Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced today that the Air Force will delay the retirement of the A-10 aircraft until at least 2022.
“Secretary Carter’s announcement today that the Air Force will not prematurely retire the A-10 is a credit to the brave airmen from Davis- Monthan Air Force Base and military installations across the country who are providing unmatched close-air support in critical missions throughout the world. Not only has the Air Force decided to keep the A-10 flying through at least 2022, but it has also pledged to replace it on a squadron-by-squadron basis – ensuring we won’t be left with a capability gap as we confront a complex array of conflicts and crises,” stated Senator John McCain today.
In January, after the initial announcement that the A-10 would be spared, USAF critics were skeptical. One of the A-10 creators, and member of the fighter mafia, Pierre Sprey, appeared on the popular James T. Harris radio show. At the time, he told Harris, “And this is exactly what is at stake here. Publicly they are not going to try to kill the A-10 for a couple of years in the budget but there is a lot of ways to do in the A-10 even after you publicly admitted that you are not doing it in and exactly what you are saying. You can slow down the overhauls, you can put a stranglehold on the spare parts budget and steal some more of the maintenance man power of the A-10 and these are all things that they have already attempted. And they got caught trying to kill the overhauls that are needed to keep the thing flying and deployed. They did get away with raiding the man power and very sadly took the highest level maintenance guys entirely in the A-10 force stripped down and substituted some green people. Fortunately the A-10 community is resilient and these new guys are starting to do a great job but it was a kind of underhanded thing to do. But right now we are very carefully watching the spare parts situation for instance. They have actually strangled the guys in combat from spare parts. These guys had to complain. They sent messages home saying that they were being cut short on spare parts. They were getting their home squadrons to FedEx parts to them because the Air Force wouldn’t send them out and when they complained the Air Force started an investigation to hang them.”
Sprey explained that the A-10 might also have a better chance of surviving any backroom maneuvers because of the departure of General James Welsh. “The two important things happening are that General Welsh is leaving this summer. He has been bitter and vindictive sparkplug behind this anti A-10 campaign. He’s leaving. He won’t be chairman of the Joint Chiefs because no one thinks highly of him so he’ll be gone. So I guarantee you his successor is not gonna want to open his time as Chief of Staff of the Air Force by picking a fight with Congress over 4 billion dollars for the A-10. So he’s got huge fish to fry. He’s gotta save a 400 billion dollar F-35 program, he’s gotta sell a 150 billion dollar bomber program. And the last thing he needs is to start with a bitter fight over the A-10. That’s working in our favor.”
According to Sprey, Debra James, Secretary of the Air Force, “is campaigning like crazy to become Secretary of Defense. Or Secretary of the Air Force. Of course she can only become Secretary of Defense is a Democratic regime so she’s gotta be real nice to Republicans and the Congress right now so the A-10 right now is the last issue in the world that she wants to get their feathers up about.”
In a letter to President Barack Obama and Carter, U.S. Representative Martha McSally called for full funding for the A-10 Warthog last week in the President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 budget. Rep. McSally successfully led the fight in the House last year to acquire full funding for our entire A-10 fleet and protect against additional backdoor means of retirement.
In 2015, Rep. McSally consistently questioned the Administration about its flawed strategy to retire the A-10 prematurely. During hearings, top Administration officials revealed to her that retiring the A-10 would result in capability gaps and that the F-35 would not be as survivable as the A-10 in certain scenarios and likely “standoff” during more Close Air Support missions.
Sprey, Tom Christie, Mandy Smithberger, Dan Grazier and Winslow Wheeler of the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight, on Wednesday are holding a briefing on the many implications of the recent report by the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation on the F-35 program. According to Wheeler’s notice, “Among the many issues that the highly technical language in this report reveals are that in some respects the F-35 program is moving backwards, that the initially “combat capable” F-35Bs and F-35As of the Marine Corps and Air Force, respectively, now and for the foreseeable future, will have no real combat capability, that a valid assessment of the full combat capabilities of the F-35 will not be available until the next decade, and that “acquisition malpractice” in the F-35 program is deepening as the program becomes more, not less, “concurrent.”