Lawmakers: Hold Off on A-10 Cuts by Brian Everstine, Air Force Times.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers last week urged Defense Department leaders to hold off on any plans to cut the A-10 and provide more scrutiny to the Air Force’s budget plans.
The letter, signed by 13 senators and 20 representatives, calls on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to “actively scrutinize” the Air Force’s fiscal 2015 budget proposals, and conduct a study on close-air support as directed by the Senate Armed Services Committee in its report on the fiscal 2014 authorization bill…
Pilots Plan Tomorrow’s A-10 by Dave Majumdar, War is Boring.
Short on cash and determined to prioritize new stealth warplanes, the U.S. Air Force is busily trying to rid itself of all 350 of its slow- and low-flying A-10 Warthog attack planes—this despite the heavily-armed twin-engine jet’s impressive combat record stretching back to the 1991 Gulf War.
But the flying branch still needs to support American troops on the ground—the Warthog’s raison d’etre. With that in mind, around 20 highly experienced A-10 pilots and engineers are working on unofficial specifications for a successor to the Warthog…