If it isn’t broke don’t fix it.
Via Defense News:
A-10 Warthog fans can breathe a sigh of relief: The Air Force won’t start retiring the famed close-air support plane until 2021, at the very earliest.
The decision delays initial retirement of the aircraft by three years, as the Air Force had planned to begin mothballing the A-10 as early as 2018. However, the service is still deliberating the future of the platform, including whether it still needs to start a new program to replace it, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said Tuesday.
“We’re going to keep them until 2021, and then as a discussion that we’ll have with [Defense] Secretary [Jim] Mattis and the department and the review over all of our budgets, that is what will determine the way ahead,” he told reporters.
Over the next couple of years, Goldfein said he’d like to see the dialogue about the close-air support mission (CAS) move from a “platform-centric” discussion about whether to sustain the A-10 to a “family of systems” approach that recognizes that many aircraft support ground forces.
“That starts with an understanding of how we do the business today of close-air support, because the reality is it’s changed significantly, and it will change significantly in the future if we get this right, because this is something we’ve got to continue to think about,” he said.
HT: TAH