Welcome to Flight Global Focus, the essential podcast for
trusted aviation insight. I'm Ryan Finnerty, Flight
Global's America's defence reporter.
And in today's episode, for years, the US Air Force has
talked about retiring its famous ground attack fighter, the A10
Thunderbolt 2, more commonly known as the Warthog.
The A10 has repeatedly proven itself in combat throughout the
past 25 years, including the recent air operations over Iran
and the Persian Gulf. But the Air Force says the A10
fleet is too old, too expensive to maintain, and I'll suited for
modern combat. After years of trying, the Air
Force began retiring some A 10s in 2023.
The fleet has now shrunk to fewer than 150 aircraft, down
from a recent high of 280. And earlier this month, the US
Air Force graduated what it says will be the final class of new A
10 pilots before the jet is retired.
But the A10 has survived retirement scares in the past,
and there are signs from Washington it may do so again.
After previously saying it would retire the Warthog by 2027, the
Pentagon now says operations may continue through 2030.
Here with me to discuss the past and future of the A10 are Flight
Global's European defence editor Craig Hoyle in London and our
managing defence editor Greg Waldron in Singapore.
Hey, guys. Hi.
Ryan, hi, everybody. OK, Greg, let's start with you.
This is a very famous plane all around the world.
There really isn't anything else like it.
It's it's almost a flying armoured vehicle built around a
gatling gun to kill tanks. How did the A10 first come to
be? Well, really, you know, the
genesis of the A10 comes about with the AX competition in, you
know, the early 1970s and it was completing against an aircraft
called the Y 9. And I guess the mission at the
time was really, you know, you're really in the heart of
the Cold War and the Eastern Bloc had this massive armour
superiority. So you need a, you know, an
aircraft that can really absorb a lot of punishment because, you
know, the Soviets and their allies had a lot of anti
aircraft capability and then just basically destroy tanks as
they're pouring through the Fulde Gap and the other
strategic points on that frontier.
And the other thing that really influenced it as well was they
did an aircraft that could take a tonne of punishment because in
the Vietnam War, the US lost a lot of aircraft to ground fire.
You know, they really struggled during the close air support
mission in places like Khe San, parts of Vietnam.
You know, they lost aircraft. So they wanted an aircraft that
could hit very hard and that would also be able to take a
massive amount of punishment. So it came down to the A10 and
another plane called the a Nine by Northrop.
And pilots, I understand actually preferred the a Nine
because it was more fun to fly as a pilot.
It felt more like a fighter plane.
The A10 looked kind of weird, but the A10, unlike the A Nine,
was using a commercial engine, the General Electric TF 34 and
the A Nine was going to get a new Lycoming engine, so there
would be more engine risk with the A9 programme.
I suppose another issue with the why Not a Nine was that it had
very high wings. So if you're a crew member and
you want to refuel the aircraft, you want to load weapons on it,
you had to climb quite high. So that made that work quite
difficult. Both aircraft were going to have
this new 30 millimetre cannon, which would be able to cut
through the frontal armour of Soviet tanks.
So the A nine would have mounted it internally, a more
conventional housing like we see with the 20 millimetre cannons
on most American fighter aircraft.
Whereas the A10, of course, the gun has a very prominent
position sticking out the nose and that gives it that very
distinct profile. And also, you know, the other
big thing is the the famous titanium bathtub when they
retire that maybe I'd like to buy one of these bathtubs for,
you know, my house. But massive protection for the
pilots. So this thing can take some
really serious hits and yet the pilot will survive.
Now the Cold War, of course, the Europe never got hot.
You know, the Soviet Union kind of faded away.
But the A10 nonetheless was a very effective in the US wars in
Iraq. It was very effective in
Afghanistan, and now, of course, it's operating in Iran.
And it's, you know, still proving itself to be, you know,
have uses in the modern age, even though it was designed for
a mission over 50 years ago, which no longer really exists.
And I'll never forget, like I was in 1990, I met some Royal
Air Force or Tornado pilots, and I said, yeah, what do you guys
think about the A10? And they said, look, the gun
might not be as great against tanks as it used to be, but just
fired at the troops. It's a morale destroyer.
