Winds of Change.NET: Sic Transit Warthog!

May 28, 2003

Sic Transit Warthog!

by Trent Telenko at May 28, 2003 12:40 PM

I see that Joe among others beat me to the Warthog story. Yet I cannot help pointing other things I have said about it in the past in my Interview with a Wild Weasel Pilot. The A-10 has been on borrowed time since the first Gulf War.

Look at this bio I found on google on General Deptula, who ordered the A-10's removal from service:

Maj. Gen. David A. Deptula is director of plans and programs, Headquarters Air Combat Command, Langley Air Force Base, Va. He is responsible for providing plans, programs, manpower and doctrine for units that encompass more than 165,000 people, and a $17 billion budget.

He was a distinguished graduate of the University of Virginia ROTC in 1974, and remained to complete a master�s degree in 1976. He earned his wings in 1977 and has flown more than 2,900 hours in fighter assignments. He has been an F-15C aerial demonstration pilot, weapons and tactics division chief, logistics group deputy commander, operations group commander, and a combined/joint task force commander. He has taken part in air operations, and defense planning and joint warfighting, from unit through service headquarters to unified command levels.

Deptula was the principal planner for the coalition offensive air campaign during Desert Storm, and commanded the Operation Northern Watch Combined/Joint Task Force during a period of renewed Iraqi aggression, in which he flew 82 combat missions over Iraq.

Prior to assuming his current position, the general was the director of the Air Force Quadrennial Defense Review at headquarters, where he was the focal point for Air Force efforts, analysis and articulation of aerospace power positions for the 2001 QDR."

If that isn't a resume for a Fighter Pilot Mafia capo, I'll eat my hat.

Continued...

The Fighter Pilot Mafia hates the A-10 because it is a pure air-to-ground fighter and in the War on Terrorism it is sexier than their beloved F-16s and irrelevant air superiority F-15Cs and F/A-22s.

The funny thing is that the A-10 was given birth by a maverick Tactical Air Command general named Richard Yudkin in the aftermath of Vietnam and McNamara's cancellation of the US Army's AH-56 Cheyenne compound helicopter.

This article from Slate explains the "Key West Agreement" on who flys what in the US military and the US Air Force and Congressional pork barrel politics that built the Warthog.

This passage is particularly telling:

"Yudkin was a bit of a rebel within the Air Force. The establishment generals (who, by the early '70s, were still dominated by the nuclear-bomber crowd) hated the idea of the A-X for the same reason they hated the close-air-support mission: It had nothing to do with the Air Force's bigger, more glamorous roles. Yudkin couldn't even get the Air Force R &D directorate to work on the project, so he set up his own staff to do it.

The A-10 rolled onto the tarmac in 1976. The brass still hated the thing. It survived only because of pork-barrel politics, it was built by Fairchild Industries in Bethpage, Long Island, home district of Rep. Joseph Addabbo, who was chairman of the House appropriations' defense subcommittee. The plan was to build 850 of the planes. By 1986, when Addabbo died, Fairchild had built just 627, and the program came to a crashing halt. No more A-10s were ordered, and 197 of those in existence were transferred to the Air National Guard and allowed to rot.

When the first Gulf War was being planned in 1990, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, the chief of U.S. Central Command, had to fight the Air Force to send over a mere 174 A-10s for his use. Yet in the course of the war, those A-10s knocked out roughly half of the 1,700 Iraqi tanks that were destroyed from the air, as well as several hundred armored personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery guns. They also conducted search and rescue operations, blew up roads and bridges, and hunted for Scuds.

Even the Air Force brass had to admit the planes had done a good job, and they kept them in the fleet. (They had planned on replacing all of them with modified F-16s.) Though the statistics aren't yet in, the A-10s seemed to do well in Gulf War II, especially now that the Army, Air Force, and Marines are more inclined to coordinate their battle plans.

It's real a shame Deptula can't figure out in 2003 what Yudkin did in 1968-73. That what is good for the USAF Brass (bomber pilots then and fighter pilots now) is bad for America, and vice versa.

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"Sic Transit Warthog!"

Tracked: May 28, 2003 6:41 AM

Putting a Stake in the Heart of Interservice Rivalry from Caerdroia

Excerpt: The A-10 Warthog is the most amazing aircraft in our arsenal, and it may be scrapped by Air Force politics. While I can't agree with Trent that "hat is good for the USAF Brass (bomber pilots then and fighter pilots now) is bad for America, and vice ver...

