TAKING A LOOK BEHIND THE HEADLINES
TAKING A LOOK BEHIND THE HEADLINES
BYBY ROBERT BECKHUSEN ROBERT BECKHUSEN
A-10 — A TOUGH
ACT TO FOLLOW...
I
N JANUARY, 74TH Expeditionary
Fighter Squadron ‘Flying Tigers’
A-10C Thunderbolt IIs and airmen
left Incirlik Air Base in Turkey for
their home at Moody AFB, Georgia.
Their mission, providing air support
to the US-led coalition’s campaign in Iraq
and Syria, had wound down with the fall
of Raqqa in October, and a shift towards
hunting the last remaining pockets of
so-called Islamic State (IS) fighters in
the desert.
The so-ugly-it’s-beautiful ‘Warthog’
was flying away from one of its most
notable missions yet, one that saw the
tough close air support (CAS) aficionado
fighting in a different way than before.
In addition to the standard AGM-
Maverick anti-armor missiles and the
devastating internal 30mm GAU-8/A
Avenger cannon, the ‘Flying Tigers’
took advantage of the A-10’s versatile
payloads and heavy munitions to attack
IS with everything from laser rockets to
bunker-busting 2,000lb GBU-31(V)3/B
Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs).
Operation ‘Inherent Resolve’ has been
characterized by the heaviest and most
sustained urban fighting A-10s have
engaged in to date. Battle-hardened
IS fighters dug themselves deep into
tunnels within cities, deep below multi-
storey buildings of reinforced concrete.
It called for the A-10s and their forward
air controllers on the ground to ‘get
creative to figure out ways to strike
targets at the bottom of these five story
buildings,’ as Lt Col Craig Morash, the
74th EFS commander, put it. ‘There was
a lot of learning as this wasn’t something
we traditionally trained to when we
arrived. We reached out to different
communities to see what we could learn
from them.’The need for the A-
The A-10 was initially held back from the
OIR campaign, but it took on a greater
role as the mission progressed. At the
start of the US aerial intervention in
2014, only 11 per cent of US Air Force
sorties involved the A-10, although this
reflected a high tempo of operations
given that the ‘Warthogs’ joined the
fight later than F-15s, F-16s and B-1s.
It contrasts with the first two-and-a-
half months of the battle for Raqqa
from June-October 2016, when some
44 per cent of all US strikes in the city
were carried out by A-10s, with pilots
averaging lengthy seven-hour missions.
The USAF had also relaxed its rhetoric
on the A-10 and openly sang its praises,
describing it as, ‘one of the most feared
and combat-effective aircraft in the
fight,’ to quote SrA Andrew Walok.
‘It was a difficult location to work in
and we faced some situations that we
have not dealt with before we arrived
here,’ 74th EFS assistant director of
operations Maj Matthew Cichowski
commented in a USAF news release. ‘Our
weapons and tactics planners have done
an excellent job preparing us for the
variety of tactics and locations that we
use and operate in.’What has changed?
A few years ago, the USAF was ready to
retire the A-10 beginning this year, with
the last jets arriving at the boneyard in- But last year, the USAF reset the
latter date to the 2030s at the earliest, in
large part due to pressure from Congress,
including politicians such as Republican
Martha McSally, a former ‘Warthog’ pilot
and squadron commander. The A-
has long faced opposition within the
USAF from officers who support a force
structure tilted to favor fighters and
long-range strategic bombers.
It is no coincidence that the attempt
to kill the ‘CAS king’ was set against
two big-ticket items that are sucking
up funding in both categories: the F-
Lightning II and the B-21 Raider.
Amid revived public support for the
A-10, the USAF in December 2017 —
finally — officially released the Combat
Camera documentary ‘Grunts in the
Sky’, which it had previously kept quiet.
The film, circulated in the ‘Warthog’
community and on social media since
2015, took note of the unequivocal
defense of the type’s importance. ‘To
have boots on the ground, you need
support and you need the right kind of
support to have boots on the ground,’Above: A 74th EFS
A-10C over Syria
in December.
Squadron
intelligence
officers briefed
the A-10 pilots
on possible
threats they
may face using
battle tracking
and predictive
analysis. USAF/
SSgt Paul Labbe1414 March 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net
14-16 The Briefing C.indd 14 19/01/2018 11: