The Gun Counter

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Wing cracks take out half of A-10 fleet

By Bruce Rolfsen - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 8, 2008 11:41:22 EST

It will likely take six months before the entire A-10 Thunderbolt fleet is back in the sky, Air Force officials said.

As of early December, 168 attack jets — nearly half the service’s 356 Warthogs — remain grounded because of wing cracks. Those planes should be repaired by June, said Maj. David Ruth, A-10 weapons system team chief at Air Combat Command headquarters, Langley Air Force Base, Va.

The grounding began Oct. 3 after inspectors at Ogden Air Logistics Center in Utah, where A-10s are sent for major overhauls and upgrades, raised concerns about wing cracks.

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It's the usual story. Congressmen who would never dream of sending their kids to college in a 5-year-old car won't hesitate to send men into battle flying 50-year-old airplanes.

Shameful.

Crap. First it's the Eagles, and now the Warthogs?

It's what I call Comanche Syndrome. The replacement (like the Comanche helicopter was supposed to replace the Apache) seems to increase costs (taking inflation into account) with every year spent in development. This replacement cost per aircraft then becomes too expensive to justify purchase to Congress, and the current aircraft's expenses go up due to lack of funding for service life improvement programs or maintaining a production line for a currently-useful line. Why lack of funding? Old technology isn't sexy. Sometimes I wonder if we don't need a "Fish or cut bait" clause (whatever the actual legal term for that is) incorporated into every other line of a military contract to ensure that systems don't get stuck in development hell. There needs to be some point where we say "So produce me a wing's worth of these or stop wasting our time and money." The F-22 program went on for how long before we got more than the showcase squadron at Langley? Wasn't it something like ten to twelve years?

Me, I'd love to keep the A-10 around. That aircraft is perfect for its role. No one could justify the cost of leaving a production line open to build new ones when the old ones wore out, I guess.

Keep in mind too, that A-10s eventual replacement, will be in service soon - the F-35A.


HTRN

HTRN wrote:Keep in mind too, that A-10s eventual replacement, will be in service soon - the F-35A.


HTRN

Yeah, and that's an expensive but poor replacement for a flying tank.

308Mike wrote:Yeah, and that's an expensive but poor replacement for a flying tank.

Not really - JDAM technology made high altitude/high speed aircraft a viable alternative to low, slow plane equipped with a cannon. Combine that with the small diameter bomb project... Keep in mind, in military terms, JDAM is a brand new weapon - in existance for less than 10 years. Then there's the whole UCAV drone system, which is taking over alot of the jobs the A-10s used to do.

CByrneIV wrote:Yup... REAL SOON NOW (tm.)

I thought the first Lightning II was scheduled to enter service in 2011? Considering that the A-10s are going to be in service till 2028..


HTRN

Keep in mind the original production run of A-10s were scheduled to have their wings completely replaced with new wings with a thicker skin. The thick skin wings were standard on later production models. It seems that low level, high "G" force combat (and practice combat) caused more cracks to appear than were anticipated in both sets of wings.

Wing cracks are a way of life in the aviation world.

JDAM's are no replacement for a good slow strafing. Ask me how I know.

It's things like this that make me believe that some of the stuff they teach us in school is not complete nonsense some guy made up. This year, about 1/3 of one of my classes consisted of cracks and fatigue. I can tell you a ton about them, but I took the final for that class two days ago, and don't want to talk about that class right now.