As the Air Force sunsets what it calls its “best close air support platform ever,” it’s shifting A-10 pilots to other platforms to ensure the close air support capabilities the Warthog brought to the fight are retained until the Joint Strike Fighter comes online.
The A-10 pilots will be reassigned to soon-to-be established close air support squadrons in the Air Force’s more modern F-16 and F-15 fighters, Gen. Herbert”Hawk”Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said Friday.
“We will take those aviators and have designated, predominantly [close air support] squadrons in the F-15s and F-16s and eventually in the F-35,” said Carlisle, who said he is working on securing a dozen F-16s to be stood up”very soon”as a dedicated close air support squadron.
The move, among others discussed this week at a summit on close air support with the heads of all the other services, is the Air Force’s way of holding on to the unique capabilities the A-10 delivers even as it phases out the airframe. The services looked at gaps in close air support, future needs and even the possibility that what the Air Force will need in the future is basically another A-10.
The Air Force wants “to keep that experience, that knowledge base and culture alive,” particularly the hours of training and focus A-10 pilots get on supporting and coordinating with troops on the ground, until the Joint Strike Fighter is ready to absorb the mission, Carlisle said.
The first Joint Strike Fighters are scheduled to be mission ready for the Marines in 2015, and for the Air Force in late 2016, but they will only be “basic [close air support] capable,” Carlisle said. “In many ways it won’t have some of the capabilities of our current platforms with the capability to do advanced [close air support.]”
The Joint Strike Fighter won’t have those more advanced capabilities until it gets a suite of new sensors and radar in an upgrade that won’t be ready until the early 2020s, Carlisle said.
“They are going to be great [close air support] platforms when we get there,” he said.
Despite the timeframe gap, the service is still committed to moving on from the Warthog, in a decision that is part budget-driven, part strategy-driven. The Warthog has received many upgrades to extend its service life through about 2030, but it may not be able to meet future threat environments, Carlisle said.
“In a permissive, and in some levels contested environments, the A-10 operates incredibly well, it’s the best [close air support] platform ever,” Carlisle said.
The Warthog continues to be used in airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and will continue to be used as long as it’s in the fleet, Carlisle said. But under the constrained defense budget, the service had to make decisions on its force structure based on each airframe’s ability to operate in future operating environments, which the service thinks will not be permissive, so the A-10 ended up on the chopping block.
But the summit this week also considered the need for a future A-10 follow on, for now called the “A-X.” The platform would fill the gap the Air Force will create by retiring the Warthogs: Having a close air support platform to fill “more capacity at the lower end” in case the future operating environment ends up looking a lot like it did for the last decade.
“When we talk about a potential follow on, we can’t afford it right now. But we have to be ready for what the world’s going to give us. What would happen if the environment changes?” Carlisle said. “So we are thinking about what A-X would look like because we have to.”
