In 1972 the Fairchild Republic A-10 came out of the big aluminum womb ugly, misbegotten and ignored. It seemed fated for a life as the awkward

stepchild of its F-plane playmates, the pointy-nose F-15 and F-16, eventually to be joined by the rapacious F-22 and vora-cious, obese F-35.

The Warthog, as the attack airplane came to be known, nally had its day when it was a 19-year-old virgin with a mus-tache and, yes, warts, about to be put out to pasture. The A-10 was scheduled for retirementfor the rst of several timeswhen the battle against Soviet T-55, T-62 and T-72 tanks that it had been designed

to ght nally erupted. Only not in the Fulda Gap but in Kuwait and Iraq, and the tanks belonged to Saddam, not Stalin. It was called Desert Storm and thankfully not World War III, but overnight the ugly stepchild became the most vicious and powerful armor-killer ever to y.

Ground attack from the air and whats

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Conceived by the Air Force as an alternative to an expensive Army attack helicopter, the A-10 Warthog has since survived repeated attempts to put it out to pasture.

Now its time may nally be upBy Stephan Wilkinson

Thirsty Warthogs: A-10s of the

Connecticut Air National Guard

trail behind a KC-135 Stratotanker.

ALL PHOTOS U.S. AIR FORCE, EXCEPT ABOVE: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

today called close air support (CAS) has a surprisingly long history (see related story, P. 38). We think of World War I airplanes as dogghters and balloon-busters, but the Junkers J.I was the worlds rst airplane designed from the wheels up for ground attack. Also the worlds rst all-metal pro-duction aircraft, it was an enormous ses-quiplane with a corrugated, Quonset-hut upper wing twice the span of a Sopwith Triplanes. It had a tall, vertical exhaust

stack that made it look like a ying locomo-tive and, presaging the A-10s structure, fea-tured an entirely armored cockpit bathtub. Like the Warthog, it too got an unattering nickname: the Moving Van, thanks to its size, weight and 96-mph top speed.

Though J.Is managed to immobilize a few thin-skinned British tanks, the rst effective anti-tank aircraft was the Russian Polikarpov I-15, an open-cockpit biplane ghter own by the Republican Loyalist

side in the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. I-15s carried four wing-mounted, rapid- re 7.62mm machine guns, and the total of 50 armor-piercing rounds per second could do serious damage to what passed for armor in that era. Several I-15s created enough chaos among Italian tanks advanc-ing on Madrid that the attack was then broken up by Loyalist infantry.

This caught the attention of the Soviets and led to the legendary Ilyushin Il-2

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An A-10 of the 81st Fighter

Squadron ies over Germanys

Mosel River in February 2000.

A quartet of Connecticut Air

National Guard A-10s sports

Europe 1 camouage.

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Shturmovik tank-buster of World War II, an airplane that turned out to be so useful it was produced in greater numbersmore than 36,000than any other com-bat aircraft ever built. The Shturmovik also had a heavily armored cockpit plus another valuable characteristic that would show up in the Warthog: It could carry a wide variety of underwing ordnance, including machine guns, cannons, bombs and rockets.

The Germans had also seen the need for a CAS airplane, the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka (see Screaming Birds of Prey, September 2013 issue). The Luftwaffes raison dtre, in fact, was entirely to provide ground support. It was the Wehrmachts air arm, and Stukas were initially used as ying artillery working in league with the armys panzers as they blitzkrieged through Europe. Though the Messerschmitt Me-109 would soon take the title, Stukas were for awhile the most important arrows in the Luftwaffes quiver.

Knowing that the Ju-87 was becoming increasingly obsolescent, the Germans tried their best to develop a more modern tank-buster, the little-known Hen-schel Hs-129. Its parallels with the A-10, however, are inter-esting. Both airplanes are twin-engine for redundancy, though the Hs-129s power plants were not very good. Both the Henschel and the A-10 utilized true armored bathtubs for cockpit protec-tionnot just steel-plate fuselage skinning but an internal structure that, in the case of the Hs-129, had sloped sides to increase the effective thickness of the armor. And both carried enormous guns. The Hs-129 is said to have been the rst airplane to re a

30mm cannon in anger, and its nal version mounted a 75mm cannon.

But what about the A-10 Thunderbolt II, as its ofcially (but rarely) known? Lets back up and look at what was behind this shotgun marriage of World War II technol-ogy, turbofan engines and a massive piece of artillery, the 30mm Gatling gun that be-came the A-10s best-known weapon. Has there ever been an airplane conceived under such miserable conditions? The A-10 story is a painful illustration of just how much ag-rank military thinking is driven by ego,

selshness and greed and how little of it is relevant to war- ghting. Dwight Eisen hower had already called its practi-tioners the military/industrial complex.

