http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-discussing-international-a-10-warthog-sales-412606/

"Boeing has floated the idea of selling refurbished A-10 Warthogs to other nations as the US Air Force seeks to retire the venerable attack airplane."

"Dozens of A-10s are currently in near-flyaway storage at the air force's boneyard facility in Arizona, and could be brought back into the operational fleet at any time."

"No other nation currently operates the A-10, called the "best close air support platform ever" by the general in charge of Air Combat Command."

When I retire years and years from now I want a stripped down version of one of these if a civilian could ever own one

As long as the recipients are:

Canada
England
France
Germany
Australia
Belgium
Holland
Israel
India
Japan etc

I'm ok with it.

If they are delivered to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq or any other of these so called allies, I'd want the CEO in front of congress answering treason charges.

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As long as the recipients are:

Canada
England
France
Germany
Australia
Belgium
Holland
Israel
India
Japan etc

I'm ok with it.

If they are delivered to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq or any other of these so called allies, I'd want the CEO in front of congress answering treason charges.

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You know we sell a lot of much more sophisticated stuff than second hand A-10's to lots of Arab countries, right?

Yes I do. Not happy with it!

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When I retire years and years from now I want a stripped down version of one of these if a civilian could ever own one

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A CLS custodianship of old aircraft could be a more economical means of keeping the capability to mobilize these weapon systems in warm storage rather than the overhead of uniformed and government civilian labor. Writing a strong PWS for such a contract would not be that difficult. Companies like Draken International could not exist if they were not able to operate tactical aircraft at a fraction of the cost that it takes our government to do so.

Draken demo video

Draken's stable of aircraft

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HARD COST SAVINGS Every hour that Draken operates in place of a military asset delivers a tangible cost savings, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in potential savings.

SOFT COST SAVINGS Every hour Draken operates an aircraft in place of a military asset is another hour remaining on the life of that aircraft.

ENHANCED COMBAT CAPABILITY Augmenting even a small portion of the sub-optimal Red Air, JTAC training, chase, R&D, and other similar missions, will free up flight hours for military aviators to focus on enhancing their "blue air" combat proficiency.

AIR-TO-GROUND Realism for SOF and JTACs on the ground is paramount for mission success.

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We keep talking about the Air Force scrapping the A-10 or selling them to other countries and are making a large deal about it, but has anyone touched on whether or not the ANG is going to continue flight operations for the airframe?

No, they won't. The AF wants ALL of them to go to the boneyard. I know there are AF Reserve A-10s at Ft Smith and Whiteman AFB, MO. There may be some other reserve units flying the aircraft. I don't think the Guard has any and there are no plans for them to get the planes.

A Wikipedia search shows 5 operational squadrons, 4 guard, 4 reserve. The AF has like 280 A-10's and they claim they can't maintain a smaller force because it would be too expensive. Of course they have a fleet of only 180ish F-22's but that's a capability they care more about. I think they should keep a handful of squadrons for the foreseeable future.

GAC, are you still flying the AV-8, or now in the F-35?

I don't plan on flying the F-35, although I think it will be a very capable jet

No question about it.

So you are still flying the AV-8?

Station gig now should take me to the end of my commitment

Very good. The F-35 community is going to need your kind of attack expertise, more than they realize with such a capable multi role aircraft. Similar to my transition from the A-10 to the F-15E in the day.

They're getting a lot of harrier guys, but I think it's going to be more like a stealth hornet that can land vertically than a harrier. CAS was my favorite mission, and things will be very different with the F-35. I'm content to build hours

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No question about it.

So you are still flying the AV-8?

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Im still waiting for Pepsi to gimme my Harrier!

http://www.coolestone.com/media/12407/Retired-Pilot-Buys-Own-Fighter-Jet/#.VWkbuGRVikp

If you want a Harrier, do what this guy did.

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No, they won't. The AF wants ALL of them to go to the boneyard. I know there are AF Reserve A-10s at Ft Smith and Whiteman AFB, MO. There may be some other reserve units flying the aircraft. I don't think the Guard has any and there are no plans for them to get the planes.

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The Idaho Air National Guard's 124th Fighter Wing has 22 A10s and flies them out of the Boise airport. Our Congressmen are fighting the Air Force to force them to keep them around.

Yep, I was dead wrong about that. Should have done my homework.

On a side note, we have a lake house at Lake Tenkiller, OK, just across the lake from Camp Gruber, an OK National Guard training base. From time to time the Reserve A-10 unit from Ft Smith, Arkansas does maneuvers over Camp Gruber and they make low level turns right over our lake house. A glorious sight indeed!

They are? Awesome. I haven't been back to Boise since last October so I haven't kept up on that.

Since no thread about the A-10 can be adequately discussed without mentioning CAS, I would like to add a little history that I came across just today.

