The Warthog is an endangered species. Air Force brass wants to kill the A-10 because they need the personnel and the money to support the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the second time they have tried to kill off the venerable close-air support workhorse. And congressional leaders, who refused the Air Force request last year, plan to refuse again for the 2016 budget year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The debate puts the Air Force leaders, many of whom spent careers flying over the battlefield, at odds with the soldiers and Marines who want the A-10 to continue laying down withering gunfire to push back enemy attackers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the Air Force insists that several other aircraft, from the F-15E to the B-1 \u2014 and the coming F-35 \u2014 can also fulfill that close-air support mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To press the point that other platforms can do close-air support, the Air Force offered fighter and bomber pilots who have flown close-air support missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You could put us in a Cessna 172 with an AK-47 and we would do CAS,” one of them boasted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Air Force also contends that the aging Warthog doesn’t stand a chance in contested airspace against sophisticated enemies such as China and Russia. Never mind that the A-10 was originally fielded to destroy Soviet tanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Certainly, the A-10 could face much more challenging systems, but it’s continued to demonstrate relevance during more than a dozen years of war in a part of the world that seems to be exponentially deteriorating. And some of the Air Force’s 283 Warthogs were among the aircraft hastily shipped to Eastern Europe as a show of force against Russian expansionism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The A-10 may not be the ultimate aircraft for all of this century’s wars. But it’s proven its value on today’s battlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Air Force should find another way to fund the F-35, and wave off on retiring the A-10 before its time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Air Force leaders’ efforts to kill the A-10 puts them at odds with the soldiers and Marines who want the A-10 to continue laying down withering gunfire to push back enemy attackers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":71788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":18,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1859],"class_list":["post-39118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"JJROFV7AVRDRJOMSFW662GBIWM","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/2015\/03\/30\/editorial-don-t-rush-a-10-s-exit\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n