Perhaps an OV-10 ? :
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.
Don’t have enough mechanics to maintain the planes?
Gee, wow, what an unsolvable problem?
Oh, hey! Wait! I got it!
Hire some more mechanics!
(Yes, I am obviously a rocket scientist of super genius level to have come up with such a non-Captain Obvious solution....tens of I.Q. points above the USAF Commanding Generals obviously too).
Where to find mechanic candidates?
Got to be some in the millions of F.S.Army streaming across the border....
duh?
I doubt it they came out I the mid to late 70’s
I’m trying to be nice.
‘Hogs weren’t deployed to Viet Nam.
Ever.
“This reminds me of how local governments work. When there is a budget shortfall, rather than cut in the logical places, they “kill” the libraries, the police, and the firemen until they are given more money.”
Yep, local city govt did just that...had a $3million shortfall. So they shut down all the city libraries. Also the case that the city was spending $3million for free sh*t for the illegals (it is a Mex city here in CA).
Just who in the hell has a personal grudge against one of the best tactical support aircraft in the world?? And WHY??
The fighter mafia hates it because it’s not sleek, supersonic, and zoomy.
The bomber mafia hates it because you can’t get up and take a piss.
The 0bamorrhoids hate it because it’s really useful for killing communists and mohammedans.
If your dad was flying an A-10 in Vietnam, it must have been undercover, DEEP undercover! The first unit received the A-10 in 1976, AFTER Saigon capitulated on April 30, 1975. I believe the USAF used the A-1 Skyraider during Vietnam for CAS.
Pay no attention to the Ruskie propaganda about the F-35, and stop screaming in favor of keeping promiscuous aircraft.
>>Well, yeah. Drop the 35.<<
Freaking flying anvil.
Former A-10 crew chief here.
There is no ‘crank down’ for the landing gear.
If you look at the design of the landing gear and the fairings, you’ll see they are all on the back of the landing gear (with the exception of one on the nose gear). They are all designed to use gravity assisted by air flow to push the gear down in the event of complete hydraulic system failure.
As a last resort, the aircraft is designed to land “gear up’ with minimal damage to the air frame. Note that the main tires stick out the bottom of the wheel wells. That was intentional, not a byproduct of saving weight or some such thing.
They really thought of everything when they designed that bad boy.
Perhaps an OV-10 ? :
Early? The early stages were 20 years ago. We're fixin' to make impact. Assume crash positions.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Can’t. The tooling to make the A-10 was ordered destroyed at the end of the contract.
Sure they could make something that looks and acts like the A-10, but.
But the parts would not necessarily be interchangeable between them. Two sets of spares for the “same” aircraft would be a logistics nightmare.
Give the old ones to The Marines, they are quite good at excelling with make-do.
Make a new fleet of A-10 clones, and give it to the Army.
Both The Marines and the Army adore the A-10.
The Air force, not so much. Screw ‘em.
How about kill the F-35 ‘money pit’ and build even more modified F-16’s and A-10’s?
” Two sets of spares for the “same” aircraft would be a logistics nightmare.”
lol,,,, nightmare? The system would barely notice.
Two groups.
Air Force career types. It's not a sexy fast mover, and it plays too close to the {{{{shudder}}}} ground.
muslim terrorists. It's a devastating opponent, and as it kills you and your fellow jihadis the last thing you see looking up is a Christian cross dominating you in the sky.
Nice to know Air Force brass and jihadis agree on something...
“Our way or we fire all the police and fire emergency.”
oh, and we’ll close the libraries too.
Damn near!
This proves we need immigrants. I’m sure their skills are good at maintaining the F-35. Glad we are getting so many million of them. /s/s/s/s/ and on to infinity.
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