Yeah, You know, it's funny, when I was a cadet in the US Army, we
used to go to a training range near where there were tests
being done on on that gun and you could just hear it echoing
throughout the mountains. There's really haunting loud
sound as there's nothing else like it, I think that I've ever
heard in the world, especially when you're you're walking
around alone or in a small group.
And you could just imagine the morale of being on the other
side of that plummeting, like you mentioned, Greg.
Also, Ryan, the interesting thing about the gun is that it
fire originally fired these depleted uranium rounds.
And of course, when these hit an armoured target and go inside,
they make like this white hot stuff that flies around inside
called Spall. So it's a very, very lethal
weapon, in addition to being loud as you mentioned.
Craig, this is a topic. You've covered quite a bit over
the years and you had quite a nice headline a while back in In
Flight International magazine. Could you maybe talk about that
story? Yeah.
Absolutely. And and just following up from
what Craig said, yes, absolutely.
If there is a market for A10 titanium hot tubs, I am second
in queue for that after you, Greg.
Yeah, So on the headline, I, I have to refer back to this piece
I wrote in March 2004. So I'd only been at Flight
International for a few months and I have to refer to it.
It was about the A10 having a big upgrade and I'm still really
proud of the headline. So I went with old hog new
tricks. So yeah, I'm not sure I've done
much better than that in my my time since.
So that article came out of a visit I'd done to Spangdalen Air
Base in Germany with Lockheed Martin as my host for that trip.
And the USAF had a last European based squadron of a 10s flying
out of there and we were talking about all the planned additions
that were coming to the jet. So that included things like the
lightning targeting pod and JDAM position guided bombs.
So at that point, the upgrades which were going to take part,
along with running enhancements like wing replacements and new
engine pylons at the back of the aircraft, they were aimed at
getting the Warthog to fight on until 2028.
So, you know, not not far off the revised 2030 target that
we're talking now. Yeah.
Some striking bits, sort of thinking back to that visit.
So I can remember talking to the pilots there, and they were
quite excited about getting lightning onto the jet.
I think they'd used it a little bit in Afghanistan by that
point. But they were saying basically
it was great because it would let them support ground troops
without having to sit in the cockpit using binoculars, which
felt so old school. I couldn't really believe that
they still did that and I, I forget who the other journalist
on the trip was with me, but he was absolutely mind blown.
They took us through the squadron house and they had a
cabinet with a used shell case from a 30 millimetre round,
which is huge. And there was this really famous
photo up on the wall which shows the GAU 8 cannon assembly
sitting on the ground next to a Volkswagen Beetle and it makes
the car look absolutely tiny. So that that really gave you a
scale of the firepower on the aircraft.
The other sort of memory I've got of the A10 is I'd seen it at
air shows in the UK when I was a kid.
But when I was in a gap year before university, I had quite a
lot of fun working at a archaeological dig at Roman
Villa of all things. So the youths have had some a
10s in the UK RF Bentwaters back then and I'm not sure why, but
they really enjoy doing low level flights over rural
Gloucestershire. So there you are working at this
at this dig and you only hear The Jets as they pretty much get
on top of you. And every time you just make
visitors to the site jump out of their skins, which was always
quite funny. So yeah, that's, that's my sort
of personal memories of a 10. And I also got to sit in one of
The Jets, I think. I think I visited A Wego with
Lockheed Martin and they had one there supporting the upgrade.
And that really gave you the feel.
It's a it's a big aircraft and sitting up front with a wing way
behind you, you've got fantastic visibility up front.
So anyway, yeah. So going back to the legendary
battlefield survivability and that titanium bathtub again,
Ryan, you wrote a fantastic piece a little while back after
interviewing Kim Campbell for Flight Global's Women in
Aviation series. So KC was flying a mission over
Baghdad in April 2003 when her jet got hit by a surface to a
missile, and she displayed some of the most astonishing piloting
skills to fly it away, land and actually live to tell the tale.
How did she do that, Ryan? Yeah, this is a really
incredible story and and we are actually going to hear from Kim
later in the episode who goes by her call sign KC.
But during that famous mission over Iraq, where it's now become
very famous, she took a Sam impact that knocked out both the
primary and secondary hydraulic systems on her A10.