Tracked: May 29, 2003 6:59 PM

Warthog, So Ugly Its Pretty from Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing

Excerpt: I was going to post on the latest AF attempts to get rid of the A-10 Warthog, comparing it with the semi-regular declarations of the Tank's obsolescence, but no time to do it. So go read Trent Telenko's and Joe Katzman's two excellent articles on...

Comments

#1 from FH at 6:04 am on May 28, 2003

If the WOT has shown anything, it is that the air force needs more, and better, Air Support combat planes. The A-10 is good, but is based on dated 70's tech. Its time to start working on a replacement, perhaps something using vector thrust technology to give it better evasion capability.

#2 from Bill at 7:56 pm on May 29, 2003

Transfer the A-10 to the Army and/or the Marines.
The Marines would know how to use the A-10 in close air support!

#3 from Skid at 8:08 pm on May 29, 2003

I flew with Dave Deptula (we were F-15C pilots together in USAFE - Soesterberg AB, NL), and I suppose my resume would qualify me for the fighter mafia as well.

I now work as a civilian contractor at Davis-Monthan AFB AZ, where I provide academic and simulator training courseware to support the USAF's central A/OA-10 schoolhouse, or flying training unit.

Our current five-year contract ends this September 30th, and we're currently competing for the next five-year gig which starts October 1st. Several other contractors have put in bids.

My point is that we're still training A/OA-10 pilots, and we'll be doing so for at least five more years.

Many of us at the grunt level of the fighter pilot mafia are strong supporters of the A/OA-10, and wish the USAF had a stronger commitment to close air support.

Regards,
Skid

#4 from Terry at 5:43 pm on May 30, 2003

Just goes to show that the Army should be allowed to run its own close air support and design and operate an updated follow-on version of the A-10. Right. Like that'll happen.

#5 from Andy at 9:41 pm on Jun 30, 2003

The "Fighter Mafia" are not the bad-guys in the A-10 fight. The Mafia were a specific group of Air Force rebels from the late '60s and early '70s who stood up against the "Bomber Generals" who thought every warplane should be an XB-70--big, complicated, nuclear bombers.
Back then we had the F-105, the F-111 on the drawing board and the F-4 Phantom was considered "lightweight." All of them were way too complex, way too large, way too expensive, and built in smaller and smaller numbers.
The Fighter Mafia, inspired by Colonel John Boyd, fought very hard to break the Bomber Generals' stranglehold and build smaller, cheaper, more effective purpose-built aircraft: the F-16 was the main result. Nearly unrivalled still, thirty years later, as a dogfighter, solid range, and better than ever as a strike "utility infielder." It's not an A-10 because it was purpose built for something else.
If anything the Fighter Mafia's success with the purpose-built F-16 paved the way for the specialized A-10.
Today we've largely reverted to the "gold-plate" tendencies of the past. Take a good idea and attach "nice-to-have" gadgets until the machine barely gets off the ground and buying it breaks the bank. If the Fighter Mafia was still around the F-22 would cost half as much and the A-10's replacement would be in production (with the same defense budget!)

#6 from Luddite Robot at 7:20 pm on Apr 01, 2004

Bill, the problem with Marine A-10s, I'm sure, is that they wouldn't be easily carrier-deployable, and if you can't deploy it from sea, the USMC has little use for it. Much of what the A-10 is good for is what the Harrier is good for, and they've already cast their lot with that one.

#7 from Kurt Plummer at 11:23 pm on Feb 19, 2007

You're all wrong.

The A-10 was a poor CAS platform from the moment it was designed solely to keep the Army below 200 knots as their own exponent of ground support.

As such, it was designed around a maze of conflicting requirements, /none/ of which represented the best way to do CAS, even in the period '70-'74 when the AAFSS was undergoing its death throws.

1. As originally spec'd the early A-10 concept art reflected a jet coming to the fight with a huge array of Mk.82 and SEA camouflage. This was invalidated the very instant the SA-7 and NATO fight again became the driving anti-system-not-personnel definition of CAS.

2. The GAU-8 is about 8,000lbs and there is another 6,000lbs of armor on the jet specific to protecting it's installation. That's half the airframes weight. The reason for this selection was to stay cheap enough to save the 'real money' for the A-X. Yet, as with the Mk.82 (a purely laydown weapon in the A-10 tactics book in USAFE) the gun requires a