Why the Air Force is Screaming to Retire the A-10 Warthog

The Airfarce wants to park the A-10 and the Army on more than one occasion has said "Give them to us" but Alas it has wings and is armed so no A-10 for the Army even though it would be a perfect platform for the Army mission.

Warfare is changing and with 300$ drones with 1000$ bombs and grenades destroying 3 million dollar Russian tanks you have to wonder where all this is heading.

Some of the aircraft that the air force operates "IT IS CLAIMED" their operating cost is 80,000$++ and hour which falls right in with with all the other things we have read about costing hundreds if not thousands of times more than anyone can believe. I guess they have to fund their black projects some how ?

The US Air Force is charging ahead with plans to retire the A-10 Warthog attack jet within the next five years, but with no dedicated close air support platform to replace it with, pilots are worried that troops on the ground won’t get the air support they need in the next conflict. In the 2023 version of the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress approved the Air Force’s request to begin divestment of the current A-10 fleet, citing the aircraft as too old, too slow, and too expensive to maintain.

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The A-10 is an amazing Close Air Support platform. In a totally permissive environment. In a near peer conflict, the A-10s are not flyable until after we have air superiority at least, if not air dominance (if we can), and the surface to air threat has been seriously rolled back. I love the A-10, and it's a hell of a platform, but its time has passed, along with other great aircraft.

The aircraft that cost that $80,000+ to operate are the ones in very tiny fleets, which drives the cost up. The B-2 runs somewhere around $150,000/flight hour, which includes 51 man hours of maintenance per hour of flight. There are 20 B-2s, and with the relatively early stealth coatings needing so much maintenance that's not surprising.

The F-22, which had a total fleet of 187 aircraft runs closer to $40,000/flight hour, including 32 man hours of maintenance per flight hour.

In August of 2022, the F-35 sustainment costs had dropped 50% over seven years, and are expected to drop 35% over the next five. The cost per flight hour was down to $33,000/flight hour in 2012 dollars. The F-35 has a mean time between failures of between 6.5-11.8 hours. The goal was six flight hours for an A (11.8 hours between failures), four hours for the B (6.5 hours), and C (9.8 hours).

If you really want to see high CPFH rates, you need to look at the very small fleets. The VC-25 (2 aircraft) was down to $142, 380 per flight hour from a high in 2014 of $206,000 per flight hour. The E-4B (4 aircraft) is $372, 496 per flight hour. Both are based on the 747-200.

Getting back to the A-10, the Air Force needs to find maintainers from somewhere. The best way to get experienced maintainers for new fleets is to take them from existing fleets. The A-10s will retire, and their maintenance personnel will go to the F-35, and NGAD once it starts coming online in the next decade. As for the Army getting them, the Army wants the benefit of having them flying overhead, without having to deal with the cost of maintaining them and building an experienced cadre to maintain them. It would take a big chunk of their budget to do it.

a reply to: 727Sky

I'm gonna jump right in on this one .

I know Zaphod will disagree with me but I do not think they will ever retire the A-10 it's just to effective .

It's a flying 30mm Seven-barreled cannon that can rain hell on the battlefield, It can't provide sustained fire like the C-130 spooky but it's faster and more maneuverable .

My opinion only a fool would do away with it.

a reply to: asabuvsobelow

It's only effective when there are no threats, or the threats are so weak that they can survive them. Put them up against a true IADS, and they'll get hammered. Send them after something with no defenses, or limited defenses and they're incredibly effective. Send them against networked S400s, even as poorly as they've performed in Ukraine, and you're losing a bunch of them, and their effectiveness drops way down.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: asabuvsobelow

It's only effective when there are no threats, or the threats are so weak that they can survive them. Put them up against a true IADS, and they'll get hammered. Send them after something with no defenses, or limited defenses and they're incredibly effective. Send them against networked S400s, even as poorly as they've performed in Ukraine, and you're losing a bunch of them, and their effectiveness drops way down.

Yes but Think about it .

How man Nations have an Air-force or Anti-Aircraft batteries that we will end up in conflict with that can completely counter the A-10 to the degree that your talking about ?

and then how many nations are basically completely vulnerable or at least after an initial attack vulnerable to the A-10 . Yes she is an asset that you bring out after the air battle is won but then she shines like no other .

Yes the A-10 is a simple aircraft but my God does she strike fear into the enemy and Hope into the Friendly troops. That sound of her cannon rolling over it's like a warm blanket.

a reply to: asabuvsobelow

Yes, but the Air Force budget is finite. A set of 27 wings to upgrade to the A-10Cs cost $239M, or just short of $9M per set, with 112 sets needed. And they're going to need more and more upgrades, and their PDM, and all their maintenance. If you're going to be fighting somewhere like Iraq or Afghanistan, then even the A-10 is overkill. Better off going the way of AFSOC and buying a fleet of OA-1Ks. Less than $2000 an hour (some reports put them at closer to $800/flight hour), and perfect for such a low threat environment.