And fortunately for KC, the the Warthog has a a tertiary set of
backup mechanical flight controls that can be used in an
emergency. And she told me during this
interview that that's known with an A10 world as going to manual
reversion. And so this is a really old
school set of cranks and cables that offer some limited control
over the aircraft, but you're not getting you the pilot are
not getting hydraulic assistance on the stick or any of the other
inputs. So it's more limited.
It's it's more physically demanding.
But this was this manual reversion was enough for KC to
regain control of the heavily damaged A10, kind of pull it out
of a dive and get back into stable flight.
And at this point in the war, that portion of of land around
Baghdad was still enemy territory.
And so she was being faced with the prospect of having to eject
over enemy territory, much like we saw in Iran last month.
And that was obviously not an encouraging prospect.
So she was able to get control of the A10 and point it S
towards Kuwait and managed to fly it more than 400 kilometres
back to friendly territory where she and her flight lead and
their commander on the ground via radio were discussing
whether or not she should just eject over friendly territory
because the aircraft was so badly damaged.
And Kim felt that she she had enough control and, and that
things were stable enough that she was going to attempt to land
under manual reversion and, and managed to do it successfully.
And that was only the fourth time in history that anyone had
done that because it was considered such a dangerous and
risky manoeuvre that it was not attempted during training.
She told me that a 10 pilots practise it in simulators,
practise landing in manual reversion and simulators or
they'll go up above 10,000 feet and sort of simulate landing
with plenty of empty sky beneath them under manual reversion.
So they do have a feel for for the aircraft under those
conditions, but don't actually get anywhere near the ground
because it is considered such a difficult manoeuvre to perform.
And if you want to hear more about that, you can read an
account of that mission and King's full Air Force career.
She wrote a memoir called Flying in the Face of Fear that you can
find. Or you can read, as Craig
mentioned, my 2023 profile of her that is up on
flightglobal.com and we'll have a link to that in the show
notes. But since retiring from the Air
Force as a full Colonel, Kim Campbell has become a sort of
unofficial spokesman for the A10 community and often advocating
for both the pilots and and the aircraft itself.
Earlier this month, she actually spoke at the graduation ceremony
for what the Air Force says will be the last class of pilots to
receive a 10 mission qualification training, or MQT.
So that means they're fully certified to fly the A10 in
combat. I spoke with her after she gave
that speech and she highlighted the role that a 10 pilots played
in rescuing the crew of an American F15 E that was shot
down over Iran last month, providing close air support and
coordinating the rescue effort from the air.
That's what's known within the Air Force as the Sandy mission.
And I asked Kim Campbell how it felt to see the A10 fly a real
life Sandy mission and what she thinks about the latest attempt
to retire the war hog. The close air support mission is
something very well known, but combat search and rescue in the
Sandy role that we play isn't as well known, mostly because we
don't have to do it as frequently, which is a good
thing. But many of us get qualified as
a Sandy pilot and are designated so that we can perform those
rescue missions. But it requires very intense
training. It requires very intense
coordination with other rescue platforms because it's not a
pickup game. It's not something you do on the
fly. It's something that you've
practise, you've rehearsed, you've gone through scenarios,
worst case scenarios and so these are highly trained a 10
pilots that have worked with the rescue task force to go out and
do these missions. So how did it make me feel
really proud of these guys that they went out there, they did
exactly what you trained to do in a very high threat scenario,
and they were able to bring a pilot and a whizzo back home
safely. And within the Air Force, why is
it that the A10 was identified for this role?
And you know, it's obviously a very unique aircraft compared to
everything else in the inventory, but what is it about
the A10 that that makes it really suited to that Sandy
mission? Well, I think the the best thing
that I the, the number one thing is that we train to it very
specifically, but we do have some specific hardware on our
aircraft. We obviously have very long
loiter times. We're also very used to
providing firepower down in close proximity to friendly
forces. So, you know, we're going to put
ourselves at risk to help that survivor on the ground.
Since you retired from active duty, you've been something of
an advocate for the A10 and the A10 community.
You're, I think, probably the most well known A10 alumnus.
And when we've spoken in the past, you've raised the point
that there's been a lot of efforts or attempts at retiring
the A10 over the years, and it keeps surviving, and it keeps
proving its usefulness and effectiveness in whatever
context arises. And that's sometimes not what
the aircraft was designed for, but it keeps finding ways to be
relevant and useful. We sort of saw that again in
Iran just recently. The Air Force has now graduated
the last MQT class officially. Who knows what's going to
happen. But how are you viewing that now
that it seems like there is momentum to actually retire the
aircraft, yet it continues to prove that it is useful?
