While the A-10 delivered “devastating” close air support for U.S.-backed Syrian-Arab fighters last week, according to Military.com, the battle against the A-10 continues stateside. The backroom mothballing might have had a setback in the latest NDAA, but the USAF remains undaunted as it maneuvers to pump more money into the bloated F-35 program.
Tony Carr, publisher of the popular website, John Q. Public describes the USAF anti-A-10 effort as “an underhanded propaganda campaign littered with command abuses and suppression tactics.” Others call it “Operation Destroy CAS.”
Those suppression tactics failed last week when Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, told Military.com the truth. “We were able to bring both the A-10s and the Spectre gunship to bear in a devastating manner” to aid in the assault on al-Hawl, Warren told reporters in a video briefing from Baghdad.
“Warren’s comments were believed to be the first by the U.S. military in describing a specific attack in the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, by the A-10s, commonly known as “Warthogs” to the U.S. infantry,” reported Richard Sisk of Military.com.
Warren’s comments might be the last for a while according to one of the creators of the A-10, Pierre Sprey, who elaborated on “Operation Destroy CAS on the James T. Harris show last week. Sprey, part of the original Fighter Mafia, told Harris that the “devastating close air support” provided by the A-10 is not news at all. “You know it’s not news. It’s been devastating throughout the entire Iraq and Afghan war ever since 2003. So it’s been devastating for at least a dozen years. But you hear no releases – certainly not out of the Air Force – that it’s doing anything good. They’re always busy telling you that the B-1 is doing a great job; the F-15 is doing a great job. And maybe they’ll say ‘yeah the A-10 participated.’ So there is no real news there. The real news is that this slipped out.”
According to Sprey the only reason anyone is hearing the “news” is because the spokesman quoted in the Military.com article “is not an Air Force guy. The colonel who gave that press release about it being devastating is an Army colonel. That’s why this slipped out. But let me tell you, he’s going to hear from his superiors. If not going to, he already is I’m sure already had a ton of bricks laid on his head about never saying that again.”
“Well you gotta remember,” Sprey continued, “that this is coming out of a joint headquarters where you have Army, Navy and Air Force. And it just happens that this time around that the PR colonel is an Army guy. Next time around this might be an Air Force guy. So that’s why this leaked out. But above him in that headquarters for sure is an Air Force general and I’m sure he has heard from that Air Force general about how he stepped in it.”
Harris asked Sprey if the fact that Warren, “stepped in it and the word is out” would curtail the backdoor mothballing. Sprey said that “General Mark Welsh, the Chief of Staff, and all the generals under him will continue to bombard the Congress and the Secretary of Defense and the public about what a bad idea it is to keep A-10’s because we need that money so badly for this wonderful new airplane,” referring to the F-35.
Harris asked Sprey about the move last week by senators John McCain and Jeff Flake to issue the not so new announcement that the USAF and other branches had been paying for the faux patriotism. Harris stated, “That isn’t the only kind of propaganda out there. We know that the United States Air Force Chief of Staff was lying about the A-10’s performance from Desert Storm forward.”
“He certainly falsified the statistics in a press conference where, once again, he was trying to lay it on the A-10 about how it couldn’t survive and how the new F-35 that we need so badly could survive,” said Sprey referring to Welsh. “He came out with this astounding figure that 70 percent of the A-10’s in Desert Storm had been battle damaged. That was an exaggeration by over a factor of five but not surprising because this is the kind of stuff that Air Force generals pass out amongst each other. The A-10 is too slow, it can’t survive. It always did get hit, will get hit and the overwhelming Russian threat will wipe it out and the only thing that can counter that is an airplane that travels 450 knots and is super stealthy. That’s the kind of stuff they convince themselves.”
“None of that is true by the way,” said Sprey. “All of that is completely contrary to the combat evidence. And in a way I’m kind of glad that General Welch raised this totally exaggerated idea that the A-10 suffered 70 percent damage. The truth of the matter is that in Desert Storm, and the first Iraq war it was the most survivable airplane in the war. If you look at the ratio of airplanes hit – to airplanes lost – it had a better ratio than anybody. It could take the hits and come back. And the reason it had the hits was because it was doing its job. If you’re gonna get down there and help the Army, help the soldiers, help the Marines of course you’re going to get hit. There’s no way not to. Because you’ll have a bunch of machine guns and a bunch of shoulder infrared missiles fired at you. But that’s because you’re down there where you can do the job. When you’re at 10,000 and 12,000 feet bombing at 500 knots, of course you’re not going to get hit, but you’re not going to do a damn thing for our soldiers on the ground either.”
The two noted the irony of the fact the Warthog is built, with its titanium bathtub, to take a beating and generals complain that it takes a beating.
“Of course it is ironic,” said Sprey, “but they’ll grab any straw they can to keep that money flowing so they can do new expensive programs that are gonna get them good retirement jobs. That’s what we’re looking at. Plain and simple.”
Sprey explained: “Well 90% of them end up working for the industry. Doesn’t that tell you something? I’m just trying to tell you what is out there. I’m not being cynical. I’m just trying to tell you what happens and why you see the kind of procurement, the kind of waste of the taxpayers’ money that you’ve been seeing. The increasing waste of the taxpayers money, which has been increasing pretty much at the exactly the rate as the percentage of generals taking defense jobs has been increasing.”
“Right after WW2, the culture among flag officers, generals, was that any guy who took a defense job after he retired was that he had blotted his reputation. It was not an honorable thing to do.” Sprey pointed out that some of the World War II generals took “superb jobs because they were great leaders” in civilian industries, but it “just wasn’t done right after WW2 that you just went straight to work for someone who built tanks or airplanes or ships. Over the years that culture of honor has eroded.”
Sprey said that now nearly 90 percent of top leaders in all branches take jobs with the defense industry.
Harris compared the situation to the political class. “We see Boehner and Kantor, as soon as they are voted out of office or retired, go to work for these very lobbyist firms that were pressuring them while they were in office.” Sprey responded, “Its exactly the same revolving door. And as long as Americans put up with it they are going to get bad defense and bad politics. Very simple.”
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