The Air Force Tried, But The A-10 Is Too Good to Kill 

“The A-10 Warthog is now in the fight across the southern flank and is hunting and killing fast-attack watercraft in the Straits of Hormuz,” General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a Pentagon press briefing on March 23. 

The A-10 is back from the dead once again. Officially designated the A-10 Thunderbolt II, but universally dubbed the Warthog because of its ungainly looks, it is a close air support (CAS) aircraft that has been in the U.S. Air Force inventory since the 1970s. It has proved its mettle in numerous conflicts, and after each one, the Air Force has tried to retire it. Yet now it is back in the fight in Iran, targeting fast-attack boats and mine-laying vessels. As of April 1, another 12 A-10s have been reported en route to the Gulf to join the dozen already there, and they could be supplemented by six more. 

What makes the A-10 good, and why is the Air Force so hellbent on ditching it notwithstanding its combat record? Therein lies a tale of parochialism, interservice rivalry, and a preference for hi-tech wizardry over rugged practicality. 

The Warthog was born in the aftermath of the Vietnam debacle. Just as victory often breeds complacency, failure can spark creative rethinking. In the CAS role in Vietnam, the military lost 266 A-1 Skyraider aircraft, as well as 300 AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunships used to help the infantry, which is the Army and Marines. This spurred a group of Pentagon reformers to develop a clean-sheet-of-paper, dedicated close support plane with the firepower to do the job and the ruggedness to survive. 

It is impossible to design an aircraft that performs all missions optimally, just as it is senseless to expect a Lamborghini to haul bags of cement like a Ford F-150 pickup.

The key to understanding the A-10 is the fact that it was built around its weapon, a 30 mm GAU-8 Avenger rotary autocannon, in other words, a very large Gatling gun. This weapon has the punch to penetrate a tank’s top armor, destroy bunkers, and sink small warships. No other aircraft has this type of gun. 

Since flying CAS missions involves loitering over the battlefield for prolonged periods, looking for targets of opportunity, it has a large internal fuel capacity, and, since supersonic speed is infeasible at such low altitudes, its engines are more economical than those of the typical state-of-the-art fighter-interceptor. These features give the Warthog considerable endurance over the combat zone. 

Finally, it is survivable. It has double-redundant hydraulic flight controls and a backup mechanical system if the hydraulics fail. The pilot and part of the flight controls are protected by a 1800-lb. titanium “bathtub” that can protect against hits from 23 mm. cannon projectiles.  

The A-10’s first major action was in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and it went spectacularly well. A-10s were credited with destroying over 900 Iraqi tanks, along with roughly 2,000 other military vehicles, and 1,200 artillery pieces. They operated extensively during the conflict, with some pilots scoring 23 tank kills in a day.  

But after the war, the Air Force sought to retire the A-10 and replace it with the F-16 fighter, arguing that the Warthog was an aging, single-mission aircraft unsuited to modern air defenses. Whatever the merits of the argument over the A-10’s vulnerability to air defense, the F-16—a light, unarmored fighter—would have been at far greater risk when used as a CAS aircraft; its supersonic capability would have been irrelevant to mission performance and would have detracted from its loiter time, and it would have made a less accurate gun platform.  

The Army and the Marines, whose ground troops the A-10 supported, were strongly opposed to the Air Force’s plans, and Congress sided with the ground pounders. The Air Force didn’t give up, however, and tried to replace the Warthog with the F-16 on multiple occasions over the next several years. (A solution might have been to give the A-10 to the Army and Marines to operate, but that would have violated the 1948 Key West Agreement, which prohibited the Army from operating fixed-wing combat aircraft). 

There was an instant replay of this drama after the second Iraq war and the drawdown from Afghanistan. The A-10 was now an unmaintainable antique, the Air Force insisted, and its supposed vulnerability to ground fire had become even greater. But the Air Force’s preferred replacement, the F-35, was even less suited to close air support than the F-16. A fifth-generation stealth fighter of great sophistication, it has a very vulnerable carbon-composite structure that is difficult to repair and a stealth coating that is time-consuming to maintain. Its operational availability is low, its unrefueled range is less than the F-16’s, and it is not suited for austere airfields where the Warthog thrives. 

The Warthog is still in service a half-century after its introduction and four decades after the Air Force first tried to retire it. There is simply nothing else that fills its niche.

The A-10 saga is part of a long story. Since its establishment in 1947, the Air Force has generally preferred sophisticated, multirole aircraft, arguing that it is more economical and logistically simpler to have a single plane than an assortment of mission-specific platforms. In practice, as with the troubled TFX experimental fighter designed to serve multiple roles, developed during Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s tenure in the 1960s, it is impossible to design an aircraft that performs all missions optimally, just as it is senseless to expect a Lamborghini to haul bags of cement like a Ford F-150 pickup. Trying to build all the features into a single platform results in a design kludge, as the F-35 is to some extent. 

Another reason is that the Air Force has never liked the CAS mission. In World War II, when American air power was a component of the Army, ensuring the safety of ground forces was taken more seriously. The A-10’s namesake, the P-47 Thunderbolt, was a formidable CAS aircraft, with ruggedness built into it. In the German retreat from Normandy in 1944, following D-Day, Allied P-47s took a heavy toll of Nazi columns, and Thunderbolt units carefully coordinated with advancing American armor to put firepower on target when needed. The Battle of Arracourt in September 1944 is a good example of this effective air-ground collaboration, as Thunderbolts worked hand-in-glove to defeat Germany’s Panzer counterassault against the Allies. 

But once it became an independent service, the Air Force made CAS something of an orphan. The strategic nuclear bombing mission was where the money and influence could be found during the days of massive retaliation—the Air Force also got control of land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) at the time—and supporting ground troops from the air may have been deemed working class compared to jousting with MiGs in the wild blue yonder.  

But the bitter lessons of the Vietnam War forced the Air Force to rethink its roles and missions, and the Warthog is still in service a half-century after its introduction and four decades after the Air Force first tried to retire it. There is simply nothing else that fills its niche.  

The post The Air Force Tried, But The A-10 Is Too Good to Kill  appeared first on Washington Monthly.