Well, it's happened over and over again.
And yes, I'm an advocate for the aeroplane.
I'm an advocate for the pilots because I think there's no one
better than us at what we do. Having said that, I think the
most important thing is that we ensure that we have a platform
in the future that can do close air support and can do combat
search and rescue. And so right now, I mean, the
good news out of the conflict in Iran is that we have extended
ended the life of the A10 to at least 20-30, at least that's
what the recent reports say, which isn't much longer than was
originally planned, but it's something and it allows us to
take a look at what is the future of combat search and
rescue. How are we going to do that?
And I think that's the missing piece is that right now there is
no replacement and there is no aircraft that is designated for
those missions, that is training for those missions.
And perhaps even more important than the aircraft itself is the
the people who fly it. And those are perishable skills
for an institution like the US Air Force.
If there's not that pipeline of people coming in and getting
trained by more experienced and more senior pilots, how do you
think about that? If, if this is in fact the last
MQT class or maybe there's a, a gap and, and the Air Force
decides to restart training or bring in another airframe and,
and restart training. How long before the institution
starts to kind of lose some of this very specific knowledge
that resides within the A10 community if there's not new
talent being brought in and and this kind of flow through the
pipeline restarted? Yeah, that's one of the the key
problems. I mean, the A10 in terms of what
they've already done in terms of divestment of the aeroplane.
I mean, the depot's closed, so we have maintenance and
logistics issues. The weapons school is closed.
So now we're losing that pipeline.
The schoolhouse just closed, so we're losing that pipeline.
So there's a lot of significant issues.
I mean, if you look at the Sandy one who LED this mission to
rescue this weapon systems officer, I mean, from my
understanding, they, you know, they went both through the MQT
programme that just shut down and the weapon school.
And so now you, you know, it just shows you that the
capability that is potentially going to lack.
I mean, right now the good thing is we still have a 10 pilots
doing the job, doing the mission, getting creative and
innovative in terms of how to respond to this current
environment. But we also have a real
possibility of losing this quickly, depending upon how far
down the road we go. How long do you think it would
take to come up with a replacement for the A10?
Or is there anything out there in the world already that you
think could maybe be a suitable successor to the A10 if the Air
Force did decide to recapitalize the fleet with the different
aircraft? That's a good question.
I don't think that there's anything out there right now
that is a suitable replacement. And the reason for that is if
you look at the F16 community, the Strike Eagle community, you
know, they have a lot of missions already.
And So what it would take is one of those communities adding on
to the missions that they already do and adding in close
air support or combat search and rescue, but they're already
tasked with several other missions.
And so now you run the risk of there there isn't enough hours
to fly to do all the missions that they're tasked to do.
That was retired US Air Force Colonel and A10 pilot Kim
Campbell speaking to me after the graduation of the the final
class of trained US Air Force A10 pilots.
Craig. Over the past six weeks, the A10
has been flying drone interception missions, air
patrols over the Strait of Hormuz, air to ground bombing.
Guns and as we heard there from KC, combat search and rescue
flights in the Middle East. The Pentagon has even said that
it has been used to strike small boats in the Persian Gulf.
What do you think about Casey's point there?
That there really is no other aircraft out there that can fill
this particular niche. Yeah, I mean, back to the old
hog new tricks thing again. Yeah, I mean, in addition to
what it's been doing, so hitting small boats, for example.
We've also had a rapid update recently, which means that the
A10 can now be refuelled, would have a modification on its nose
so it can do hose and drogue refuelling.
There's been trouble for the US Air Force with clearing it to
work with the KC 46. So this this means it can now
refuel a different way. So that's been quite an
interesting late addition. So, so late in it's life.
But back to the sort of niche capability.
I mean, Casey's absolutely right.
The A10 has this inherent survivability and firepower that
other types just do not have. I guess the natural replacement
for it is the F35 fifth generation stealth fighter.
You certainly wouldn't put high value asset like that in harm's
way like you you do the Warthog. We saw one UCFF 35A get hit by
some form of ground fire during Operation Epic Fury.
