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The US Air Force has begun studying future close air support (CAS) aircraft to succeed the Fairchild Republic A-10 as the Pentagon evaluates the weaponry it needs for “prolonged operations” of one year or more. The flying branch is looking at tactical air support platform alternatives for low-intensity “permissive conflict” like counterterrorism and regional stability operations, similar to the types of missions being conducted Iraq and Afghanistan today, where air superiority has been achieved and coalition aircraft can roam relatively freely in support of ground troops. USAF officials say a portion of a "combat air force study” is dedicated to...

A-10 retirement delayed for six years There is good news for Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The Air Force will not retire A-10s until the year 2022. Tuesday Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said the A-10 has been such a powerful tool in the fight against ISIS that plans to retire the warplane are on hold for another six years. That's what a lot of Southern Arizona was hoping to hear. The A-10 is a huge part of the local economy. More life for the A-10 is good news for the local economy but bad news for ISIS. The plane is...

The Pentagon "is finally coming to its senses," said U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, welcoming reports Wednesday that the military is backing off plans to retire the Air Force's A-10 fleet, including planes based at Tucson's Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The plans, leaked from the Pentagon, indicate a change of policy from the Obama administration's last two budget requests, which called for retiring the entire A-10 program, McSally said. Congressional pressure, including support from McSally and her predecessor, Rep. Ron Barber, kept the planes on active duty. "It appears the administration is finally coming to its senses and recognizing the importance...

A-10 Warthogs to Ämari Air Base in Estonia during a stunning atmospheric phenomenon known as Aurora Borealis, Estonian photographer Gen Vagula pounced on the opportunity to take these gorgeous pictures.

...“The A-10 is the best ‘close attack’ plane ever made, period,” Sprey tells me. “But the Air Force hates that mission. They’ll do anything they can to kill that plane.” He says retiring the iconic A-10, a twin-engine attack jet with 30-mm cannons that hit with 14 times the kinetic energy of the 20-mm guns mounted on America’s current fleet of supersonic fighters, became an article of faith among high ranking Air Force officers, generations of whom had been raised to believe in the redemptive power of technological innovation. That mentality drove production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the...

Accompanying article: Hawg: The Story of the A-10 and Close Air Support in Afghanistan

The A-10 Warthog is the only aircraft built for a close-air-support (CAS) mission. It was literally designed around its distinctive 30mm Gatling gun. The gun is more than 19 feet long and weighs more than 4,000 pounds. The distinctive sound made by the weapon (aka the BRRRRRRRRRT – . . . .

Martin Matishak, The Fiscal Times August 14, 2015 The Air Force didn’t help its long-standing argument that the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack jet should be retired when the service announced this week it would deploy more of the aircraft to Europe this fall. The 23rd Wing at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia announced it will send 12 attack planes and crews to Central and Eastern European to bolster NATO’s “Operation Atlantic Resolve,” an ongoing show of military might meant to deter Russian aggression in the region. In March, the Air Force deployed a dozen A-10s from Davis-Monthan Air Force...

The Air Force based its plan to retire the A-10 on projection of cost savings, ignoring mission (close air support), the Government Accountability Office. GAO punches holes in Air Force's bosses decision to retire the attack jet, saying planners did not, did not include the increased workload on other aircraft tasked Baltic & Black Sea theater realities. Rep. Martha McSally, R-Arizona, to block the Air Force's pro Soviet armor superiority, review. The agency states that the Air Force made the plan to retire the A-10 based on a "enemy with-in" review". The Air Force's guidance prioritized fifth-generation aircraft, readiness and...

The Air Force will send some perfectly fine fighter jets to the boneyard or delay its F-35 Lightning II rollout for a year if Congress blocks retirement of the A-10 Thunderbolt, according to a document recently provided to military oversight committees. The tradeoffs would occur at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, due to limited number of personnel to maintain the A-10s, F-16 Fighting Falcons and the first advanced F-35 joint strike fighters slated to arrive later this year, the service told lawmakers. The Air Force and Congress have been grappling over the future of the A-10, known as the...

A dozen A-10 attack jets have been deployed to the Middle East in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Air Force announced this week. The deployment of 350 airmen and the 12 "Warthogs" come as Congress and the Pentagon battle over whether to retire the popular aircraft, which provides close air support for troops in combat. This is the second deployment of an A-10 unit in the fight against ISIS. Air Force leaders say the service can't afford to maintain the attack jet under defense budget constraints and that other aircraft can conduct the close...

