Pentagon is set on replacing the Warthog with a fast mover.
Via FOX News
With a roaring engine, 30-mm. cannon and nose painted like a toothsome, snarling beast, the A-10 Thunderbolt sends ISIS fighters scattering like cockroaches on the Iraqi desert plains, but the legendary fighter plane pilots call the “Warthog” may be fighting for its own life.
The venerable plane, first built for destroying Soviet tanks, has been on the chopping block since the sequester of 2011 mandated steep cuts in the Pentagon budget. Although the planes haven’t been built in more than 30 years, the Defense Department believes it can save maintenance costs by phasing them out. Air Force brass believes newer, faster aircraft like the F-16, F-15E, and, eventually, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter can do a better job of the Warthog’s mission of providing close air support to soldiers on the ground. But supporters say Islamic State fighters are finding out the hard way what they have said all along.
“The aircraft sparked panic in the ranks of ISIS after bombing its elements and flying in spaces close to the ground,” Iraqi News reported last week after a sortie took out several terrorists in ISIS-controlled territory near Mosul. “Elements of the terrorist organization targeted the aircraft with 4 Strela missiles, but that did not cause it any damage, prompting the remaining elements of the organization to leave the bodies of their dead and carry the wounded to escape …”[…]
The Air Force has been itching to junk the plane for years, with some speculating that top brass believes the A-10 bucks the embraced strategy of high-altitude strategic bombing. The Pentagon believes it can save $4.2 billion in operation and maintenance costs over five years by retiring all 283 of the Air Force’s A-10s, the last of which rolled off Fairchild Republic’s assembly line in 1984.
The plane has survived year-to-year, with powerful lawmakers such as new Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., fighting to keep it alive. Loyalists have even established a Facebook page, dubbed “Save the A-10.” Now, it is likely the A-10, spared retirement in fiscal 2015, will gain more support with McCain’s ascent and its battlefield success in Iraq.