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WASHINGTON — The US Air Force will request a total of $188.1 billion in the 2025 fiscal year, part of a budget submission that asks lawmakers to greenlight the retirement of 250 aircraft, officials revealed today. In a Friday briefing with reporters ahead of the budget release, Kristyn Jones, who is performing the duties of the Air Force Undersecretary, said that the service’s budget would grow by about 1.6% compared to the FY24 request of $185.1 billion, an increase of $3 billion. For the Department of the Air Force (DAF), which includes the Space Force, the DAF’s topline would grow...

Poster says use of their text is forbidden without permission, so, link only: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfYhXzPRkqA

The US Air Force has been trying for years to retire its aging fleet of A-10 Warthog planes. During a Thursday hearing, the service secretary said the aircraft "doesn't scare China." "It still has some limited utility, but we have to get on with things," Frank Kendall told Congress. The US Air Force has long butted heads with Congress over plans for the retirement of its aging A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft — flying cannons also known as Warthogs, and on Thursday, service leadership stressed to legislators that it's time to move on because the warplane is less useful than...

Pierre Sprey, a 1960s Pentagon “whiz kid” who was a formidable intellectual force in military analysis and weapons development, often tangling with top defense officials to improve U.S. military readiness and weapons development, died Aug. 5 at his home in Glenn Dale, Md. He was 83.The cause appeared to be a sudden heart attack, said his son, John Sprey.The French-born Mr. Sprey (pronounced “spray”) was a multilingual polymath whose interests encompassed history, engineering and literature. A Baltimore Sun profile declared that he “may well be the most fascinating person you’ve never heard of.”[ August 20, 2021 ]

...Lt. Col. Mike "Vago" Hilkert, a pilot with the 303rd Fighter Squadron, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross last month for heroism during what has been described as "one of the most intense combat rescue missions of the Afghanistan war." During that six-hour fight on April 23, 2011, Hilkert not only coordinated the warfighting efforts of 21 aircraft over dozens of frequencies, but he also intentionally put himself and his plane in harm's way repeatedly to draw enemy fire away from rescue helicopters. The Air Force said Hilkert also helped save the lives of more than 30 people....

Will no one rid us of this troublesome A-10 ‘Warthog’? The United States Air Force (USAF) has spent almost two-thirds of its existence as an independent service trying to get rid of the A-10, one of its most well-known aircraft. But has the Air Force finally given up? It is odd to think that a fifty-year-old aircraft might have more job security now than at any time in its long history, but it does seem that the Warthog now has a relatively secure space in the USAF fleet.

The planes landed on a four-lane stretch of Michigan State Highway M-32 The Michigan Air National Guard took off and landed multiple planes on a four-lane stretch of State Highway M-32 Thursday, which is the first time that modern combat aircraft have intentionally landed on a U.S. civilian road, the Selfridge base said. Part of M-32 near Alpena in the northwestern part of the state was closed down for the training exercise, which was dubbed "Thunder Landing Zone (LZ)." "Thunder LZ gave the pilots the opportunity to land in an austere environment that they’re not used to," U.S. Air Force...

A typical misconception is that the military always seeks to enlarge its force, obtain more equipment and keep what it has – while it is lawmakers who want to cut budgets and force a downsizing of ships and planes as cost-cutting measures. However, when it comes to the A-10 Thunderbolt II – known affectionately as the Warthog – it is the United States Air Force that is being “forced” to retain an aircraft the service would like to retire.

Pilots discuss how the A-10 Warthog's tight turning radius coupled with its big gun means it can sting even the best fighters in a dogfight. While the “Warthog” isn’t optimized for the air superiority role and lacks key capabilities, such as high-speed, radar, and radar-guided long-range missiles that make its fighter brethren such air-to-air supremos, even the greatest fighter pilots are rightfully wary of getting into a close-in turning dogfight with a ‘lowly’ mud-moving A-10. the U.S. Air Force Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, actually teaches the art of Basic Fighter Maneuvers (BFM) in its bi-annual...

The GAU-8 Avenger is one impressive weapon system and the foundation of the A-10 Warthog, despite its age, won’t go away anytime soon. Used for combat during the time of the Gulf War in 1991, the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt – also known commonly as the “Warthog” – destroyed more than 900 Iraqi tanks, some 2,000 other military vehicles, and approximately 1,200 artillery pieces. The aircraft also reportedly shot down two Iraqi helicopters.

