http://youtu.be/KUHh2hkdWfo
Other good vids:
http://youtu.be/Zhv71M5xXJY
No video, but I saw a couple of them in Nevada, and those planes are as nimble in the air as they are ugly on the ground. Seeing them well flown makes them a thing of beauty to me.
Paint a pig’s snout on it.
A transfer payment is the provision of aid or money to an individual who is not required to provide anything in exchange. Social Security and welfare benefits are examples of transfer payments. Transfer payments have become much more important in the past few decades.
Just a little perspective.
Quit killing your babies -- God.
A-10s often fired on ranges very near us, while we trained (12Bs at the end of the ‘80s and during the ‘90s). They sounded pretty neat, the way two-hundred-foot-tall giants might sound while sitting on the ground after eating a few hundred tons of beans.
While it does carry a large amount of ammo, you must also consider it's firing rate.
The entire magazine can be emptied in 7 seconds.
Studying...In work...
On top of which, the tooling was destroyed by order of Congress.
No doubt to prevent Clinton from selling the dies to China...
Was it prior to the decision to rape the country and flee to Zurich?
And now General Maleficent wants to kill the Warthog and brand its supporters as treasonous. What a guy!
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