After years of debate, Congress has finally given the green light to the Air Force’s plan to retire the A-10 Thunderbolt decision that brings an era to its close with this iconic aircraft. The A-10 was originally designed in the 1970s to provide close-air support against Soviet tanks. It has served the U.S. military with distinction for decades. Particularly effective during the Gulf War when as many as 8,100 sorties were flown, a couple of thousand Soviet-era combat vehicles were destroyed.
Although retired from service in the United States, the A-10 may still have value to international partners. Ukraine, for example, might welcome A-10s as it prepares to take on Soviet-era tanks and dug-in Russian positions. While President Joe Biden has voiced support for training Ukrainian forces to fly F-16s, analysts say that the A-10 might be a more suitable choice given its ability to take off from shorter, less pristine runways.
Other intended recipients could be all the African nations battling ISIS and Boko Haram, and Latin American countries fighting against the paramilitary rebels, and drug cartels. The United States has already performed military asset transfers to other close allies, such as the A-29 Super Tucano, supporting counterterrorism missions in Africa and Colombia.
The Air Force’s push to retire all the A-10s by 2029 is gaining momentum, though their advocates say the A-10 is irreplaceable for close-air support missions. Under terms of the new defense policy bill, the Air Force would be required to submit a detailed plan to Congress six months in advance of retiring any of the A-10s. The plan is to detail how the service would execute close air support, forward air controller airborne, combat search and rescue, and airborne battle management missions without the A-10.
The bill also calls for the Air Force to explore options to sell A-10s that have been stricken from the inventory to foreign allies. But Ukraine has indicated it would prefer the more modern F-16s because of doubts over the A-10’s survivability in its conflict environment.
Economics also plays a factor in the plans to retire the A-10: The maker of the aircraft, Fairchild Republic, went out of business in 2003, and maintaining the aging fleet has grown increasingly expensive. A $1.1 billion re-winging project that wrapped up in 2019 underlined how expensive it is to keep the A-10 combat-worthy.
Lee Levy, a retired major general in the Air Force, called the A-10 “a really great airplane in a very limited environment,” but said its effectiveness and usefulness are reduced in a combat situation where advanced surface-to-air threats exist. Such conflicts have lately demonstrated that close-air support missions can well be carried out with lesser vulnerable planes like B-2 and B-52 bombers.
But not everyone is buying those arguments, and critics continue pressing the view that no other system compares with the A-10 as a guardian of ground troops and calling on the Air Force for a better plan to replace the capabilities that will be lost.
With the retirement plan well underway, there is a very real danger that some future congress will once again reverse course and shut off the spigot, continuing to cause expensive disruptions in pilot training, maintenance, and supply chains. The legacy that is the A-10 is well and truly assured, but its time in the U.S. military is drawing to a close, making way for the next generation of combat aircraft.