Yesterday the mailman delivered my monthly copy of Air Classic, which included an excellent article on the Navy F-111B , also known as McNamara's Folly. I am very familiar with the AF F-111 series, having served two tours as a weather weenie supporting the F-111D equiped 27th TFW at Cannon AFB, NM. Once as a butter bar and later as an O-4 Weather Detachment Commander. But while I knew of McNamara's Folly, I did not know a lot of the details of the Navy versioin until today.

McNamara was JFK's Secretary of Defense and had been a top exec in the Ford Motor Company. In 1961 the AF had a requirement for a supersonic tactical fighter (the TFX) and the Navy had a requirement for a Fleet Air Defense fighter (the FAD).

In Feb 1961, McNamara instructed the military services to explore the feasibility of developing a common aircraft for the TFX and FAD mission and ALSO THE CAS MISSION TO SUPPORT THE ARMY AND MARINES! (Completely new info to me.) Long story, short - the AF got the F-111 series for TAC and the FB-111 for SAC (I had several friends who were FB drivers) and the Aussies got some TAC F-111 versions.

The Navy F-111B was a disaster from the start and was far too heavy for carrier ops. Only 7 test models were built before the program was cancelled. The AF used both the F-111 and FB-111 series successfully but the aircraft was a compromise from the start and not what the AF really wanted. (I believe the Aussies were quite happy with their F-111s.) The Navy ended up with the F-14 Tomcat as their FAD platform and i understand they were quite pleased with the aircraft.

The CAS mission? Here is a quote from the Air Classics article:

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In June (1961) a meeting of high-ranking officers managed to convince McNamara that the CAS mission was completely incompatible with the TFX and FAD concepts. McNamara then instructed the military in no uncertain terms to work together to combine the TFX and FAD requirments.

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And as it turned out, the TFX and FAD concepts were incompatible as well.

As for CAS, it is my opinion that the A-10 comes closest to being the ideal fixed wing CAS platform. A poster I highly respect, GAC06, does not agree with me, but I believe we have agreed to disagree.

It appears that the DOD has come full circle with the F-35 - a "common" aircraft that will be a jack of all trades and master of none. McNamara would be quite pleased.

I don't think I've ever said that the A-10 isn't very well suited for CAS. It is. I think that we should keep some around for the foreseeable future. I think that the things that made the A-10 well suited for CAS aren't as necessary as technology continues to progress.

The similarities between the F-111 and F-35 end with "joint". The F-35 was never intended to be a strategic bomber, air superiority fighter, AND attack aircraft. The F-35 was designed as a joint strike fighter. I think it will perform that role well. The F-16 was introduced as a daylight IR only interceptor, and now it's a highly successful fighter, strike platform, and SEAD asset.

Fair enough. As I posted, I respect your opinion and will continue to do so.

What bothers me is the fan boys and those with strong opinions without an understanding of what CAS is. I don't mind disagreement from knowledgable posters, and you are an asset to this board.

Thomas Connolly, 86, Top-Gun Admiral, Dies

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Thomas Connolly, 86, Top-Gun Admiral, DiesBy ROBERT McG. THOMAS Jr.Published: June 9, 1996

Thomas F. Connolly, a three-star admiral who sacrificed his chance for a fourth star, clearing the way for his namesake, the F-14 Tomcat, died on May 24 at a hospital near his home in Holland, Mich. He was 86.

The cause was emphysema, said his wife, Margaret.

Almost 25 years have passed since he retired as a Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, and it is a safe bet that few of today's carrier pilots could place the name Connolly in the pantheon of Naval heroes.

After all, as the Navy's top guns, the ones who strap themselves into the supersonic swept-wing F-14's that Tom Cruise made famous in the movie, they hardly need to know that every time they catapult off a carrier and take to the skies at Mach 2 they are paying tribute to the man who made the plane possible.

The F-14 Tomcat, the last in a series of Grumman-built cat planes dating to the F-4 Wildcat and F-6 Hellcat of World War II, is the only one named for an admiral. The reason that Tom Connolly is the admiral the plane is named for will not be found in his official Navy biography.

A native of St. Paul who grew up in Los Angeles, Admiral Connolly was a top gymnast who won a bronze medal in the rope climb at the 1932 Olympics before graduating from the United States Naval Academy.

At the outbreak of World War II he was completing a master's degree in aeronautic engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He received his share of decorations for wartime service commanding a squadron of 40 land-based patrol bombers, but what many of his fellow fliers regarded as his most courageous and most significant contribution came two decades later. The enemy, as the Admiral saw it, was not an alien power but his own well-meaning civilian bosses.

By then Admiral Connolly was on a four-star track, having distinguished himself as a crack test pilot, established the Navy's elite test pilot training center at Patuxent River, Md., commanded two carriers, a carrier division and the entire Pacific air wing, and had spent so much time in high-level Pentagon posts that it was hardly surprising when he was elevated to Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for air in 1966.

