US Air Force in a big lie about the A-10

STEPHEN BRYEN

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Captain Richard Olson, a 74th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron A-10 pilot, exiting an A-10 Warthog after his flight at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, in 2011. Note the seven-barrel Gatling-style autocannon – something the F-35 lacks. 

While the US Air Force publicly insists it wants to get rid of the A-10 “Warthog” close air support fighters, it has just deployed a squadron to the Middle East.

The deployed fighters each can carry 16 GBU-39B small-diameter bombs (four per bomb rack). The A-10 also has an ultra-powerful 30mm GAU-8/A Avenger gun that rapidly fires depleted uranium shells that can penetrate armor.

The Pentagon has sent an A-10 squadron to the UAE. It is likely the A-10s will be moved to Iraq or possibly even Syria to be used in support of US bases, which have been repeatedly attacked by missiles and drones. When the US occasionally has responded, it has sent supersonic fighter aircraft.

The subsonic A-10 is much less expensive to operate and its gun system is far more lethal. For the most part, the A-10s will be operating in an area where the enemy has little or no air defenses outside of MANPADS. The A-10 has very good missile warning receivers and A-10 pilots can evade MANPADS when warned.

For the record, it is worth noting that US bases in Iraq and Syria have very limited air defenses and haven’t been able to counter rockets and drone attacks effectively.

The US Air Force has criticized keeping the A-10s in service, arguing that the aircraft are not survivable against modern air defenses, and has convinced the US Congress to dump the A-10s on the ground that they are not survivable.

However, the empirical evidence says that the A-10s do survive even in dense air defense environments.

In the 1991 Gulf War, the US deployed 144 A-10s. These aircraft flew an astonishing 8,077 sorties – and, on average, 95.7% of the A-10s in the fleet were available for combat at a given time. This is far better than the capability rates for other US fighter aircraft:

The above chart is unduly optimistic about the F-35’s capability rate, which actually was running between 54-58% in 2022. The F-35 requires a lot of support and cannot operate from forward bases. The A-10 can use almost any airfield and requires only light support.

The A-10 costs about US$6,000 per hour to operate. By comparison, the F-35 costs $36,000 an hour and the F-16C around $22,514 per hour.

In the 1991 Gulf war, the A-10s destroyed 987 Iraqi tanks, 501 armored personnel carriers, 249 command posts, 96 radar installations, 72 bunkers, 1,306 trucks, 2,000 other vehicles and 53 Scud missiles and missile launchers. Around 70 A-10s were damaged but survived. Six A-10s were shot down in of over 8,000 missions.

While air defenses have improved since 1991, most of the Russian air defenses in the current war in Ukraine date back to Soviet times and are more or less the same as what Iraq had in its arsenal in 1991. The exceptions are the evolved S-300 and a single S-400 in Crimea.

Looking at the hard data proves beyond any doubt that the A-10 is both lethal and survivable in dense air defense environments.

Its low loss rate can be attributed to its unique design. While the A-10 is subsonic, its two jet engines are mounted above the wings, reducing the A-10’s heat signature as viewed from the ground. This helps protect the A-10 from ground-launched infrared homing missiles, common to most MANPADS.

In addition, the cockpit is protected by a titanium “tub” so ground fire is unlikely to harm the pilot. The fuel tanks are also foam lined, so if they are hit by gunfire or shrapnel, they won’t explode.

Originally designed as a tank killer for the European theater, the A-10 performed a similar role in the Gulf War and thereafter in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The inspiring survival capability of the A-10 is illustrated by the story of Major Kim Campbell, an A-10 female pilot and hero who brought her heavily damaged A-10 back to base after being badly damaged over Iraq in 2003.

The Air Force plans to replace the A-10 with the F-35. This limits availability because of the operational problems with the F-35, and such a substitution would jack up per-hour operating costs.

At the same time, the F-35 can’t possibly replace the firepower of the A-10. There is no reason to believe that the F-35 can be effective as a ground support aircraft except with standoff weapons. In addition to fielding the same standoff weapons, the A-10 can provide close ground support with its powerful Gatling-style autocannon, which cannot be done by the F-35.US airmen load ammo into an A-10’s monstrously powerful GAUo-8/1 Avenger Gatling-style autocannon, from General Electric. Photo: YouTube / USAF

It is noteworthy that if used in close support missions, the F-35’s “stealth” is of no value, as the aircraft will be exposed to gunfire and MANPADS.

The standoff weapon GBU 39/B is a small-diameter bomb (SDB) with a range of 40 nautical miles. It costs around $40,000. There are a number of models, but the latest version has a tri-mode seeker that combines radar, infrared and semi-active laser guidance.

The entire unit weighs 250 pounds, but the warhead itself is 36 pounds (16 kg) of AFX-57 high explosive. Reportedly, with a delayed fuse setting, it can penetrate a 3-foot (1 meter) steel-reinforced concrete bunker covered by 3 feet (1 meter) of earth.

An updated version of the GBU-39/B can triangulate GPS receivers where updated coordinates are fed from a theater air operations center using Link-16. Other versions of the weapon apparently have an ImageNav system that does scene matching.

The SDB is not suitable for deep underground bunkers, but is ideal for the kind of bunkers and hideouts used by irregular forces, such as Iranian-backed terrorists.

The Air Force and Congress should reconsider retiring A-10s. It is a big mistake to take an effective weapon and put it in the scrapyard. The latest deployment illustrates the value of the A-10 and empirical combat performance data shows that the A-10 is far more survivable than the Air Force admits in its specious claims, forgetting the weapon’s real history of success.

The real hard truth is the Air Force does not want to support either the US Army or the Marines in combat scenarios, which is why it is pushing to get rid of the A-10.