Why You Should Not Listen to the United States Air Force, Part 29

Because, once again, they are trying to kill the A-10 again. (Paid Subscription Requited)

The USAF has been trying to kill the A-10 since they first entered service, since "real pilots" don't fly dedicated close air support platforms.

Thankfully, a bunch of people who have not drunk too much of the Wild Blue Yonder juice are pushing back:

Now that the Air Force has placed the A-10 Thunderbolt II under consideration for cuts in a worst-case budget scenario, a grassroots movement is building to keep the aircraft, flying since 1977, around longer.

The A-10 is not one of those programs, like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or the KC-46A tanker, that the service wants to protect. In fact, a chart from Air Combat Command shows the entire fleet of close-air support aircraft may be divested by 2015.

The A-10, affectionately known as the Warthog, does have a following. The lumbering aircraft was designed to loiter over the battlefield until it unleashes firepower that can shred through tanks. Originally made by Fairchild Republic, it carries a 30 mm Gatling gun that can fire up to 3,900 rounds per minute. The service's A-10s can carry all kinds of bombs, including laser-guided ones, joint direct attack munitions, and the AIM-9 Sidewinder. Ground troops love it.

They are not alone. From a Save-the-A-10 Facebook page with 2,722 likes, to the back room of a military base bar and even on Capitol Hill, the proposal to scrap the aircraft is meeting resistance.

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Coram himself recently published a column on the Project on Government Oversight's website articulating the case: “No $160 million F-35 is going to get down in the weeds where a single bullet can take it out. A host of small arms fire hitting an A-10 can be fixed with what amounts to duct tape,” Coram writes. “No F-35 can maneuver under an 800-foot ceiling with two-mile visibility as can an A-10. No F-35 has more than three combat trigger pulls before running out of ammo. The A-10 has twenty. No F-35 has the battlefield survivability of the A-10.”

Whether the efforts will make a difference within the Pentagon remains to be seen as high-level budget politics on Capitol Hill and in the Obama administration are sorted out.

But lawmakers have been working to maintain the A-10 fleet, at least in the short term.

Last year the Air Force recommended carving out nearly a third of the A-10 fleet, much of it from the Air National Guard. Congress slowed that suggestion by creating the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force.

Yet more evidence that the independent Air Force does not serve our defense needs.

Air power is essential in modern warfare, but I do not think that the pilots are up to running their own branch of the service.