Air Force Special Operations will have to adapt to major changes in mission and organization while coping with tighter budgets in the new era of great power competition, Lt. Gen. James Slife said Monday. "One thing that's clear to us is that the future doesn't look a lot like the present to us," Slife, head of Air Force Special Operations Command, said in a virtual discussion with the Center for Strategic and international Studies.

The F-16, hit by the cannon fire, caught fire and exploded having recently been refuelled and made ready for a training sortie due to take place later that day. Another aircraft received minor damage. If anyone ever needed a reminder of the lethal dangers of working with live munitions, then a recent incident at Florennes Air Base in Belgium is the ultimate wake-up call. It is thought a maintenance worker accidentally activated the six-barrel 20mm Vulcan M61A-1 cannon hitting another plane parked on the runway. No-one was in the line of fire, but two technicians were taken to the medical...

Despite multiple efforts to push the iconic A-10 Warthog's retirement date further into the future, the U.S. Air Force is now slated to shelve dozens of the Cold War-era ground-attack planes in the upcoming fiscal year, according to the service's budget request.

The Air Force this week awarded Boeing a contract worth up to almost $1 billion to expand its effort to add new wings to A-10s, shortly after wrapping up a previous initiative that replaced wings on most of the fleet. “The Air Force currently has a fleet of 281 A-10s and recently announced the completion of wing replacements for 173 A-10 aircraft, by Boeing, from an earlier contract award,” the service said in an Aug. 21 release. The Aug. 21 contract allows the Air Force to re-wing up to 109 aircraft, plus three spares, “depending on how many aircraft are...

The iconic A-10 Thunderbolt II will be flying into the late 2030s thanks to a re-winging project completed by the U.S. Air Force. Air Force Materiel Command said in a press release on Monday that 162 A-10s received new wings thanks to a $1.1 billion project that began in 2011. The contract, awarded to Boeing in 2007, required the creation of new parts for the plane’s fuselage. “At the end of the program, making sure we had all the pieces and parts that we needed to make that happen required a really significant team effort,” said Stephen Zaiser, director of...

The A-10 will continue to fly in support of America’s ground forces, thanks to the quick passing of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The aircraft, which has not been manufactured since the early 1980s, is useful to the U.S. but is showing its age. Just two years ago, nearly half of the A-10 fleet was grounded. The spending plan will include money for new wings, as well as other upgrades. “The A-10 Warthog has immeasurable value to our U.S. troops on the ground and plays a critical role in our military strategy in the Middle East and around the...

Project 401, "Son of Ares" Some speculate this testbed aircraft might be a more modern, low-cost, stealthy option for a ground-attack platform similar to the A-10. No one knows the reason for the extreme dihedral of the wings, a feature not made clear by the photo at left, maybe some freepers can do some meaningful speculation. The video at link shows this feature in quite some detail. .. Sometimes called "Son of Ares", this aircraft is built around the GAU-12 25 x 137 mm (see photo at right), so this round is not nearly the monster carried by the Warthog....

on a Runaway Taliban Vehicle You can run, but you can’t hide from an A-10 Thunderbolt II and its technological advanced GAU-8 30mm weapon system. U.S. Air Forces Central Command released a un-classified footage of an engagement between an A-10 and what looks to be "a Taliban vehicle fleeing the scene of an attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan." The short video display a light-colored car speeding down a dusty desert road only to be stopped by a hail storm of 30mm rounds from the A-10. Zooming in on the stopped vehicle you can see four basketball-sized holes punched in the top...

More than a third of the service’s Warthogs risked retirement without new wings. It's official: The U.S. Air Force will buy new wings for aging A-10 Warthogs that risked a one way trip to the boneyard. The Air Force has made clear its intention to keep the A-10 flying after concerns surfaced that the service was taking advantage of the issue to get rid of the iconic close air support plane. Earlier this month, a Pentagon official in charge of the A-10 program announced an effort to re-wing 110 of the jets “was not going to happen.” Of the 280...

DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. -- While all members of Davis-Monthan AFB have maintained our mission of sustaining attack airpower, a select group of Airmen have been preparing for an additional mission; demonstrating the capabilities of the A-10C Thunderbolt II. The A-10C Thunderbolt II Demonstration Team will perform demos for the first time in seven years for the 2018 air show season. The A-10 will be one of three single-ship aerial demonstration teams in Air Combat Command. “It’s humbling to be selected as the team to bring back the A-10 demo,” said Master Sgt. Derek Allen, A-10C Thunderbolt II Demonstration...