Good News: Here's Comes the A-10 Warthog on Steroids (New Weapons and More)

[RugersGR8]

Good News: Here's Comes the A-10 Warthog on Steroids (New Weapons and More)
Published on Sep 29, 2019

The Air Force had hoped to begin retiring its 281 A-10s starting in 2015. But Congress blocked the effort. Now the A-10 is safe even as the Air Force considers retiring other plane types.

 

[RETOKSQUID]

Scraping the production and all associated tooling for the A10 was a horrible mistake.

 

[bigfug]

Scraping the production and all associated tooling for the A10 was a horrible mistake.

Happens to often though. Look at the state of the B1B program. They are scanning and 3d printing parts at Tinker and cannibalizing airframes to keep the ones in service flyable.

 

[TerryMiller]

I've long thought the A-10 was a great plane. Anything that does that well for supporting the ground troops is a winner to me.

And, the designers managed to do a good job of protecting the pilot when performing its duties in hazardous places.

 

[RickN]

The Air Force had hoped to replace it with the F35 which I think is a major mistake. Go fast does not make for good ground support even with precision weapons. Of course the A10 can carry those too.

Personally I always thought the ground support role should be in the hands of the Army with a mix of helos and dedicated ground support aircraft like the A10. Let the AF play with the fast movers.

 

[Glock 40]

Love me some BRRRRT

 

[Snattlerake]

First saw them in 79 at Ft Riley. I was amazed at their slow speeds and ability to turn hard without losing altitude.
They looked like they were out of the Star Wars movie.

Of course that is the same night I heard a WHUMP, WHUMP WHUMP! outside my tent. It was a blue dummy 500 pounder finally coming to rest in between my tent and the next tent.

Come to think of it that's the same week we found an AIM-9 parting the no passing stripe on the blacktop while on route recon. We reported it to range control because we thought it was an obvious part of our exercise. Turned out it was dropped off an A-10 that morning and they were trying to find it. Man I wish I'd had a camera during summer camps and playing army on TDY.

 

[golddigger14s]

When I was in Macedonia an A-10 came into the airstrip missing an engine and half a wing. She landed it no problem.