Air Force downs its best close air support plane

Washington Times:
The Air Force’s A-10 “Warthog,” which provides close air support for ground troops, has survived enemy anti-aircraft fire for decades but is about to be downed by the budget cutter’s pen.

With combat envisioned in the Asia-Pacific region, there is little room for a “tank killer” like the A-10 Thunderbolt — nicknamed “Warthog” because of its look — and other long-treasured weapons systems in a Pentagon budget facing deep reductions, officials say.

The budget cuts also could reduce production of the KC-10 Extender tanker aircraft, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and the Ground Combat Vehicle.

“Do we want a ready force today or a modern force tomorrow? That’s the dilemma. You can’t have both,” Gen. Mark Welsh III, Air Force chief of staff, said last week at the American Enterprise Institute. “If you lose a counterinsurgency action, it’s embarrassing. If you lose a full-spectrum conflict, it will be catastrophic.” 
Officials are considering retiring the Air Force fleet of 324 A-10s by 2015, which would save about $3.7 billion a year in operational, maintenance and logistical costs. At least three times as many F-16s would have to be cut to get the same amount of savings, Gen. Welsh said.
...
I would try to find a way to save this plane which has had a unique roll in saving the troops.  It is too bad the Marines can't find a way to make the A-10 a carrier based plane because it is ideal at a mission prized by the Marines.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more