U.S. Air Force Secretary: Service May Delay A-10 Retirement
Sep 16, 2016Lara Seligman | Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
WASHINGTON – Although the U.S. Air Force has been fighting for
years to sunset the A-10 attack plane so it can move resources to newer
fighters, Secretary Deborah Lee James tells Aviation Week the air arm
may once again delay plans to retire the Thunderbolt II.
The Air Force’s latest plan is to begin gradually sunsetting the A-10
in fiscal year 2018, with the last aircraft heading to the boneyard in
fiscal 2021. But Congress is once again pushing back, arguing that
divesting the so-called Warthog leaves the Air Force without a
dedicated close-air support (CAS) platform, leaving soldiers on the
ground vulnerable to enemy fire.
“The plan has us gradually retiring the A-10 beginning in the final
couple of years of the five-year plan, but Congress appears to be
saying no to that,” James said. “We would also consider: could we keep
the A-10s, by different approaches, longer in our inventory than we
project?”
This would not be the first time the Air Force has caved to pressure
from Congress and the public to keep the A-10 around longer than
planned. For the past several years, the Air Force has attempted to
retire the A-10 in order to move precious maintainers and resources to
standing up the fifth-generation F-35. But each year the Air Force has
shifted its budget plans, most recently citing the Warthog’s critical
role in the campaign against Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria.
“I want to be absolutely crystal clear that we stand by 150 percent the
close-air support mission and there’s a variety of aircraft that
contribute to that,” James stressed. “Bottom line is we have got the
backs of the ground troops and we are going to continue to be experts
on CAS.”
The Air Force will review all the possibilities about what to do with
the A-10 and how to fulfill the CAS mission in the future as the
service begins planning its fiscal 2018 budget request later this fall,
James said.
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James also expects to hear more this fall about a new plan being kicked
around inside the Air Force to pursue not one but two new aircraft
programs to augment and eventually replace the A-10. Although Air Force
leaders have serious reservations about the two-phased approach, the
controversial plan is not off the table just yet. In fact it is one of
several possibilities service leadership is considering to ensure the
future of the CAS force, James said.
Although James stressed that no final decisions have been made, senior
service leaders have questioned the viability of the two-step plan,
which involves pursuing a low-end, light-attack “OA-X” to augment the
A-10 in a CAS role in the short term, while simultaneously aiming for a
more robust A-10 replacement down the line.
Gen. Herbert Carlisle, Air Combat Command chief, said recently that he
is “struggling” with the first part of the plan in particular, which
could involve buying an off-the-shelf airframe, such as the turboprop
A-29 Super Tucano or the AT-6 trainer, for use in a low-threat
battlespace. Carlisle is not convinced the U.S. and its allies will
fight in permissive environments for much longer, particularly given
the proliferation of advanced surface-to-air missiles that can shoot
down slow, unstealthy aircraft, he said in August.
“Given the evolving threat environment, I sometimes wonder what
‘permissive’ in the future is going to look like or if there is going
to be any such thing,” Carlisle said. “I’m working my way through
whether that’s a viable plan or not given what the threat is continuing
to evolve to, to include the terrorist threat and their ability to get
their hands on potentially weapons from a variety of sources.”
The Air Force seems more open to the idea of buying a more robust AX-2
to replace the A-10 in the long run. The new platform would be designed
to operate in a moderate- to low-threat regime, meaning it could fight
in some contested conditions. The Air Force is currently building a
draft requirements document for a follow-on CAS platform, Lt. Gen. Mike
Holmes, deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements,
said in April—the first concrete step toward developing an A-10
replacement.
But it is still unclear where the Air Force would get the money for
either OA-X or AX-2. The service is facing a bow wave of modernization
programs that threatens to bust the Pentagon’s budget belt at the same
time that the Navy kicks off an effort to replace its ballistic-missile
submarines. The Air Force’s bow wave includes top priorities such as
the F-35, the B-21 bomber and the KC-46 tanker, as well as lower-level
priorities that must compete for resources: T-X, modernizing Air Force
One, and building a replacement for the Minuteman III land-based
intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“I don’t know where the money would come from,” Carlisle said. “If we
got extra money, in my opinion there’s other things that I would do
first to increase our combat capability before I would go to that
platform.”