How the F-35 Stealth Fighter Is 'Destroying' the A-10 Warthog

James Stevenson

Security,

A sad day. 

The U.S. Marine Corps, tired of waiting for the continuously-delayed F-35B, has gone to the Arizona boneyard to retrieve some of its preserved, first-edition F-18 Hornets to fulfill its close air support obligation to protect Marines on the ground.

Mindful of the aphorism “willful waste makes woeful want,” the Marine Corps preserved its F-18s in the boneyard just in case it ever needed them again.

The U.S. Air Force, not feeling a similar obligation to protect U.S. Army soldiers on the ground and arguing that the F-35A can perform close air support as well as the A-10 Warthog can do, is now claiming it cannot afford the A-10s because it needs the money to support the forthcoming F-35A.

With a mentality reminiscent of Vietnam thinking — “We had to destroy the village to protect it!” — the Air Force is dismantling some of its stored A-10s.

Even the warning from the popular musical Hamilton — “Don’t throw away your shot!” — is not enough to get the Air Force to reflect on the possibility the thin-skinned F-35A might not be up to the job of getting down low and slow to save soldiers’ lives.

The U.S. Air Force paid Fairchild Republic to build 716 Warthogs and 291 of them were still in service as of June 2016. As of late July, 49 A-10A and 50 A-10Cs were sunbathing at the Arizona boneyard.

The “C” version is an upgrade to the airframe that gives the airplane an additional 8,000 hours of flying time and new avionics. For reasons that remain unclear, the Air Force is destroying stored A-10s, even some of the A-10Cs, many of which still have thousands of hours of life remaining.

I wrote to the Air Force to ask for detailed information about the stored Warthogs. Terry Pittman from AMARG declined to answer all of my questions. “We consider this information to be for official use only,” Pittman wrote.

But Pittman did say that the Air Force has removed parts and engines from many of the stored A-10Cs. “Most of these aircraft have experienced some reclamation of critically-needed parts.” Just 20 A-10Cs in the highest category of preservation are exempt from “cannibalization.”

Why the Air Force decided not to leave their dormant airframes preserved in the Arizona sunshine is difficult to comprehend, as even the Navy’s ancient F-8 Crusaders, which have not flown since the 1980s, have remained intact at Davis-Monthan.