Congress has told the Air Force to keep A-10 close support aircraft in its inventory for three years beyond its scheduled retirement at the end of next year. In the National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA) passed last week, there’s a provision that orders the Pentagon to hang on to at least 103 Warthogs for the next two years before phasing them out through 2029. It’s the latest in a long line of reprieves for the 50-year-old plane, which is essentially a flying gun. There’s a substantial faction in Congress that doesn’t believe the Air Force when it says they no longer have any use for the aircraft, which was designed to blow up Soviet armor in a ground invasion of Western Europe. Air Force brass say the A-10 is a sitting duck for modern anti-aircraft missiles.
The NDAA provision also places limits on the retirement plans for three other airframes, including the KC-10 tankers mothballed in the desert after they left service last year. The civilian fleet of DC-10s and its derivatives have been grounded after an accident in Louisville last month in which the left engine of a UPS MD-11 detached on takeoff. Three crew and 11 people on the ground were killed. It’s not clear if the mothballed KC-10s will get the same inspections and repairs as part of their continued pickling, which is now under congressional order to be maintained indefinitely.
Congress is also slowing the pace of retirements for the F-15E Strike Eagle and the E-3 Sentry surveillance aircraft, mostly because of delays in supplying their replacements, namely with the F-15EX and F-35s in the case of the Strike Eagle and the E-7 Wedgetail for the E-3. Congress says the Air Force and National Guard need all the C-130s they have and they can’t reduce those numbers until at least 2028.
Good.
Smart. Rifles ,guns, knives and forks are all mature technology that’s used daily around the world. Wise not to turn your back on what has proven itself.
My workshop is full of superannuated but serviceable tools. Just yesterday(!) I unearthed a very specific tool that I have not needed in this century, to solve a problem for which it was uniquely designed. Saved me a short-ton of time and money. But I guess our Defense/War Department would rather use our money to buy new toys.
The ‘Hog was uniquely designed for lethal close air support in an asymmetric environment. I guess the Pentagon doesn’t expect to need that, now that they have their shiny new drones …
How about the USA stopping franchising our self-described “democracy” with “our way or the highway” demands including deciding for other nations, who will be governing them? We always attempt to decapitate by ruining a sovereign nation’s economy by sanction, causing its population to pay terrible prices economically, humanly, and ethically. A debtor nation cannot be the global hegemony. We think we can be both. The rest of the planet has been on the receiving end of this foreign policy essentially making everyone our enemy at the same time making us dependant on these “enemies” for essential goods and services. This includes producing all the aircraft, weaponry, and target information that is required to take on the planet’s combined growing arsenal to keep us out of global hegemony. We destabilize a country by infiltrating it’s current government, foment civilian unrest, sanction the crap out of them, AFTER we have sent our manufacturing often to the same countries we are sanctioning, including buying the basic natural resources we need for what’s left of what we do produce, So, we charge a franchise fee, called a tariff. We have no willingness to simply do business with the world. Instead, it is always a “war”, never officially declared, but justified by the war on terror, war on drugs, war on human trafficking, war on immigration, war on_________________, fill in the blank. But if you are in hock beyond rational accounting, you cannot financially back this “war machine” anymore. Our current condition of the USAF dated 6/20/25:
Today, the U.S. Air Force inventory is the smallest in the service’s 78-year history. As reported by the Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin at the AFA Warfare Symposium in March, the average age of all USAF aircraft is now over 31 years old. Gen. Allvin told Airmen at the symposium that readiness, as measured by aircraft availability rates, is now 54 percent on average for all Air Force aircraft, meaning just over five out of every 10 aircraft are ready to fly on a given day because of funding and parts shortfalls. If called to fight tonight, the Air Force could generate just 56 combat-coded F-22s for air superiority and 354 combat-coded F-15Es, F-16s, and F-35s for strike and interdiction.
The bomber fleet is similarly diminished. Its 140 total aircraft—B-52s, B-1s, and B-2s spread across nine squadrons—average 48 years old. Only 19 are stealthy B-2s, and even those average 31 years of age. Just 52 percent of the bomber fleet is mission-capable on any given day.
The ARC combined have 640 fighters; subtracting training and test jets, that leaves 434 fighters in operational units. Subtracting further due to mission capability rates, the ARC can muster just 66 air superiority fighters and 155 strike and interdiction fighters against China on any given day.
The Air Force has roughly 272 known air-breathing ISR aircraft that include 22 RC-135, 9 RQ-4 Global Hawks, 27 U-2s, an estimated 20 to 30 RQ-170 Sentinels, and 184 MQ-9 Reapers for armed ISR. While the different aircraft all have unique attributes, the MQ-9 demonstrates the broadening of the mission area, providing a unique sensor-shooter capability that did not exist in the Cold War. While space plays an increasing role in ISR, airborne assets remain essential to modern combat.
Factoring in readiness, the Total Force could deploy only 523 fighters and 51 bombers into the Indo-Pacific today if war broke out, and just 308 of those fighters and 27 of the bombers would be mission ready upon landing in theater. While the macro ISR number has held steady since the Cold War, demand signals from combatant commands continue to increase, which risks stretching the force too thin. Combat losses, inevitable against a peer threat, would reduce those numbers further.
This significantly reduced combat force structure compared to the Cold War era comes just as China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) is growing. Over the past 14 years, China fielded some 1,300 combat-coded fighters, including 320 fifth-generation J-20s. Another 120 J-20s alone come hot off production lines annually, more than double the number of new combat jets the U.S. Air Force is buying. China’s 185 H-6 bombers, less advanced some than U.S. bombers, provide significant regional strike capability, and China’s industrial base, unencumbered by budget constraints, delivers the PLAAF a numerical edge, and a superior ability to backfill attrition.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/usafs-capacity-capability-and-readiness-crisis/
Read this article carefully in full. It is an eye opener of the fiction we have been fed, the glory of our airpower displayed at Oshkosh (with full intention of military recruitment at Airventure, paid for by us as taxpayers). Yes, there is a taxpayer funded recruitment program which the EAA gets for this display of our airpower under the financial ledger labeled “patriotism” in front of 700,000 people each year. Can’t blame the EAA, it pays their bills.
Yes, it would be wise to keep our aging A-10 fleet, which at the rate of regime change attempts present and future, will ensure these will be flying just like our B-52’s…well into the future until they can’t…through bankruptcy and resulting civil unrest. The perfect platform to deal with that civil unrest.