The A-10 fighter jet, designed to kill Soviet tanks in Europe, made its reputation instead in America’s Middle East wars. Now it’s back in the region while its advocates fight off the Air Force’s attempts to kill it.
A-10s from the Indiana National Guard arrived from Afghanistan last month at an air base in southwest Asia, where they will be used for missions against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Air Force officials said.
The plane, affectionately nicknamed the Warthog, is slow and ugly compared with the Air Force’s other fighter jets, especially the stealthy, supersonic F-35 that is scheduled to replace it. But it’s also heavily armed and armored, making it a deadly weapon in close-in combat against enemy ground forces and a welcome sight for friendly troops.
The Air Force says the A-10 is too old and not versatile enough to keep flying in a tight budget environment. Getting rid of the A-10 would save $4.2 billion over five years, the best value with the least loss of aircraft, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welch told the House Armed Services Committee in March.
But Senate and House negotiators agreed Dec. 2 to keep it flying at least through the end of fiscal 2015, forbidding the Air Force from taking it out of service.
Lawmakers also directed the Government Accountability Office to study the close-air support mission as a check on the Air Force’s argument that the A-10 is no longer useful.
The A-10’s relationship with the Air Force has always been a shotgun wedding. First built in the 1970s to meet the need of close air support for ground troops, the aircraft was designed based on lessons from the Vietnam War, where more vulnerable aircraft had been shot down and supersonic jets proved unsuited for the mission. But it wasn’t a favorite with pilots or service leaders, who preferred the faster, more technologically advanced fighters, and the Air Force has tried several times to give it up.
“The Air Force hates the mission,” said Winslow Wheeler, head of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight.
Wheeler, a former defense analyst in Congress and at GAO, said arguments by Air Force officials against the A-10 don’t stand up to scrutiny, noting that the aircraft has performed exceptionally well in four wars, starting with the Gulf War in 1991.
The F-35 is more expensive — $148 million apiece in 2015 dollars compared with $18.8 million for the A-10 — less capable for the mission and not even as survivable as the A-10, despite its supersonic speed and stealth technology, Wheeler said.
“The A-10 has demonstrated an extremely high survivability rate in every combat theater it’s been in,” he told the Washington Examiner. “The F-35 only survives if it doesn’t get hit.”
The F-35 is also years away from being combat-ready. The Air Force target date for fielding the first combat squadrons is December 2016, but Wheeler said it could be years before those planes are able to perform close-air support because of delays in developing munitions for them.
The A-10s are available now.
But Air Force officials have persisted in their attempts to get rid of the A-10, most recently by claiming that keeping the aircraft would delay the scheduled deployment of the F-35 because of a shortage of maintenance personnel.
That drew a fierce pushback from the A-10’s supporters in Congress, most notably Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former Navy fighter pilot, and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., whose husband is a former A-10 pilot.
“This is, in our view, a false choice that should be soundly rejected based on the overwhelming consensus of our ground troops and commanders and the clear intent of Congress,” the two wrote in a letter also signed by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.
The letter, which was sent to the chairmen and ranking minority members of the armed services committees in each chamber, also reminded them that bipartisan majorities on both committees had voted to keep the A-10 flying.
Still, the compromise bill worked out by negotiators, while barring the Air Force from retiring the A-10 altogether, allows the service to take 36 of the more than 350 A-10s out of service if needed to keep the F-35 on-schedule.
“This whole experience has been unbelievable,” Wheeler said.
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