House Armed Services chairman says A-10 will keep flying

The venerable A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack jet, a mainstay of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, has won a powerful new ally in Congress in the fight to save the aircraft from early retirement.

During a visit to Tucson on Wednesday with Arizona Rep. Martha McSally, House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said the A-10 is safe from proposed retirement in pending versions of the main defense authorization bill for fiscal 2017.

And Thornberry said the A-10 will keep flying for the foreseeable future, if he has anything to do about it.

Speaking at the gate of Davis-Monthan Air Force base with military aircraft soaring overhead, Thornberry said there is broad support in Congress to keep the A-10 to fulfill an urgent need for close air support of ground troops.

Built for close air support, the A-10 already has a strong supporter in Thornberry’s Senate counterpart, John McCain, who with McSally and others has helped block Air Force plans to retire the aircraft to save money.

Backers say that with no ready replacement to provide the kind of slow, loitering and lethal air support the A-10 offers, retiring the “Warthog” would put troops’ lives at risk.

“I see, personally, no option but to provide that close air support. This is the aircraft that’s done it, it has some unique capabilities, but we’re not going to send people into combat without it, that’s the bottom line,” said Thornberry, who toured D-M for the first time on Tuesday. “I think we’re going to have A-10s for a long time.”

“My sense is, the argument has turned in Congress, on both sides of the aisle,” he said, giving McSally credit for leading the charge to save the A-10 as a freshman member of the Armed Services Committee.

Thornberry, who became chairman of Armed Services last year, said he supports a McSally amendment in the pending version of the defense policy bill, requiring comparative test of close air support capabilities between the A-10 and the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Thornberry said he also supports another McSally amendment to the defense appropriations bill, that would provide $100 million to resume a program to upgrade wings on existing A-10s whose airframes are reaching their maximum service life.

He predicted the A-10 retirement prohibition and the rewinging proposal will make it through the lame-duck Congress after the election as part of a larger budget deal.

Earlier this year, Air Force brass said they would delay the planned final retirement of the A-10 fleet by three years, to 2022.

But McSally, a Tucson Republican and a former A-10 combat pilot, said that without the rewinging upgrades, the Air Force would have to start scrapping A-10s by fiscal 2018.

New wings have been purchased for more than half of the roughly 280 A-10s in the fleet, under a billion-dollar program awarded to Boeing in 2007. Along with other upgrades, the rewinging was intended to keep the A-10 flying until 2028, before the Air Force decided to mothball the aircraft.

Another McSally amendment in the pending House version of the defense authorization bill would require the Air Force to conduct a “fly-off” between the A-10 and the F-35 to compare their prowess at close air support. The measure would require the Air Force to certify a switch to F-35s for close air support wouldn’t add risk to troops.

“It simply makes it conditional,” McSally said. “We’re not going to put one more A-10 in the ‘boneyard’ until we have a fly-off competition, side by side between the F-35 and the A-10.”

Though McSally stressed features that make the Warthog more survivable, such as extra armor and redundant controls, the Air Force says the plane can’t survive in areas with sophisticated air defense systems the F-35 is designed to evade.

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After visiting the Army’s Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista on Tuesday, Thornberry toured Raytheon Missile System’s plant at the University of Arizona Tech Park to view production lines for the Navy’s Tomahawk cruise missile and other weapons. He later met with the DM50, a local support group for the base.

Wednesday morning, Thornberry and McSally met with officials of the Arizona Technology Council to talk about opportunities for small- to medium-sized businesses in the defense acquisition process, McSally said.

Later at D-M, Thornberry got to climb around the cockpit of an A-10 and visited the operations of the Air National Guard 214th Reconnaissance Squadron, which remotely pilots unmanned aircraft in combat zones from its base at D-M. The local base is on the short list to land further drone remote-piloting squadrons, McSally noted.

The Texas Republican also was shown the 309th Aircraft Maintenance and Regeneration Group’s aircraft “boneyard,” the 612th Air and Space Operations Center, D-M’s EC-130 Compass Call electronic jamming planes, and visited the base’s combat search and rescue squadrons.

McSally noted that while D-M has been associated mainly with the A-10, D-M hosts many critical capabilities that are in high demand, while offering easy access to major training ranges in Southern and Central Arizona.

She noted that the 612th Air and Space Operations Center, a unit of the D-M-based 12th Air Force, has been managing Haiti hurricane-relief efforts as part of its mission to coordinate air operations for the entire Air Force Southern Command.

Thornberry, a rancher who has no military background, said he learned much and was impressed during his visit.

“The diversity of the missions here, and the ranges, the terrain benefits, all of that was very impressive,” he said. “I don’t think I had a full understanding before coming here and talking with the people who perform those missions.”

McSally said Thornberry was also shown some areas that need budget attention, such as an inadequate jet-maintenance area that has been neglected for lack of construction funding.

“There’s some to-do lists that come out of this visit for me, that help me understand better and put greater emphasis on some of the upgrades, whether its the (A-10) upgrades or facilities,” Thornberry said.

Thornberry also said he was impressed by a showing of community support for D-M.

“I come away very impressed not only by what the men and women serving in the military are doing, but also the community support that helps them do that,” he said. “That’s a key factor in today’s military and obviously it’s a strong positive in this area.”

Tucson community and business leaders worry that the loss of the A-10 mission would make D-M vulnerable to the next round of base closings and have launched a larger lobbying effort to advocate for new missions for the base and a public-education campaign to rally community support.

Thornberry said in an interview that a base closing and realignment, or BRAC, will not be approved by Congress this year, noting that continued expenses related to the last major BRAC round in 2005 have left a bitter taste in lawmakers’ mouths.

Instead of a full-scale BRAC, the Pentagon may make smaller, targeted facility cuts, he said.

Thornberry said he has a “very good” working relationship with McCain.

“We don’t always agree with each other, but he has a unique place in the country by virtue of his background, and what he has said and done for so many years in national security,” he said.