Air Force appears to concede that the F-35 can’t (and won’t) replace the A-10 Warthog

[Valin]

Hot Air:

Jazz Shaw

Oct. 30 2016

 

The amount of money that we’ve flushed into the development and deployment of the F-35 Lightning all-weather, stealth multirole fighter is now enough to fund the budgets of several small to mid-size nations. But for all of that, the program has experienced one setback after another, including one in April that threatened to ground the entire fleet. Even with that issue resolved, a later test of six of the new, stealthy fighters revealed that only one of them was capable of a rapid, ready alert launch.

 

This has led to inevitable, unfavorable comparisons to the aging but highly reliable A-10 Warthog. In fact at one point, the military even scheduled a face to face “grudge match” testing the two craft against each other in close air support scenarios. That process is still rolling out but we’re getting a pretty good idea of how it’s going from the supply chain side of the military. While no official announcement has been made, an article from Instapundit pointing us to this piece from Popular Mechanics shows that the Warthog “ain’t going anywhere.”

 

(Snip)

 

The news about the supply chain orders is probably more definitive than any formal announcement. We apparently aren’t going to be able to do without the Warthog so any savings on that front to defray the monstrous cost of the F-35 will not be realized. If they are setting up maintenance shops and spare parts lines for “indefinite service” as that announcement indicates, we’d better take a fresh look at the military budget. The A-10 is apparently here to stay and it’s going to cost plenty to keep those birds in the air for the next several decades.