When the Air Force was released from its traditional service as an obedient part of the Army in September 1947, it became a sepa-rate and independent branch of the armed forces. The brand-new U.S. Air Force im medi-ately foreswore serious duty working for sol-diers on the ground. Let the Army and Ma-

rine Corps take care of their own, said the Air Force, our job is ying at the speed of heat, gunning enemy jets, making aces and dropping bombs, preferably nuclear. Not a pound [of airframe weight] for air to ground became an Air Force ghter- development principle.

This deal was further ratied in March 1948 by the Key West Agreement. The chiefs of staff and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal sat down in, obviously, Key West and agreed that the Navy could keep its tailhookers (some of which the Marines

would of course continue to use for close air support), but that the Army was done for-ever ying xed-wing aircraft in combat. They were wel-come to play with helicopters, which seemed at the time to be of little consequence, but ying real airplanes was the Air Forces job. The Army could continue to use aircraft for minor logistics, medevac and recon, but no weapons were allowed to be mounted aboard them.

The U.N. police action in Korea saw the Air Force grudg-ingly dedicating its obsolete F-51D and its least effective jet ghters, the Lockheed F-80C and Republic F-84, to the un- glamorous job of going down

Above: Gunsmoke shrouds a Warthog ring its seven-barrel GAU-8/A Gatling

cannon. Below: A VW Beetle is parked next to a GAU for comparison purposes.

In 2011 Major Loren Coulter climbs out of an A-10C in Afghanistan.

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low and helping grunts hold off raging Chicoms and North Koreans. But the most effective CAS missions were own by Marine F4U Corsairs. Oddly, the Air Force had retired or given to the Air Guard all its P-47s, the workhorse American ground- support airplanes of WWII. No Thunder-bolts ew in Korea.

Vietnam was the real wake-up call. North American F-100 Super Sabres and other jets were assigned the CAS mission and did the best they could, but nding targets hidden in thick jungle while ying too fast at alti-tudes too high with too little fuel to hang around for a second look didnt work. One pass, haul ass became the CAS mantra.

To the dismay of the speed-of-heaters, the Douglas A-1 Skyraider proved to be the most effective CAS airplane of the war. Not only was the Spad old enough to have almost made it into WWII, but it was a Navy plane, forgodsake. Still, it was the best the Air Force could nd for CAS.

The Army, meanwhile, was developing helicopter gunships into serious (albeit still vulnerable and delicate) CAS birds. Serious enough, in fact, that in 1966 the Army began work on a ground-up design for an armed and armored attack helicopter, the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne. The Cheyenne was a compound helo, with rigid rotors for VTOL and a pusher prop for pure speed. It was so complex and sophisticated that had it gone into production, each Cheyenne would have cost more than an F-4 Phantom. That will never do, the Air Force said; thats money we should be getting.

The Air Force set out to develop its own xed-wing close air support machine. Even though they didnt want the CAS mission, letting the Army take it over was worse. All the brass wanted was for their ground- attack bird to be better and cheaper than the Cheyenne. So began the 1966 A-X (Attack Experimental) program. Six air-framers wanted in, but only two were selected: Fairchild Republic and Northrop.

Northrops contender, the YA-9, was conventional and unimaginativeits high wings made loading ordnance more dif-cult, the low-mounted engines were vulner-able to groundre and a single vertical tail offered neither redundancy nor shielding of the engines infrared exhaust signatures. Fairchild Republic, however, had the help of an unusual civilian maverick, French-

born systems analyst Pierre Sprey. The Air Force loathed Sprey, for hed been one of the key developers of the much-reviled lightweight ghter that became the F-16; the Air Force preferred the big, expensive, electronics-laden, multiengine F-15.

But Sprey knew the importance of CAS, had some big ideas on how to do it best and had written scholarly papers on the subject. Hed studied the Stuka, and one of his heroes was Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the ultimate ground-attack pilot (with more

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PFAIRCHILD REPUBLIC A-10A Thunderbolt II

Wingspan 57 ft. 6 in. Length 53 ft. 4 in. Height 14 ft. 8 in. Maximum takeoff weight 51,000 lbs Payload 16,000 lbs

Engines Two General Electric TF34-GE-100 turbofans, each generating 9,065 lbs of thrust Maximum speed 368 knots (Mach .56)

Ferry range 2,580 miles Ceiling 45,000 ft.

