The A-10 has been in the news again this week. Apparently the brass hat fighter jocks in charge of the US Air Force are still trying to kill off everyone else’s favorite aerial beast. 

An A-10C Warthog pilot from the 163rd Fighter Squadron at the 122nd Fighter Wing in Fort Wayne, Ind., taxis across the flight line after completing a training mission, July 14, 2015, at the Indiana Air National Guard Base, Fort Wayne, Ind. Photo credit: Air National Guard, Staff Sgt. William Hopper

 

Despite having served with distinction in close air support combat missions over Kosovo, Gulf War I and II, and continuously in Afghanistan, the Air Force has been trying to retire all or most of its A-10 fleet for the past decade. However, thanks to its massive popularity among troops on the ground, and some very good lobbying on Capitol Hill, the A-10s keep on keeping on.

Most recently, the Air Force wanted to retire 44 A-10’s (3 squadrons’ worth) in its 2021 budget request. Congress said no. The Air Force keeps insisting that the highly-sophisticated, and extremely expensive, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter can take over the A-10s close air support role. No one else appears to be convinced that an unproven, extremely high cost, high maintenance, fast-mover like the F-35 could possibly be anywhere near as effective at CAS as the low-cost, easily-fixed, extremely rugged, low-and-slow A-10 – which has proven itself in combat time and time again.

A U.S. Air Force A/OA-10 Thunderbolt II from the 355th Fighter Squadron is surrounded by a cloud of gun smoke as it fires a 30mm GAU-8 Avenger Gatling gun over the Pacific Alaska Range Complex in Alaska on May 29, 2007. The seven-barrel Gatling gun can be fired at a rate of 3,900 rounds per minute. Photo credit: Airman 1st Class Jonathan Snyder, U.S. Air Force.

 

Meanwhile, there is a growing body of opinion that the Air Force should simply transfer the A-10 fleet and all of its assets to the US Army’s Aviation branch. Since Army aviation is all about close-in tactical air power that actually makes a lot of sense. The Air Force doesn’t really seem interested at all in tactical air power these days anyways, and is much more focussed on strategic air power, space, and cyber warfare.

So just why is the A-10 so well-loved, and so effective at its job? This video does a very good job of explaining it: