Saving a life-saving plane

Martha McSally, a Republican representative from Arizona and a retired Air Force colonel, has an article in The New York Times about a plane we'll miss when it's gone:

When American troops find themselves fighting for their lives, there is no better sight than an A-10, a plane officially nicknamed the Thunderbolt II, but known affectionately by the troops as the Warthog, firing its enormous thirty-millimeter gun at the enemy. It might not be pretty, but the A-10 is our most capable close air-support aircraft, and its arrival on the battlefield signals survival for our troops and annihilation for our enemies.
Yet over the last two years, the Obama administration and the Air Force leadership have been working overtime to mothball our entire A-10 fleet, thirteen years ahead of schedule. They claim that other, newer planes can do the same job, that it’s too slow and vulnerable, and that it’s too expensive.
I appreciate the budget pressures that the Pentagon faces these days. But those arguments have serious flaws and, if we retire the A-10 before a replacement is developed, American troops will die.
Before running for office, I was an A-10 squadron commander with over three hundred combat hours. During my time in uniform, and since coming to the House and taking up the fight to keep the plane, I have heard countless stories from American soldiers about how the A-10 saved their lives.
In 2008, Marine Master Sergeant Richard Wells and his team were on patrol in Afghanistan when they were ambushed. “It was the first time in my life that I thought to myself, ‘This is it, we’re going to die, we’re not going to make it out of this,’ ” he recalled in a recent interview. The Marines were severely outnumbered, cornered, and in close combat with dozens of insurgents. Because of the poor weather, fast-moving fighters above the clouds were unable to identify the targets or get close enough to engage. Soon two Marines were seriously wounded, and the enemy was fifty feet away.
Suddenly two A-10s descended below a heavy layer of clouds. The planes are extremely maneuverable and designed to fly close to the ground. Coming within four hundred feet of the mountains, they made nearly a dozen gun passes each, giving Sergeant Wells’ team cover to run to safety. Without the A-10 and the exceptional training and bravery of its pilots, six Marines would have died that day.
True, other planes and drones can do close air support. But every close-air-support scenario is different, and every platform brings strengths and weaknesses to the fight. The A-10 has unique strengths for the most complex and dangerous such missions.
It can loiter over the battlefield for long periods without refueling. It can maneuver in difficult terrain at low altitudes, fly slowly enough to visually identify enemy and friendly forces, and survive direct hits. And it’s one of our most lethal aircraft, especially against moving targets, with its eleven hundred rounds of ammunition, missiles, rockets and bombs. Not only is the A-10 best equipped for close air support, but it is crucial to leading combat search and rescue missions of downed pilots. After the barbaric murder of a captured Jordanian F-16 pilot by ISIS, these capabilities are more important than ever; indeed, A-10s are on round-the-clock alert during American missions against ISIS.
The A-10 was designed as a Cold War tank killer, and its cannon is the only one in the Air Force that can fire armor-piercing depleted-uranium thirty-millimeter bullets. In a recent hearing, I asked the general in charge of our forces in South Korea what the loss of the A-10 would mean for our anti-armor capabilities. It would leave a major gap, he conceded.
Critics knock the age of the A-10 fleet; the last one was delivered in 1984. But with maintenance and upgrades— the Air Force just spent a billion dollars on improvements to the A-10 fleet— age by itself isn’t a reason to retire the plane. And it’s far from the oldest plane in our fleet: those same critics celebrate the B-52, the youngest of which is over fifty years old, and won’t be retired until 2040.
Those trying to retire the A-10 also claim it isn’t “survivable”, an amazing claim, given the long list of stories about the plane’s ability to take fire and still fly. In 2003, Captain Kim Campbell was flying over Baghdad, Iraq when her A-10 was hit by a surface-to-air missile, punching a large hole in the plane and knocking out its hydraulics. Most planes would have been destroyed; Captain Campbell switched into a mode only available in the A-10: manual reversion, where you fly the aircraft by brute force, manually pulling on cables when you move the control stick, and flew home safely.
Last year the Air Force said it needed to close some A-10 squadrons to free up maintenance personnel. Arguing to scrap a lifesaving workhorse like the A-10 to solve a staffing challenge, while maintaining fifteen different musical bands, makes one question the Air Force’s priorities. 

Rico says dump the bands (and replace them with marching iPods) and keep the planes...