It’s wrong to compare the F-35 with any other asset that was designed to perform a specific mission: this is, in simple words, what a U.S. F-35 pilot said in an interview he gave to the Danish website focusing on military topics Krigeren. Interviewed at Luke Air Force Base, by Christian Sundsdal, Maj. John Wilson, an F-35 pilot with an F-16 background clearly explained something that is quite obvious to everyone: an A-10 Thunderbolt II will always be better in CAS than the F-35 because it was designed to perform that kind of mission. Similarly, an F-22 will always be...

Air Force leaders wanting to send the A-10 Thunderbolt to the bone yard already have any number of lawmakers criticizing them from Capitol Hill. Now they’ve got “Lone Wolf McQuade” coming after them. Action star Chuck Norris – an Air Force veteran – on Monday delivered an editorial roundhouse kick to the Air Force, arguing on the World Net Daily website that the “Warthog” – as it is known – still has plenty of fight left in it. In the ongoing campaign against ISIS, Norris writes, “the A-10′s utility is warranted even more now than ever.” “Its firepower capability, speed...

After more than four decades in service, the A-10 Warthog is due for a replacement. So says the U.S. Air Combat Command. What's more, ACC says it's already "thinking about" fielding such a replacement. But what might that replacement be? Last week, we got a clue. As reported by Reuters, the Air Force has recently begun evaluating Textron's Scorpion fighter jet as a potential 21st-century replacement for the 20th-century Warthog.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will not receive the software package required to operate the Pentagon’s top close-air support bomb until 2022, according to military.com. The article also stated that the JSF office already had discovered earlier that the precision-guided air-dropped Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB II) does not fit onto Joint Strike Fighter Marine Corps variant without modifications to the aircraft’s weapons bay. Yet the Department of Defense will wait until the F-35 B (the Marine Corps variant of the F-35) reaches initial operability before modifying the F-35’s armament bay, since the weapon will be useless without the right...

The U.S. Army has no interest in taking over the Air Force’s fleet of A-10 attack planes, even if it would save the venerable Cold War-era aircraft from the bone yard. The service’s top civilian, Army Secretary John McHugh, rejected the idea of accepting hand-me-down A-10 Warthogs from the Air Force. “No chance,” he said during a breakfast meeting with reporters on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. “That’s not even been a topic of casual conversation.” “With our own aircraft fleet we’re taking some pretty dramatic steps to reconfigure and become more affordable, and the A-10 mission is not something we...

Forty years ago, an attack aircraft Su-25 (GrachRook) took off from an airfield in Moscow suburb Kubinka for its maiden flight. Time has not dimmed its lustre. This aircraft remains a fearsome fighting machine, and can be called the future of Russian attack aviation. At the beginning of 2015, there were 14 air assault squadrons, composed of 150 Su-25; 60 Su-25SM; 52 Su-25SM2 /SM3; and 15 Su-25UB. Of all these storm-troopers 80 more machines will be upgraded to the SM version by 2020. About 100 more of this type of aircraft are parked at the long-term storage bases. Shock and...

SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany — Fighting rages in Ukraine, Leaders in Europe on Wednesday welcomed back a Cold War Hammer. Twelve of the previous one hundred forty, Close-air support A-10 “Warthogs” — designed in the 1970s to knock out Soviet tanks — are back in Germany.

While the Ukraine conflict may not have erupted into World War 3 quite yet, the situation in the country’s bloody, 10-month long civil war grew even more alarming Saturday night, and into Sunday morning, as Russia appeared to ignore a cease-fire agreement that its own president, Vladimir Putin, signed earlier in the week. [....] On Friday, the United States said it had sent a fleet of 12 A-10 “Tankbuster” jets to the region, jets that were designed to destroy Soviet tanks during the Cold War.

European Command said this week that 12 A-10 Thunderbolts would be deployed to Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, which was formed after Russia's intervention in Ukraine over the past year. ... The Air Force said besides operating in Germany, the A-10s will be forward deployed to other partner nations in Eastern Europe. U.S. forces have operated out of bases in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Poland, among others, in the past year. The A-10, also known as the "Warthog," was designed in the 1970s to support ground troops in Europe against the tanks and armored vehicles...