26 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY NOVEMBER 2014

than 2,000 vehicles, trains, ships, artillery pieces, bridges, aircraft and landing craft destroyed, including 519 tanks). Sprey is said to have required every member of the A-10 design team to read Rudels autobiog-raphy, Stuka Pilot.

Tasked with leading the A-10 team and writing the specs for the prototype, Sprey interviewed every Vietnam Spad pilot and forward air controller he could nd. As a result, he prioritized long loiter time, good range, excellent visibility, low-and-slow maneuverability, survivability and lethal weapons the very sight of which will turn an enemy soldiers bowels to water, wrote Robert Coram in his book Boyd, an excellent study of the ghter maa led by iconoclasts John Boyd and Sprey. Still, as Coram put it, the A-X was a leprous project led by a pariah.

Sprey pretty much got his way, since the Air Force simply wanted to put a stake through the Cheyennes heartwhich they did when the Lockheed program was can-celed. Two A-10 features that Sprey didnt like were its twin engines and enormous size; he had wanted a smaller, lighter, more maneuverable airplane than the Warthog turned out to be. After all, it is a single-seat attack aircraft with a wingspan only 5 feet shorter on each side than a B-25 Mitchell medium bombers, and fully loaded for a CAS mission an A-10 weighs 6 tons more than a grossed-out B-25.

Yet the A-10 is a simple airplane, and

until post-production upgrades beginning in 1989, it even lacked an autopilotjust like a WWII ghter. Nor does it have radar, and the main landing gear is only semi- retractable, like a DC-3s. Half of each main-wheel protrudes from its fairing in ight, which some have assumed is to enable the Warthog to make safer gear-up landings. Thats true, but the design was really chosen because it allows the wings to remain free of wheel wells, making construction simple, straightforward and strong. Same goes for the protective cockpit structure, which is not a forged bathtub-like piece at all but several plates of titanium bolted together.

By zoomy blue-suiter standards, the A-10 is painfully slow. It can do just over 365 knots but usu-ally ies strikes at 300 knots or less. The typical jokes are that A-10s dont have instrument panel clocks, they have calendars. And bird strikes from behind are a big risk. (Those of us who ew the origi-nal Citation 500 business jetoften referred to as the Slowtationwere subjected to the very same snark.)

But if the A-10 has a basic shortcoming, it admittedly is underpowered. A-10 pilots say the airplane has three power-lever posi-tions: off, taxi and max power.

The A-10 was also designed around a specific weaponthe General Electric GAU-8/A seven-barrel Gatling cannon, which, with its huge 1,174-round ammuni-tion drum (mounted behind the pilot), is as big as a car. It res 30mm cartridges nearly a foot long, and though its ring rate is typi- cally quoted as 3,900 rounds per minute, thats a meaningless number. An A-10s gun is red for one- or two-second bursts, so a delivery of roughly 60 to 65 rounds per second in intermittent bursts is what will turn an enemy soldiers bowels to water.

The rotating-barrel cannon is mounted exactly on the A-10s centerline, resulting in the Warthogs odd stance, with its nose-gear strut displaced well to the right to clear the barrel. A popular myth has it that ring the gun results in recoil so strong it could stall the airplane, but youd have to be y-ing just a knot or two above stall speed for that to happen. What is a consideration, however, is that the guns recoil is strong enough that any off-centerline positioning of the ring barrel would result in yaw that could cause the ring pattern to be scatter-shot rather than rehose.

The cannon res high-explosive and armor-piercing rounds, in addition to target- practice rounds in peacetime. The armor- piercing incendiaries have depleted- uranium cores, which have the advantage of being extremely dense1.67 times as dense as pure leadand thus have enor-

The cockpit of an A-10A, on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.

Armorers load an AGM-65 Maverick on an A-10 in South Korea.

NOVEMBER 2014 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 27

mous hitting power. But DU has two other potent characteristics. It is self-sharpening, meaning the projectile doesnt squash or atten as it pierces armor but fractures and remains relatively pointed. The other is that DU is pyrophoricit spontaneously ignites upon contact with the air. As an A-10s DU rounds penetrate a tanks armor, its frag-ments, some as tiny as dust, all become intensely incendiary particles scattering through the tanks interior, with grisly effects on the crew.

By the end of the 1990s, it again seemed the Hogs day was done. Seven hundred and fteen A-10s had been built, but the active eet was down to 390 units, what with weary and excess A-10s sent to the Davis-Monthan boneyard. (Many returned to base almost unyable, but only seven Wart hogs have ever been shot down or crashed due to combat.) Production had been shut down since 1984, and zero effort had been put into coming up with a direct replacement. It looked like the Hog would be makin bacon in the boneyard.

