The Air Force’s A-10 Warthog attack jet has bested its foes in Washington again and is back in combat over Iraq.
A-10 supporters exulted this week when an amateur YouTube video emerged that appeared to show the Warthog in action above the town of Rawah. The jet is seen attacking with its dreaded 30mm Gatling gun, which produces an unmistakable deadly belch.
“And Obama Admin wanted to retire A-10 fleet,” Arizona Sen. John McCain tweeted, linking to a report about the video.
The Indiana National Guard unit whose aircraft are flying in Iraq announced its deployment back in September, but this week’s appearance of the video coincidentally followed passage of the new National Defense Authorization Act, which spared most A-10s from the boneyard for another year.
So with the aircraft available, the U.S. Central Command added them to the war against ISIL, sending the A-10 out alongside Lockheed Martin-built F-16 Fighting Falcons, Boeing F-15E Strike Eagles and B-1B Lancer bombers. Lt. Gen. James Terry, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday that air power has succeeded in virtually stopping the forward progress of the terror group, which he called by another Arabic nickname.
“We will continue to be persistent in this regard, and we will strike Da’esh at every opportunity,” Terry said.
The U.S. has conducted more than 1,300 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, Terry said, although neither the A-10 nor any other American fixed-wing warplanes are based inside Iraq itself. Instead, they’re flying from bases in Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar and elsewhere.
American commanders have no U.S. troops serving as forward air controllers for the A-10s and other warplanes, but Terry said reconnaissance aircraft and close coordination with Iraqi units mean American air power can be just as effective without them.
“The coalition is really very deliberate about how it conducts strikes out there,” he said. “We have some great capability in terms of precision. What’s in the balance here is, if you’re not careful, you can be precisely wrong, you can strike the tribes, or the Iraqi security forces and you could create a very bad situation. To date, we’ve got a very good record. I’m tracking no civilian casualties.”
The A-10 was built to fly low and slow over the battlefields of Eastern Europe and shred Soviet tanks in a World War III, making it ideal for providing close support to friendly ground troops. It did so to great acclaim in the first two Iraq wars and in Afghanistan, but the Air Force says budget pressures mean it can’t keep the Warthog and pursue its other priorities. So, it argues, the older jets have to go.
Air Force officials have asked to retire their entire fleet of A-10s in their last several budget submissions, but each time, the Warthog’s powerful friends — including McCain, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and several key advocates on the House Armed Services Committee — have intervened to save it.
The future of the A-10 also was a major point of contention in an Arizona House race between outgoing Democratic Rep. Ron Barber and his challenger, retired Air Force Col. Martha McSally, who squeaked past him by fewer than 200 votes to win the seat on Wednesday after a recount.
To be sure, the Warthog didn’t survive the 113th Congress completely unscathed. In a compromise, members decided to permit the Air Force to place 36 A-10s on lowered flight status, but only after the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office conducts a study about how the Air Force will handle close air support down the road.
Support for the aircraft may only grow in the new Republican-controlled 114th Congress. After the House and Senate sent the defense bill to President Barack Obama, Ayotte pointed to testimony by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno and support from other military commanders as excellent reasons to keep the Warthog flying, and its deployment to Iraq will become another talking point for supporters.
Ayotte’s husband was an A-10 pilot, and she has called the Air Force’s desire to get rid of it “a serious mistake.”
The Air Force remains unmoved.
Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, a former Warthog pilot himself, says he has no particular grudge against the A-10 or close air support. He argues budget caps imposed by Congress, including members who want to carve out support for the Warthog, means he had to make choices in order to get the most savings possible.
The Air Force can’t just retire small batches of airplanes here and there and free up the same kind of cash it can with entire types of aircraft, Welsh says. In the case of the A-10, getting rid of not only the airplanes, but their training pipeline, support infrastructure and other things would free up more than $4 billion over five years.
“The Air Force was very clear. They said, ‘If we could afford it, we want to keep it, but if they have to keep it because Congress wants them to, what else are they going to have to cut?” said Mark Gunzinger, a former top Air Force official who’s now a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Welsh and Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James have warned that if they must keep the A-10 fleet, it could require them to retire all the B-1B Lancer bombers or all the KC-10 Extender refueling tankers. And that would only mean new retirement battles with congressional delegations from South Dakota, Texas, California and New Jersey.
Lawmakers are only making life difficult for the military — and potentially threatening its ability to keep ready — by restricting the Pentagon’s ability to respond even as they persist with caps on its budget, Gunzinger warned.
“The Air Force, all the services have a problem,” he said. “They have excess infrastructure and aging infrastructure. People cost more now than they ever have. There’s some really interesting technology they’d like to put money into to create new advantages — and Congress is saying, ‘We want you do to everything and we’re not going to let you get rid of excess infrastructure, get rid of end strength, get rid of old aircraft, old ships … how do you manage the force with all those constraints?”