It wouldn't have been flying low level like an A10 while that
happened. So that's sort of shown the
vulnerability also sort of practical bits like the I think
the Marine Corps F-30 Fives have an external cannon, but it's a
lot smaller and it's just it's not the same sort of mission.
Of course, if you, if you think about the, the counterparts out
there, there's the Soviet era one, which is circle is SU-25
Frogfoot. There are still about 500 of
those in use around the globe. But it's got less technology
than the A10. It's, it's equally that's
slightly younger platform, but it's very old and it's mainly
flown by the likes of Russia, Belarus, African air forces,
things like that. Casey referred to the F16.
So that did a lot of closer support work in Afghanistan,
both with Yousaf and and European nations like the
Netherlands. But it was a much more benign
operating environment than we see in Iran.
So I mean, looking at alternatives, swayed by what had
happened in Afghanistan, US Air Force embarked on the armed
Overwatch programme. And the idea behind that was it
can employ A turboprop to do work like close air support at a
fraction of the cost that a fast jet would take to use.
And at that time, the Afghan Air Force that was being set up,
they had the Embraer A-29 Super Takano coming via US Prime
Sierra Nevada. And then Beechcraft came up with
the 86 Wolverine version of its trainer.
So that sort of market opened up.
Ultimately U.S. Special Operations Command
picked a heavily armoured adapted crop duster for this
role and 1st deliveries of the OA1K Sky Raider 2 have already
started from L3 Harris. So as it's an adapted crop
duster, the Sky Raider looks like it can pack a punch and
also should take some punishment as well.
But it's you know it's no A10 and if it was parked on the ramp
next to a Warthog I know what most pilots would rather be
flying. So I think the turbo prop would
do a decent job, but looking at the survivability side I
struggled to see how it's going to cope in a sort of near peer
conflict that the US is now pivoting towards.
Yeah, that's a good point about the OA 1K.
Craig and I know L3 Harris, which is the prime contractor
and that has floated it as a potential A10 replacement and
they're very enthusiastic about it.
But having seen that up close at the Soft Week trade show in
Tampa, FL last year, it looks like a crop duster that's been
up armoured and had some munitions strapped to the wings.
But it's clearly very different than the A10.
And I was told by L3 Harris at the recent Army aviation
Conference that they will have an OA 1K flying at the Soft Week
conference in Tampa, which is happening in May.
So if anyone's in that area. You could get to see.
The Sky Raider 2 flying around Greg, As we've mentioned a
couple times, the A10 has survived a few attempts at
retiring it over the past few years.
What has kept it alive throughout those attempts and
and what are some of the new ways that the Air Force has
tried to employ it during that time?
Yeah, certainly, Ryan. And I think I'd like to give a
bit of a counterpoint as well to the A10.
I mean, as iconic as the aircraft is, as survivable as it
is, there is kind of the sense that it is yesterday's
aeroplane. And, you know, the Air Force has
been working to try to, you know, retire it.
But one of the issues that stands in their way is that it's
a very iconic aircraft. And it also probably the main
thing going for the A10, in addition to its awesome
firepower, is it has extremely strong backing in Congress,
particularly in Arizona where there's a major A10 base, and
also in places like Georgia and Michigan where also a 10s are
deployed. So the congressman and senators
from those regions are very supportive of keeping the A10
because it's basing it's jobs. It's that kind of thing.
Another curious thing about it is previous defence secretaries
have tried to kill the A10, but now Pete Hegseth has come in and
and said he loves it. I mean, he tweeted when the Air
Force secretary announced of the day that the A10 was going to
get an additional year, Hegseth was right out there to say that,
you know, he loves the aircraft. So the political backing I think
is very strong. But that said though, I, you
know, over the recent years, I've had this real sense that
it's almost been an aircraft, that it's been looking, looking
for a mission, OK. So if you look at some of the
missions it's doing or it's been put up for, OK Boat Hunter and
the Strait of Hormuz, a lot of other platforms can do that.
You don't need this flying tank with a 30 millimetre gun to do
that. Drone killer.
OK, so so many 10s of markings. They've shot down Shaheds,
great. But you know, helicopters with
door Gunners can do that. Other fighter aircraft can do
that. You can put a lot of advanced
precision kill weapon systems on a standard fighter.
They can take out drones. Decoy carrier.
