Is A New A-10 Plane In The Works?

Deadly force: A line up of A-10s at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina. Planes of this type will arrive in Kuwait for combat operations next week

Kris Osborne, National Interest: Super Warthog: Is the U.S. Military Set to Unleash a New A-10?

The Air Force is beginning to work on how fast, lethal, durable and capable a new “A-10”-like aircraft would need to be in order to provide U.S. military ground troops with effective close-air support for decades to come.

Senior service officials are now exploring “draft requirements” concepts – and evaluating the kind of avionics, engineering, weapons, armor and technical redundancy the aircraft would need, Air Force officials told Scout Warrior.

Many of the core technical attributes and combat advantages of the A-10 will be preserved and expanded upon with the new effort, officials said.

The performance of the A-10 Warthog in the ongoing bombing campaign against ISIS, coupled with the Air Forces’ subsequent decision to delay the aircraft’s planned retirement – has led the service to begin the process of developing a new, longer-term A-10 type platform.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: So much for expectations that the F-35 is/was going to fulfil this role .... clearly it will not. But the problem with having a new A-10 is that I do not believe there is money in the budget for the development and production of such a plane. Hmmmm .... is this a smokescreen to convince supporters of the A-10 that they should let this plane die so that they could then focus their attention on a new A-10 .... but in reality when that happens they will just let the entire concept die and put the money in the F-35 .... I will let you be the judge of that.