But wait. Saddam came back, and now we also had the Taliban to deal with. Hog pilots suited up and headed not to retirement but to the Mideast again, where A-10s continued to rule the anti-armor and CAS roost. The distinctive sound of an A-10s engines was sometimes enough to make an enemy throw away his weapons and run. If he heard the even more distinctive sound of its GAU, it was already too late.

By 2008, most of the still-active A-10s were C models, with glass cockpits, up -graded sensors, video targeting and many other enhancements. Gone was some of the original Hogs steam-gauge simplicity. Some pilots didnt like the optical/FLIR imaging and called the video screen a face magnet, sucking the pilots view into the cockpit. The most frequently used meta-phor was that viewing the battleground through a cameras eye was like looking through a soda straw. Like looking through a toilet paper roll might be closer to the truth, but it was a far cry from a good pilots

360-degree physical scan.Blame Congress and sequestration, not

the USAF, but the Air Force has been told to lop a big chunk off its budget. They have chosen to do this by scheduling the A-10 for total retirement in 2015not by just reduc-ing the eet size but by eliminating the air-plane, the pilots, ground support, training, spare parts supply, logistics, upgrading and every other vestige of the Warthog. Total eet and infrastructure removal is the only way to save serious money, which in the case of the A-10, the Air Force calculates, will come to $3.7 billion.

But some legislators want the Air Force

to nd another way to save that money. In May the House Armed Services Committee came up with a defense spending bill that specically blocked plans to retire the Warthog, and it was approved a month later by the House of Representatives. If the Senate agreeswhich as we go to press doesnt look likelythe A-10 will y on at least a while longer.

When the Hog does make that nal ght to Davis-Monthan, what will replace it for the CAS mission? The Air Force version of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Opponents of the way-over-budget F-35 program say that the JSF acronym actually stands for Joke Still Flying, in light of the F-35s problems and presumed fail-ings, and some have called for its cancella-tion rather than the A-10s. But lets assume the F-35 eventually meets all of its perform-

ance targets and goes into service as one of the worlds best ghters; can it replace the A-10? The Air Force claims that with sophisticated targeting systems under development and even in existence, there will no longer be a need to get down in the weeds and use binocularsa favorite Hog pilot toolto nd and identify targets. CAS will necessarily be done from altitude and at speed, since nobody is going to risk a $200 million ghter to small-arms re.

An excellent article, Tunnel Vision, by Alexander Cockburn in the February 2014 issue of Harpers Magazine, however, described a May 2012 CAS mission by a two-

ship of A-10s over Afghanistan, controlled by a video-viewing JTAC (joint terminal attack controller) from a forward position. The JTAC sent the two A-10s to four differ-ent grid coordinates, one after the other, in a confused search for Taliban troops sup-posedly in contact with American forces. At the fourth location, the A-10 ight leader reported that yes, now he could see through his binocs people around a farm building, but there was no sign of weapons or hostile activity. He refused to attack, so the JTAC assigned the CAS mission to a loitering B-1 bomber that used satellite-guided bombs to obliterate an Afghan husband, wife and ve children. Apparently, remote targeting systems still need work.

A-10 enthusiastsincluding every pilot who has ever own one in combatargue that the Warthog is cheap to y, is already

A Warthog prepares to take off from Al Asad Air Base, Iraq, on a close air support mission in 2007.

28 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY NOVEMBER 2014

Dishing it out: An OA-10 res a Maverick missile during a live-re training exercise over the Joint Pacic Alaska Range Complex.

Not yet ready to join them: An A-10 of the 23rd Fighter Group overies the Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in 2002.

Taking it: Hit by groundre during a mission over Baghdad on April 7, 2003, this A-10 (left) was brought back to base by its pilot,

Captain Kim Reed-Campbellshown (right) surveying the damagewho received the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor device.

NOVEMBER 2014 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 29

in operation, has substantial loiter capa-bility that the F-35 will lack, is extremely survivable and can put Mark I eyeballs on the target. Only an A-10, they say, can put ordnance danger close to ground troops, which in extreme cases means 20 feet away from them. And many A-10s are currently getting brand-new Boeing-built wings and center sections, which will allow them to operate for another quarter-century.

F-35 proponents point out that their air-plane is stealthy, which the A-10 denitely isnt; that the A-10 is slow and vulnerable to sophisticated anti-aircraft systems; and that, just like the WWII Stuka, it requires air superiority before it enters a target area. A point they especially stress is that the F-35 is a multirole aircraft: It can achieve air superiority, it can bomb and it can do the CAS job. The A-10, they say, is a single- mission aircraft, and the Air Force can no longer afford such specialized machines. (Though there is a forward air control ver-sion, the OA-10, it is simply a designator difference, as the airframes are identical and they are all part of the CAS mission.)

