ISIL breathes new life into A-10's?

Stars and Stripes:
Months after staving off a trip to the boneyard, the embattled A-10 Thunderbolt II is headed to the Middle East where it could be used to fight Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria.

An Indiana Air National Guard unit that flies the Cold War-era gunships, known as Warthogs, is planning to deploy about 300 airmen and an unknown number of its aircraft to the U.S. Central Command region early next month, says a Sept. 17 news release from the unit.

The 122nd Fighter Wing, located at Fort Wayne Air National Guard Base, Ind., has 21 aircraft, though it’s uncertain how many will be deploying, a spokesman said Thursday.

The Air National Guard release doesn’t mention where the group is headed or for what purpose.

The Air Force wants to retire the A-10, an attack aircraft intended for close air support, to pay for its new — and costly — multipurpose F-35 stealth fighters. Retiring the decades-old fleet of about 300 A-10s would potentially save about $4.2 billion over five years, Air Force leaders have said.

But Congress this summer spared the plane from defense cuts. And now some experts say they wouldn’t be surprised to see the almost-mothballed A-10 pulled into the air war in Iraq and Syria, a possibility that could further heat the debate on the plane’s future.

Designed to shoot Soviet tanks rolling across the open fields of Europe, the A-10 has been the primary aircraft for close air support of ground forces since the mid-1970s. Experts say that capability is well-suited to taking out ground targets in Iraq and Syria.

“When you deploy the A-10, they only have one purpose,” said Dakota Wood, the senior research fellow for defense programs at the Heritage Foundation, and that is “to kill things on the ground. If the expectation is to defeat ISIS in Iraq and help the Iraqis push them out or do anything in Syria, especially in the border area between Syria and Iraq, you will need firepower well-suited” to targeting armored vehicles and enemy fighters on the ground.
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There is more.

Readers of this blog know I am a proponent of the A-10 and its close air support mission.  I think it is ideal for taking on ISIL and its mechanized units.  It can thwart the enemy's movement to contact.  The US should put the bulk of the A-10 fleet into this fight and let them do several sorties a day.

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