The A-10's last fight?

By Richard Pecore

I am unabashedly a fan of the A-10 Warthog. I believe in the mission, and I believe that there is no other weapons platform out there that can do the job the A-10 does, with the same efficiency, effectiveness, and confidence that it provides to our troops on the ground. It’s big, ugly, and slow. It’s also rugged, durable, and extremely deadly.

The Air Force likes new toys. Other than the venerable B-52, the A-10 is the oldest plane in the inventory. The F-35 was not built solely for the specific mission of ground support as was the A-10. The F-35 is the new F-16, or so goes the argument. It can do many things well, not just one. But the price tag is enormous. This is one time, I believe, that the USAF has it wrong.

I am usually in favor of new technology. Battlefield innovation is a bad thing to lag behind in, but some innovations like the old F-111 never lived up to the hype. Is the F-35 an effective weapons system? It still might be, but it is not a “low cost” version of the F-22, and the jury is still out. The original idea was to match up the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II and repeat the success of the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Falcon. Then they tried to add the flexibility of the F-4, and it all went to hell. After over a decade of development and prototypes, cost estimates per unit have ranged from over $98 million (Lockheed Martin website) to $178 million for a standard A model to $337 million for the Navy version. The bottom line is that the cost per copy has risen exponentially higher than planned, and there simply will not be as many airplanes as originally planned. That changes the argument.

The U.S. military, with the exceptions of the Sherman Tank and F-16, has almost always chosen quality over quantity. Joseph Stalin said, “Quantity has a quality all its own.” I like a little of both, and in the simplest terms, there are more A-10s available to do the specific mission of supporting troops on the ground than any other tool in the inventory, and the A-10 can do it better than anything else in the sky, either now or in the foreseeable future.

Like the P-47 before it, the A-10 has earned its place in history, from the pilots who flew her to the men on the ground whose lives she has saved. We honor this venerable warbird. It has dispatched our enemies with ferocity and brought home many of our fighting men and women who would not otherwise have made it. If saving soldier's lives on the battlefield is the goal, then the A-10's end is premature.