It's another one put forward for the A10.
You know, the miniature air launch DK, you drop these decoys
and they flood the air defences. Again, a lot of other platforms
can do that combat search and rescue.
Now, certainly I think in a fairly permissive environment
such as Iran, you know, the A10 will certainly have a role
there. But how much utility would it
offer in a big conflict in the Asia Pacific against, say,
China, where, you know, you maybe potentially have pilots,
you know, shot down at over the ocean or shot down over the
Chinese mainland? And that's a very different
proposition for the an aircraft like the a 10.
So yes, well it is great at this close air support and combat
search and rescue mission. I think it really depends on the
environment, you know where it's working and I would argue that
other ways of doing CSR maybe don't involve manned aircraft,
but perhaps Ccas, you know, where you have like a series of
Ccas, you don't mind if you lose a few and they're kind of
protecting a pilot. Now that's going to be a few
years in the future, but I think Ccas are ideal for this kind of
like dangerous, dirty, hazardous mission.
Another thing that's been covered this it's a great
aircraft for ACE, which is probably true.
That's agile combat employment because it can operate from a
steer strips. But again, the reason you have a
because you're fighting a pure competitor like China.
And how survivable will this aircraft be in that conflict?
And one of the more weird ones we wrote about a few years ago,
the US military made a big thing about it was protecting SSBNS
like ballistic missile submarines when they're leaving
port to go out to sea. And, you know, the idea is that
you have your A10 hovering around and the SSBN can, you
know, transit the littoral waters and head out to sea
safely. But there's a lot of other
systems you could do to protect the SSBN.
You could have some UAVs. You could have a few guys in
boats with guns. You could have helicopters doing
that mission. It just seems like kind of a
bizarre, weird overkill, like trying too hard to find a
mission for this aircraft. I guess too, like, I guess the
case is against the aircraft. You know you have tight budgets
and it's a very niche aircraft. As I mentioned before, it really
can only operate in low threat environments, like after the
integrated air defence system is taken down.
The gun, as amazing as it is, isn't as effective against
modern tanks that have composite armour.
The A10 Can you stand off Like Craig was talking about JDAM and
so forth just now, but a lot of other aircraft.
Every other aircraft really uses JDAM as well.
Old aircraft are hard to maintain.
Retiring would free up a lot of maintainers, and drones can
perform a lot of these roles without risking a pilot, as I
mentioned with the combat search and rescue.
So that's going to get me in trouble with the A10 community
and the fans, but just putting it out there.
Yeah, You know, it's funny, Greg, Speaking of fans, you
mentioned the Defence Secretary, Pete Hagseth.
It's really notable that as you mentioned, he's a supporter of
the A10 and he was a, a, a, a junior officer in the US Army
National Guard and deployed to Iraq during the Iraq war, during
the Global War on Terror. And A10 does have a sort of cult
following within the US Army and Marine Corps because it did
perform those close air support missions for troopers groups in
contact. And you know, where is it?
An F16 or an F15 might drop a precision munition from 10s of
thousands of feet up in the air. The A10 was always down and
close and had that very distinctive sound of the the
main gun firing. And so it really imprinted, I
guess you would say, in the minds of a lot of ground combat
troops from those conflicts. And that was a big reason why it
had such support in Congress is because every time the Air Force
would try and retire it, you'd have a bunch of Army and Marine
Corps veterans writing to their congressman or their senator and
telling them it's, you know, that it saved my life or my
friend's life or it saved our unit or, you know, that kind of
thing. So I think it's pretty
interesting that that Pete Hags has probably has either a direct
connection or kind of absorbed it through osmosis as someone
who was in in the Army in Iraq rather than on the Air Force
side. But I think one of the things
that I'm really watching for now that the Air Force is going to
extend service until 2030. So we've got a few years at
least before the A10 now retires.
What I'm watching for is to see if they restart pilot training
because as we mentioned earlier in the episode, the Air Force
graduated what it says was its last class of mission qualified
a 10 pilots. That happened at the beginning
of April. And now currently they plan to
shut down the A10 flight training score squadron sometime
in September around the end of the fiscal year.
So I spoke with Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Rudder, who's the
commanding officer of the 357th Fighter Squadron.
That's the unit that manages A10 flight training at Davis
Mountain Air Force Base in Arizona.
