Reports indicate that the A-10 Thunderbolt, (known widely as the “Warthog”) has been crucial to recent U.S. efforts in combatting ISIS in the Middle East.
Military.com notes that the A-10’s “operating out of Incirlik airbase in Turkey provided ‘devastating’ close air support for U.S.-backed Syrian-Arab fighters in taking a town in northwestern Syria from the Islamic State.” About a dozen Warthogs were recently deployed to the Turkish Air base.
Despite numerous attempts by the USAF to retire the plane (which first took flight in 1976) with more costly aircraft more suited to the type of air to air and bombing missions which are that services main stays, the Warthogs’ ability to fly slow and close to the ground while withstanding significant punishment from enemy fire make it the most effective airborne defender of troops in existence. It has survived, with bipartisan support, another appropriations battle and will be funded again in the FY2016 Pentagon budget. But with increasingly constrained funds, the future looks less than optimistic.
The battle to save the indispensable aircraft has been fierce. Former Defense Secretary Hagel had stated that “The A-10’s age is also making it much more difficult and costly to maintain. Significant savings are only possible through eliminating the entire fleet, because of the fixed cost of maintaining the support apparatus associated with that aircraft. Keeping a smaller number of A-10s would only delay the inevitable while forcing worse trade-offs elsewhere.” His remarks were met with disagreement by ground troops, many of whom have noted that they owed their lives to the aircraft.
While funds are limited, the fact that there is nothing in the U.S. arsenal that can accomplish its tasks of knocking out enemy armor and safekeeping American troops as effectively is a powerful argument for its preservation. It is unfortunate that the diminishing defense budget forces inappropriate choices to be made, particularly at a time when international threats are rapidly rising.
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The problem is, the aircraft, as mandated by law, is assigned to the Air Force, but its primary mission is one that belongs to the Army, the destruction of enemy armor and protecting ground forces.
Its role is not, by any stretch of the imagination, obsolete. Indeed, it may well be needed now more than ever. As the NEW YORK ANALYSIS OF POLICY & GOVERNMENT reported earlier, most American tanks have been withdrawn from Europe. The White House has also, inappropriately, sought to close down the very last factory that manufactures tanks, to make the job complete. For the United States to continue its NATO obligation to defend against the increasingly likely possibility of further Russian aggression, the A-10 would be the best solution to provide a credible deterrence.
A 2014 Breitbart analysis noted: “The problem is that the Air Force doesn’t want to ‘own’ the CAS [close air support] mission. Since the A-10 was created, many argue that CAS has always been an orphan in the Air Force’s planning, budgeting and training. That may be going too far, but it is clear that the Air Force doesn’t want to ‘own’ CAS by devoting the resources needed to perform CAS.”
A Bloomberg report last year disclosed that “Active-duty and retired service members … are trying to persuade the U.S. Department of Defense to drop its plan to save $4.2 billion in operation and maintenance costs over five years by retiring all 283 of the 1970s-era Air Force planes. Some top Army officers say there’s no substitute for the protection the jet has long provided to troops in ground combat. The Air Force says that newer, faster aircraft, such as the F-16, F-15E, and, eventually, Lockheed Martin’s (LMT) new F-35 fighter, can perform the A-10’s principal mission of “close air support,” striking targets on the ground to help soldiers in a land battle…[but retired Lieutenant Col. William Smith, who flew the A-10 in Iraq and Afghanistan] asks “You really think they’re going to allow a $200 million airplane to get down in the weeds, where it’s extremely vulnerable?”