Death of a Legendary Fighter Jet

It’s all-but-official that the fabled A-10 Thunderbolt II (aka Warthog) is dead:

The five-year scheme retires all of the roughly 340 A-10 Warthog attack jets in the active Air Force, Air Force Reserve and state-controlled Air National Guard. The Warthogs account for the majority of the planned warplane cuts.

The twin-jet, gun-armed A-10s disappear from their main active-duty strongholds in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and South Korea in 2015 and 2016. Reserve and Guard squadrons in Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri and Maryland surrender their A-10s more gradually between 2015 and 2019.

Cutting the low- and slow-flying Warthogs leaves a big gap in the Air Force’s ability to support ground troops and destroy enemy tanks.

We’ll be replacing the low-cost/high-survivability/highly-effective A-10 with high-cost/lower-survivability/less-effective F-16s in the ground-strike role. Then the F-16s will be replaced by the stupid-cost/lower-survivability/unknown-effectiveness F-35.

In Washington this is called “progress” and “budget cutting.”

The guys with mud on their boots call it a “SNAFU” courtesy of “REMFs.”

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Cross-posted from Vodkapundit