Something has to give in the budget, and that's going to be older aircraft, like the F-15C, and the A-10, and others. If you look at the priorities for the next 10 years or so, there are something like 10 major programs upcoming that are going to have to be done. You can't keep everything, not matter how much you like it. Losing older aircraft saves on money and upgrades, and will have you a couple hundred million a year per program.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Thanks for your learned explanation. And no, I'm not being a smart alleck saying that.

My understanding of what you've said is that basically technological advances in air defense systems have rendered the wonderful A-10 obsolete.

But my question is, what's going to support the poor ground pounders when they have to make that call for close air support when they find themselves pinned down by hostile fire?

a reply to: Zaphod58

your right , I mean I know deep down you are right but it's just such a unique killing machine I hate to see her go.

The A-10 was initially concepted to counter an onslaught of Soviet tanks massing into mainland Europe but She has adapted from there into the modern battlefield . I'm a little sentimental about the A-10 .

I spent a fair amount of my military career on the conventional side and A-10's provided much of our air-support , We didn't get access to C-130 Gunships .

I don't mind her being replaced just so long as it is a proper replacement.

a reply to: asabuvsobelow

That's the gist of my question. What's going to replace it?

a reply to: TonyS

That's just it, for years in Iraq and Afghanistan, everything that could carry PGMs was providing CAS. That's everything from B-1s and B-52s, down to A-10s and MQ-9s. Once upon a time CAS actually meant Close Air Support, meaning that the aircraft providing the weapons had to get right down on top of the guys on the ground they were supporting. With PGMs being the primary weapon now, even something like HIMARS can provide support to ground troops in contact. Just about every unit has a JTAC embedded to call in aircraft support, so CAS has changed as everything else has.

The A-10s were designed, as stated, to stop hordes of Soviet tanks rolling through the Fulda Gap. At the time it was designed, air defenses were not mobile, except for a few. So it was entirely possible for the tank columns to outrun their air defenses, with a few exceptions like the ZSU-23. Even the mobile missile launchers that could keep up with the tanks had to stop and set up their radars, so they were really leapfrogging ahead to set up and cover the tanks as they were moving forward. The only real threat that could move and shoot were the antiaircraft gun systems. The ZSU-23-4 was one of the most feared of the gun systems, but the weapons in use eventually just outranged them. But at the same time, the missile systems became better and more mobile, and could keep up with the tanks, and even shoot while on the move.

a reply to: asabuvsobelow

I'd say a B-21 in the CAS role will be a proper replacement.

a reply to: asabuvsobelow

Let's just say in the first war the A-10 didn't fare nearly as well as the F-16, I worked both.

a reply to: Oouthere

Let's just say in the first war the A-10 didn't fare nearly as well as the F-16, I worked both.

That depends on what capacity the Aircraft is being used in .

F-16 being used in targeted Airstrikes and ' Show of Force Runs ' ...yes . But actual effective CAS runs compared to the A-10 ? no I would disagree.

I have lived near Selfridge ANGB here in MI for my entire life and they currently have the A-10s stationed there.
I see them flying often but they are not as sexy as some of the planes have seen flying out of there over the years.

I have seen F-100, F-106, F-4, F-16, T-33, A-7, C-130, KC-135 and a few others that I am probably forgetting.
Don’t know if they will retire the A-10 from the ANG but it would be cool to see what else they would bring in over here.

As is always the case, even great airplanes, with few exceptions--why, hello there, B52--become incapable of doing the job they were designed to do.

The Warthog is a great plane, it remains a great plane whose time has, unfortunately, passed--or is passing. Once upon a time, the North American P51 Mustang was, arguably, the finest fighter in the air--but its time passed as technology improved.

Same thing is happening with the A10--it will have, today, a very hard time doing its job against a near-peer adversary, in 10 years impossible, those pilots would be on one way suicide missions.

I have a home very, very close the Michigan NG gunnery range and have frequent A-10 and F-16 flights, up to 4x a day, all in 2 ship formations. When your glass windows crack from explosions, you're very, very close. What I can tell you is that there has been a major shift in A-10 tactics.

In the past, the A-10 flights were at treetop level. When I say treetop level, I mean tops of trees being whipped about. I mean one pilot who flies right down our 2 track road, sometime below treetop. Which means they pop up, unleash holy hell on an innocent target.

Over the past year, they are now at 1 - 2 k feet. That, to me, seems like a rather dangerous method of attack for the A-10. Being a conspiracy whackjob, I'm thinking that in a hot zone they'd be an excellent target so that "well, we were right, they're way to easy to shoot down, we need to retire them."

a reply to: billxam

They’re moving away from gun runs and in to PGM runs, which means they need to stay higher to get more range for the weapons. They recently certified them for the SDB. They can carry 16 in a single mission. The SDB has a range of 45 miles, but to get that range they need to be released as high as possible.

a reply to: asabuvsobelow

The cost per hour is what killed the F-14 Tomcat. That and the crappy engines they had when they first came out.
I loved the plane, but, understood why it had to go.

The two that piss me off are the A-6 and the S-3. They were casualties from the A-12 fiasco and Mc Boeing's PR department.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Search and Destroy / Deep Interdiction

a reply to: FlyingFox

With no threats.