Posted on 04/28/2015 8:24:45 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
The Air Force will send some perfectly fine fighter jets to the boneyard or delay its F-35 Lightning II rollout for a year if Congress blocks retirement of the A-10 Thunderbolt, according to a document recently provided to military oversight committees.
The tradeoffs would occur at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, due to limited number of personnel to maintain the A-10s, F-16 Fighting Falcons and the first advanced F-35 joint strike fighters slated to arrive later this year, the service told lawmakers.
The Air Force and Congress have been grappling over the future of the A-10, known as the Warthog, for the past year. Hill recently unveiled plans to mothball 18 of the aircraft. The service wants to eliminate the close-air-support aircraft to save money but the House Armed Services Committee said it will vote this week on a draft defense budget that will bar the move.
“The Air Force, if compelled to retain the A-10, does not possess a sufficient number of experienced maintainers to sustain the original Hill AFB conversion plan [to] stand up [a] new F-35 fighter squadron and then convert two F-16 units,” the service wrote to the committee in an unclassified talking paper obtained by Stars and Stripes. The undated document was recently provided to House and Senate armed service committees, congressional staff said.
The F-16s were to be relocated to other bases – Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and Fort Wayne Air National Guard Base in Indiana – to replace A-10 units and make room for the F-35s.
Instead, the jets would be sent to the “boneyard” storage area at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, the service said.
If lawmakers try to block F-16s from the boneyard, the lack of qualified maintenance personnel would delay the F-35 from flying at Hill for “at least a year,” it said.
The Air Force has repeatedly asked Congress to support the A-10 retirement, which it says will save about $4.2 billion over the next four years and allow the fleet to be modernized. The A-10 has been flying since the 1970s and is now deployed in Iraq and Europe.
Lt. Col. Christopher Karns, an Air Force spokesman, said it is premature to speculate on what actions the service will take before Congress hashes out the annual defense budget.
“The Air Force has actively explored a range of options to address its maintainer shortage,” Karns wrote in an email. “An inability to divest A-10s will impact the ability to provide experienced maintainers to support the F-35 mission.”
The chairman of House Armed Services released his draft of the annual defense budget Monday and it included a measure fully funding the A-10 program, though it would allow the Air Force to mothball a maximum of 18 aircraft.
However, Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., said she plans to introduce an amendment Wednesday that will prohibit any retirement of the aircraft.
The best way to describe the Warthog is a big cannon with an aircraft connected to it. It has 2 engines in case one is shot up.
Thank him for me. My father was USMC air wing ground crew on the Sandy.
Thank you.
If the A-10 was going deep, absent SEAD and absent strikes to take out the IADS.
“The F-35 is hugely unproven,”
Indeed. Even the Test & Eval platform is under-performing, and once you hang enough ordnance on the jet to be CAS or deep-strike effective, you lost L/O capability.
“. . .but the loyalty the A-10 has engendered with its excellent performance in Iraq and Afghanistan and its high-visibility to the troops on the ground has become an obstacle to a modern air-power military.”
Stand-off SEAD weapons, cruise missiles, F-22 to pull the plug and poke their eyes out (’knock down the door,” and F-15E’s with strike loads (and self-protection weapons for A/A), those are the ones that engage in strategic attacks. The A-10 is a CAS platform, tactical in nature. Neither the F-22, F-16s or the F-35 are CAS platforms that can stay in the target area for multiple passes and affect the battle-space.
So, modern airpower is effective when using the proper platform for the mission (strategic or tactical). The problem comes when trying to make a jet that can do all and be all, fly all missions with equal effectiveness. Can't do that, especially if you are trying to affect the near-battle, as that takes specialized weapons, platforms and intensive CAS training for the pilots.
Of course, others may disagree.
Of course, we all know the Marines are flush with cash and can build an entirely new infrastructure to support a new jet, set-up logistics and support necessary to service, maintain, upgrade, repair, arm and re-arm, and train many more pilots. And we can't forget the Marines will need to build runways (A-10s can operate from "austere" places but not dirt).
Nice to fantasize about but realistically, not feasible.
“The Marine Corps is THE expert service on the CAS mission”
How so?
Amen to that. Some never seem to grasp that concept.
The strength of the A-10 is it ability to stick around to perform many attacks, employing PGMs, and the GUN. A-10's can attack and attack and attack. . .not just ‘one pass haul a$$”
Uh, you do realize that the Marine Corps already has an air wing? As a matter of fact we have FOUR different Wings: three active duty and one reserve.
And surprising enough, those wings have the ability to repair and arm and re-arm them aero-plane, fly-ee thingy ma-gigs. Heck, we even got us some cement runways.
That the A-10 cannot do.
Oh, and you know the Marines would have to acquire new weapons, weapons they don’t have, and spare parts and bigger ramp space, new avionics to maintain, tires, tools, all sorts of stuff that would hit the Marines HARD in the wallet.
So, “those wings have the ability to repair and arm and re-arm them aero-plane, fly-ee thingy ma-gigs” for the existing airframes, but not for a new airframe like the A-10.
That makes good sense, thanks :-)
You left out the "and grunts & LNs will die as a result" part.
Perhaps OV-10s? A whole 'nother animal.
How about clearing out some dead weight, desk jockeys at the Pentagon and investing the savings in trained personnel who actually do something productive?
It was the Aviation Section of the Army Signal Corps that did the flying in WWI also.
What was made once, can be made again. A print, a sample part....no problem. I see it all the time for planes that are no longer in production.
China probably already has an assembly line running, after making a contribution to the Clinton Family Foundation.
Our Air Force leadership, both civilian and military, are for crap. Scrap them and keep both the A-10 and F15/16/18’s.
Damned fools and cowards, like those who pooh-poohed Billy Mitchell’s demonstration that a bomber could sink a major class warship.
I say, raise the Air Force Academy to the ground, dig up Gen. Hap Arnold and Col. Doolitle, put them in chairs in a gym, and start all over again.
To No. 6. If we send Warthogs to Israel, we will have to cut a few inches of their tailpipes in order to make them kosher. (Inside joke. If you don’t get it, let me know and I’ll explain).
“F-35 Thunderbirds? No. Just No. “
I think it’s a wonderful idea! Just think... the F-35 can’t fight, it can’t shoot and flies like a pregnant turkey. But it sure looks purdy!
So yeah, they would be great for air shows! They only cost a bazillion bucks each.
Good post.
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