Inevitably, the last-generation multimis-sion aircraft, the General Dynamics F-111, is brought up, for the Aardvark was largely a failure, a jack-of-all-trades that was mas-ter of none. If history tells us anything, Ian Hogg wrote in his book Tank Killing, it tells us that can openers are better than Swiss army knives for opening cans.

The A-10 has gone to war in Iraq, Af- ghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya. Where it hasnt gone to war is Russia, China or North Korea. If we could be guaranteed that our future opponents will be Somalis with AKs or Syrians with RPGs, the A-10 will continue to get the job done at the lowest possible cost. But if the U.S. needs to face off against a wacky Putin or a crazed Kim Jong-un, the stakes will be higher and the weapons vastly more deadly.

Perhaps the F-35 isnt the perfect mud-mover, but could this be a case of perfect being the enemy of good enough?

For further reading, frequent contributor Stephan Wilkinson recommends: Warthog: Flying the A-10 in the Gulf War, by William L. Smallwood; A-10 Thunderbolt II: 21st Century Warthog, by Neil Dundridge; Tank Killing, by Ian Hogg; and Boyd, by Robert Coram.

K its of the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II have been issued in all the popular sizes, from the tiny 1/144th-scale to the gigantic 1/32nd-scale offering. One of the most accurate and easiest to build is the 1/48th-scale Tamiya kit no. 28. While many newer replicas have all the exterior updates, I used a kit based on an air-craft from the 1981-1992 era. The model I chose, rst issued in 1977, has a few aws but nothing that cant be xed with some time and effort.

First glue 30 grams of shing sinkers behind the cockpit and in the fuselage nose, to keep the Warthog from becom-ing a tail sitter. Next assemble the cockpit. Since the A-10s cockpit really stands out, time spent on detailing here should be especially rewarding. Paint it dark gull gray, FS-36231, with aircraft interior black, FS-37031, for the side consoles and instrument panel. Note this kit comes with the old Escapac ejec-tion seat, which should be replaced with an aftermarket ACES II version from True Details or Quick Boost.

Now assemble the nose gear bay and cement it into place. Before closing the fuselage sides, assemble and paint the canopy activation device at black, FS- 37038. Construct the twin General Electric TF34-GE-100 turbofan engines and paint them dark metallic gray, with burnt iron tail pipes. Spray the engine fan fronts aluminum, attach them to the completed power plants and place them in the pods, located on the top rear of the fuselage. Fix the horizontal and dual vertical stabilizers in place, making sure theyre square to the fuselage. The seams may require lling and sanding.

The Warthog, capable of carrying 16,000 pounds of weapons on 10 under-wing hardpoints, is used as a dump truck to haul ordnance to support ground troops. Follow instructions carefully in attaching the pylons and ejector racks for the bombs, precision-guided weapons and ECM (electronic countermeasures) pods. Once the pylons are in place, glue together the wing top and bot tom por-tions and attach to the fuselage.

With the main airframe construction complete, begin assembling the deli-cate, complicated nose and main land-ing gear. Paint the main legs and door actua tors Floquil platinum mist silver, with tires in at black. Next mask the cockpit and spray on an overall coat of Alclad II light-gray primer, to highlight any construction aws. Rell and sand any areas that need attention.

Our model is a replica of an aircraft from the 23rd Tactical Fighter Wing, 76th Tactical Fighter Squadron, as it ap peared in March 1981 at England Air Force Base, in Louisiana. Warthogs from that unit were painted in what was initially called lizard camouage but later ofcially referred to as Europe 1. The wraparound camouage pattern is shown in black and white on the kit instructions, but theres a full-color foldout depicting the gray, FS-36081; medium green, FS-34102; and dark green, FS-34092, camouage pattern in The A-10 Warthog in Action, Squadron Signal Publication No. 45.

After applying the at camouage colors, youll need to add a clear gloss coat to provide a smooth surface for the decals to adhere to. Theres a full set of markings in this kit for an aircraft based at England AFB. I chose to use decals from Micro Scale sheet 48-135 (the aftermarket shark-mouth decals conform more easily to the compound curves around the models nose).

With the markings complete, all thats left is to arm your A-10 with the kits 12 Mk. 82 bombs, one GBU-10 and one GBU-8 guided weapon, six AGM-65 Maverick anti-tank missiles and two ALQ-119 ECM pods. Once all that heavy repower is in place, your Warthog is loaded for bearand ready for display.

Dick Smith

Build Your Own A-10 Warthog

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