He told me that many existing A 10 pilots have already begun re
qualifying on new fighters, particularly the Lockheed Martin
F35 and the newest A 10 pilots which are known as wingman
within the Air Force, likely won't fly the Warthog for very
long. I shared with them from the
beginning, I think, you know, they have the unique perspective
of of being the last, you know, A10 wingman, which I think is
something to be, you know, very proud of that.
I think they'll take forward with them into their next
communities. But to your point, they won't be
a 10 pilots for their entire career based off of the current
plan and timelines, and so they'll most likely have about 1
operational assignment that they're able to to get through,
with many of them probably becoming 2 ship fight leads.
Like I mentioned before, they transition to another fighter
and the majority of them will transition to other fighters
with the F35 kind of being the primary cross training platform
that we'll that we're sending most of the A 10 pilots to.
There's opportunities in other other airframes as well.
We're sending some people F sixteens and occasionally F
fifteens, but for the most part F35 will be the community that
absorbs a lot of our A 10 pilots.
Kind of what I try to share with our wingman.
Is that part of their job or role?
Will be to. Take the lessons that they've
learned in close air support and combat, search and rescue and
forward air control these these primary a 10 mission sets and be
those subject matter experts in their follow on fighter as they
transition. Even if that fighter doesn't do
that as a primary mission or role, it's important to kind of
keep the institutional expertise and some of that culture alive.
And so I think they'll, I think they'll do a great job taking
that mission forward. Why is the F35 kind of the
primary destination? Is that just a mass thing?
That's where. It is, yeah.
It's just, yeah, it's just the numbers.
Since that aircraft, you know, is still building out and we're
still producing more F-30 fives, the biggest we'll say community
or airframe for absorption of a 10 pilots will be the F35.
And again, that was Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Rudder, commander
of the US Air Force's 357th Fighter Squadron, which trains
and qualifies new A 10 pilots. Greg Craig.
Militaries around the world are famous for making plans and then
changing them on short notice. So do you think that's what
we're likely to see with the plans for the A10 retirement?
Yeah, Ryan, I think it is finally coming to the end of its
days. As KC mentioned, you know, they
only extended it out to 2030. Look, the aircraft's iconic.
It has some unique attributes and it certainly has nostalgia
value both among those who fly it and the ground troops, as you
mentioned, right? But I feel that, you know, as we
things advance with, you know, collaborative combat aircraft
and drones, there's just going to be more automated, safer ways
to do, you know, the A10's mission.
But one thing, just to Colonel Rutter's point, you know, the
knowledge of the A10 community when they move to either F-30
fives or whether they're working with Ccas, I mean that learning
of the A10 will, you know, certainly influence operations
with new aircraft and CCA. So I think even though the A10
might not physically be in the Air Force for long, I think it's
legacy will certainly live on. And as I said, you know, I'd
really like to get the titanium bathtub, but if I can't, a
cocktail shaker made from one of the shell cases of a 30
millimetre round would be fine as well.
Yeah, just make sure it's not one of the depleted uranium
ones. Yeah.
Definitely not Craig. Any last thoughts?
Yeah, I, I would agree. I mean, I, I think, I think it,
you know, it's getting a small extension, but I think this
probably really is getting towards the final chapter now.
So as you said in the introduction, the fleet size has
pretty much halved within the last decade and the last pilots
are coming through. So yeah, you you can see the end
of it now. So, I mean, despite all the
impressive upgrades and structural modifications that
have gone on the jet over the past last few years, you can't
get away from the fact that they're old jets.
We're talking 42 to 46 years old for the fleet and they they just
can't go on forever. That said, I bet President
Zelensky would love to have been able to get hold of some for
Ukrainian Air Force service. And just sort of note on the
Pete Hegseth loving the A10. Well, you know, if he didn't
have a 10 in Sandy, he couldn't get in his great vengeance and
furious anger quote from Pulp Fiction, could he?
So yeah, it's it's a great jet. But I think unfortunately the
the time comes for all of us. All right, guys.
Well, it's been great to talk with you and a really
interesting discussion, but we're going to have to leave it
there. So we'll see you next time and
take care. 810 Forever man. Cheers everybody next time.
Well, thanks everyone. You've been listening to Flight
Global Focus, which is a production of Flight Global with
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