It was the time in which Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and the Whiz Kids he had brought to the Pentagon from the Ford Motor Company were pressing to save money by building a common plane, with slight variations, for both the Air Force and the Navy.

In theory it was a brilliant idea, but to the Navy, the execution was weighted dangerously in favor of Air Force needs. Indeed, to a man, Navy aviators and naval aviation specialists argued that the plane, the F-111, was unstable and too heavy for its thrust to take off from carriers.

In the political climate of the Johnson Administration, however, the Navy's concerns were swept aside, and like the loyal officers they were, the Navy's admirals kept their objections quiet in public.
Then came the day Vice Admiral Connolly joined a team headed by the Secretary of the Navy at a Senate hearing conducted by John C. Stennis, the chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee.

Gerald E. Miller, a retired admiral who was present as an aide to Admiral Connolly, recalled that Mr. was sympathetic to the Navy's position. But with Secretary Paul R. Ignatius of the Navy fielding every question, no matter how technical, and following the Pentagon line to the letter, Mr. Stennis despaired of getting the explicit criticism he needed.

Finally, in desperation, he singled out Admiral Connolly, noted his renowned expertise in naval aeronautics, and asked him pointedly to give his personal, not his official, opinion. Admiral Miller remembers vividly that Admiral Connolly swallowed hard, then declared, "There isn't enough thrust in Christendom to fix this plane."

With his answer, Admiral Miller noted, the Navy version of the F-111 died aborning and Admiral Connolly's dream of promotion to full admiral died along with it.

Having rescued the Navy from what he considered an aviation disaster, Admiral Connolly threw himself into the design and development of the F-14, becoming virtually the day-today project manager.

He retired in 1971, a star short of his dream, but his work on the F-14 and its name provided a measure of consolation. It is a tribute to his vision that two decades after it was introduced as the technological marvel of military aviation, modified versions of the F-14 are still regarded as the primary defenders of the nation's fleets.

And they still call it the Tomcat.

In addition to wife, Admiral Connolly is survived by a son, Thomas Jr., of Holland; a daughter, Susan Maya of Vienna, Va., and three grandchildren.

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Lord rest his soul. We need a Tomcat Connolly to speak the truth and Mac Thornberry to listen to him.

From a technical and engineering standpoint, the JSF will eventually with enough additional funding meet the threshold for its KPPs. It's going to take a crap-ton more money to put the check in those boxes and I don't believe that PM has yet determined how much that's going to be. Once they put the check in those boxes and get it through LFT&E the real bulk of the lifecycle cost will start accruing. However expensive the APUC ends up being for the variants of the JSF I believe that it will cost far more per flight hour that any of the estimates from the JPO or CAPE have calculated. The argument will be that it is x times more effective than the Hornets or Falcons it replaces but it will also be 2x more expensive to own and fly than those aircraft.

Multi-role multi-service aircraft acquisition programs are a cost imposing strategy that we inflict on ourselves. This has happened over and over again when big-aerospace runs the show. The taxpayers have been much better served when someone with vision is given the autonomy and resources to build what is needed in a Skunkworks than in the mainline organization of megalithic companies and massive government JPOs that are dutifully generating all of the required documents described in the DoD 5000 series of policy.

The $5 Billion Misunderstanding




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Nevermind. I just needed to take a lithium tablet. It's going to be different this time. The JSF is going to be the best aircraft and the best ACAT 1 program ever.

The Admiral's quote in your post was included in the Air Classics article I referenced.

The Israeli's don't want the A-10 because, like USAF, they understand that it's no longer survivable against any remotely capable air defense even in small wars.

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/strike/2015/05/30/israel-air-force-iaf-gaza-jdam-f35-fighter-precision-pgm/28141849/

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The Israeli's don't want the A-10 because, like USAF, they understand that it's no longer survivable against any remotely capable air defense even in small wars.

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That's going to be a huge disappointment to the AC-130 community. The writing is on the wall for their demise.

A-10's are no longer in Ft Smith.
The 188th now is a drone outfit.

Damn, I'm going to miss them flying low over my lake house at Tenkiller this summer.

The MQ-9 is the future of CAS in a low-mid threat environment -- which is the only environment an A-10 can really operate effectively.

I'm a ground guy, and think it should be retired.

In addition, the AH-64 covers a lot of the role that the A-10 is supposed to occupy. Sure, I'd like to have an armed UAV, a pair of Apaches doing CCA, and a pair of A-10s hovering overhead, but it is a zero sum game.

China and Russia are the pacing threats, and the capabilities of modern IAMD have led us down the road to JSF. I agree with Ulysses, though, that the multi-service, multi-role "swiss army knife" approach is false economy.

Finally, it is worth noting that anyone quoting Hawk Carlisle on the A-10 being the "best CAS platform" ever invented forgot to add the "but..." at the end.