The A-10 “Warthog” attack aircraft is likely to be protected again by Congress as it marks up the defense budget later this month, a staffer close to the process said Wednesday.
Right before Congress adjourned for the Easter break, both the House and Senate passed budget bills with more than $90 billion in overseas contingency funding for defense. The extra funding was added by Congress to make up for the committees’ decisions to hold fiscal year 2016 Pentagon baseline spending at sequestration levels.
For the Air Force, the repeated threat of sequestration has formed the basis of its request to be allowed to retire the A-10 fleet. The Air Force has argued it needs the estimated $4 billion it would save over the next several years to apply to other, critical priorities, such as surveillance drones and its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It also argued that it needs to phase out the A-10 to free up its ground crews and maintenance personnel to shift them to the F-35, and it has argued that the A-10 can’t handle highly-contested environments for close air support.
When Congress rebutted the Air Force’s effort to retire the A-10 last year, the service approached the goal another way — to move 18 of the aircraft into “backup inventory status.” Nine of those 18 aircraft would come from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. The base is home to 12 other Davis-Monthan Warthogs that are currently deployed to Europe, flying missions to reassure NATO allies rattled by persistent incursions by Russian warplanes and the uncertainty of where Russia’s ground ambitions end.
With each approach, the Air Force has found its argument challenged by lawmakers, former A-10 pilots, ground controllers and advocacy groups who see the early retirement of the revamped airframe as a colossal mistake. In the last 10 years, the aircraft U.S. military once called its “guardian angel” has had its wings replaced through a $1 billion contract to Boeing in 2007 and its cockpits overhauled by Lockheed Martin starting in 2006 for $168 million, to enable the attack aircraft to continue flying through 2030.
Arizona Republican Rep. Martha McSally, a retired Air Force colonel who deployed for Operation Southern Watch over Iraq as an A-10 pilot from Davis-Monthan, has been an active opponent of the Air Force’s efforts to retire the warplane. She called the Air Force’s backup inventory approach a “backdoor means” to mothballing the A-10 that would harm national security, and suggested that move would be addressed by the House Armed Services Committee as it marks up the Air Force’s budget later this month.
“There currently is no better aircraft to provide close air support to troops in harm’s way and no weapons system in our inventory that can match the A-10’s lethality, loiter time, and survivability,” McSally said. “With defense authorization hearings scheduled for later this month, we’re going to continue to fight to make sure that our troops have the best close air support available flying overhead.”
When the House Armed Services Committee marks up that funding later this month, it will be able to specify how the additional $90 billion in overseas contingency funds should be spent, and it’s likely the A-10 will be protected, a committee staff member confirmed Wednesday on the condition of anonymity.
“If Congress can find a way to take care of that budget concern … it’s hard to see, absent budget concerns, what the rationale for cutting the A-10 is,” the staff said.
From Congress’ point of view, the amount invested in the “Warthog,” and the nation’s current dependence upon its capabilities in both Europe and the Middle East, have more than proven its value.
On Wednesday, in a breakfast with defense reporters, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh acknowledged that the decision is out of the Air Force’s hands.
“Congress decides what we keep and don’t keep, and what we fund and don’t fund. I got that — I have no argument with that,” Welsh said.
Welsh said discussions are still ongoing with the House on what the final shape of the A-10 fleet will be.
“I don’t know what Congress is going to tell us to do with the money. The discussion is still ongoing,” Welsh said. “My concern is not the A-10. I love the A-10. I’ve always loved the A-10 and I love the people that fly the A-10 and fix the A-10 and arm the A-10. They do great work. The A-10 is doing its share [in Europe and the Middle East], and as long as we have it, we are going to use it.”
Welsh, a former A-10 and F-16 pilot, said “it’s hard to keep emotion out” of the argument of whether to divest the A-10. “My emotion is to keep it — the airplane’s been so successful, it’s an icon,” he said, calling it the “ultimate Cold Warrior.”
If Congress passes the $90 billion in overseas contingency funding, Welsh said the Air Force would still need it to provide some flexibility in how the money could be spent — or it will still find itself in a defense crunch.
“I’m hoping and I am confident that Congress is looking hard at ‘how do you mechanize this money’ — what authorizations does the department get for use of this money that are different than standard [overseas contingency] authorizations,” he said.
Without that flexibility, the extra funds are limited as one-year money — something that does not help the Air Force in its long-term modernization plans.
“If we use that money to keep current fleets in the Air Force and operate them, great!” Welsh said. “We have no problem with that. But when we put our budget submission in, we’re looking at the ability to operate for today and the ability to modernize for tomorrow. We have to be able to do both.”
This story originally published at 5:47 p.m. and has been updated since then.
