Posted: 12/14/2025 10:48:55 PM EDT
|
ARFcom's favorite aviation underdog is safe for a few more years. A-10 retirement delayed "Congress has told the Air Force to keep A-10 close support aircraft in its inventory for three years beyond its scheduled retirement at the end of next year. In the National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA) passed last week, there’s a provision that orders the Pentagon to hang on to at least 103 Warthogs for the next two years before phasing them out through 2029. It’s the latest in a long line of reprieves for the 50-year-old plane, which is essentially a flying gun. " |
<placeholder for something good in the future></placeholder>
| If we ever get into a shooting match with China, we will need every last jet and piece of equipment we still have. |
Liberals are a curious mix of communism and fascism, they want to destroy you but want to use your own money to do it.
I'm getting down to the last box, the others have all been destroyed...
I'm getting down to the last box, the others have all been destroyed...
|
Originally Posted By Rbass: The air force is terminally incompetent when it comes to procuring aircraft. Give the remaining A-10's to the marines and build more with current avionics tech. There aren't many "problems" that can't be solved by marines with some brrrrt. Building more would be extremely difficult. Many of the original vendors might not have the drawings or fixtures, and their prices for small lots will be astronomical. I can't tell you how many times I had to play detective to find a switch that was in an original engineer's desk, in order to fulfill a contract. "You need that switch? Sure, we'll make 500 of them" "But we only need one!" I can't blame the vendor, as they would have to tool up for the run, and that costs time and money. |
|
Originally Posted By Rbass: The air force is terminally incompetent when it comes to procuring aircraft. Give the remaining A-10's to the marines and build more with current avionics tech. There aren't many "problems" that can't be solved by marines with some brrrrt. Combat airpower is one problem that can't be solved by Marines or "brrrrt". Which is why nobody who understands anything about financing, procuring, building, or operating combat aircraft would ever tool up to newly construct a 50-year old aircraft...especially one that has nearly zero utility in any of the current scenarios in the National Security Strategy. |
|
Originally Posted By fxntime: If we ever get into a shooting match with China, we will need every last jet and piece of equipment we still have. Yeah, flying them over thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean only to get annihilated by the web of shipborne Chinese double-digit SAMs isn't a particularly good way to do anything except send American airmen to their deaths. |
|
Originally Posted By MudEagle: Yeah, flying them over thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean only to get annihilated by the web of shipborne Chinese double-digit SAMs isn't a particularly good way to do anything except send American airmen to their deaths. Originally Posted By MudEagle: Originally Posted By fxntime: If we ever get into a shooting match with China, we will need every last jet and piece of equipment we still have. Yeah, flying them over thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean only to get annihilated by the web of shipborne Chinese double-digit SAMs isn't a particularly good way to do anything except send American airmen to their deaths. True that maybe not in a modern threat environment. However; there is still a requirement for CAS in permissive environments. To completely give that up without a suitable replacement is penny wise and pound foolish. That's why we need the AH64 and the A10 in the Army and USAF inventories. |
Dave Funk
Past President and now a Board of Directors member Iowa Firearms Coalition.
Past President and now a Board of Directors member Iowa Firearms Coalition.
Just build something new that does what the A-10 does and call it a day. It's cheaper, faster and easier than rebuilding them and with something like 70% of the original production run gone attrition will ultimately get the rest of the fleet anyway. 25 years ago I worked for a small machine shop in the Pacific Northwest. In the early 2000's we got on board with DLA to bid on spares for all kinds of air frames. When they were re-winging the A-10 fleet we made a ton of parts. The cost is staggering. The machines aren't just programmed to crank out parts. The parts are manually digitized from paper or mylar drawings. Tooling has to be made. The heat treatment and finish codes are often obsolete and equivalents have to be found and approved by the government engineers. Sometimes parts are made and make it all the way to the aircraft only to be exactly per the drawing but won't fit the aircraft and the process starts all over again. It's that way for everything we fly that isn't still in production. |
|
Originally Posted By MudEagle: Combat airpower is one problem that can't be solved by Marines or "brrrrt". Which is why nobody who understands anything about financing, procuring, building, or operating combat aircraft would ever tool up to newly construct a 50-year old aircraft...especially one that has nearly zero utility in any of the current scenarios in the National Security Strategy. "current scenarios in the National Security Strategy" is one of the area's they are terminally incompetent. 
|
