discuss.
A House bill filed this week would force the Air Force to keep at least 126 A-10 Thunderbolt II Warthogs, far more than were in the service’s plans, and to reverse a year’s work dismantling the aircraft’s maintenance depot, pilot training pipeline and weapons course.Introduced Monday as H.R. 9780 by Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., the BRRRRT Act (Bolstering Recognition, Resurgence, Retention, and Remembrance of the Thunderbolt) gets its name from the bone-rattling “BRRRRT!” sound the jet’s 30mm Gatling gun makes when fired.Rep. Don Davis, D-N.C., is co-leading the bill. He and Hamadeh both sit on the Armed Services subcommittee that writes fighter force-structure policy, with Davis as the committee’s vice ranking member. Four Republicans also signed on as original cosponsors, including members from Georgia and Missouri, home to the last two A-10 bases.The bill comes as the Air Force has ramped up A-10 divestment yet has not identified the aircraft that can, and will, take on the close air support and combat search and rescue missions the Warthog has assumed for decades. The service says those roles will be filled by some combination of platforms like the F-35A, F-15E and F-16.“The A-10 has repeatedly proven itself on the battlefield, saving American lives and delivering unmatched close air support when our troops need it most,” Hamadeh said in a statement announcing the bill. “The BRRRRT Act ensures we do not retire a proven weapons system before a certified replacement exists.”This bill is the latest move in a lengthy tug-of-war between the Air Force and lawmakers.The Air Force began fiscal 2026 with 162 Warthogs and tried to retire them all. Congress refused, setting a floor of 103.
>>65362667You'd need to be a complete retard or boomer to think it's a good idea so it'll probably be veto proof.
>>65362667I don't just get why the Air Force doesn't create a "bomb truck successor" to the A-10 so that they can finally retire the thing for good.
>>65362667>tfw turdies, commies and chinks will still get slaughtered by the thousands by M2's, M4's B-52's and Warthogs in the Martian wars of 2198
Following heavy A-10 involvement in Iran, including the recovery of downed F-15E aircrew, the service announced it would keep squadrons flying at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, and Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, into 2029 and 2030, roughly 54 jets across three squadrons.Reaching 126 aircraft would mean halting retirements already scheduled and towing aircraft back out of the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona.The bill gives the Air Force 90 days after enactment to explain how it will restore depot work, training, sustainment and flight testing, programs that were all cut in anticipation of retiring the fleet.The depot line at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, closed in February. The last class of new Warthog pilots graduated in April, and the Weapons School course at Nellis is winding down.Under the bill, retiring more A-10s would become harder, as well. The defense secretary would first have to certify that a replacement is fielded and fully operational, and get that in writing from the Army secretary, the Marine Corps commandant and the head of U.S. Special Operations Command. A mission does not count as replaced, the bill says, if another aircraft picks it up as a secondary tasking.Should the bill fail to pass, the terms could find their way into the annual defense authorization act instead, which is how the 103-jet floor came to be. Hamadeh took that route in June, placing two A-10 provisions in the House bill that reappear in the BRRRRT Act.Editor’s note: At the time of publication, the text of H.R. 9780 had not been made public. Details of the bill are based on the July 13 Legislative Counsel draft, provided to Defense News.https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/07/22/the-brrrrt-act-would-keep-more-warthogs-flying-and-force-the-air-force-to-reverse-course/
>>65362676Probably waiting for laser tech to mature enough to put the equivalent of a GAU laser gatling in the thing.
>>65362667Kino af Gov niggas is lit
>>65362667during the height of operation Inherent Resolve I witnessed an A-10 pilot down at least 3 pitchers of beer at the Incirlik bowling alley till 3 am then leave to go fly a sortiesay what you will about the aircraft itself but the pilots are real American heroes
>>65362680Lasers are poorly suited for a ground attack role. A railgun or Project MARAUDER plasma cannon would be a better choice for a future A-10.
>>65362676It's called the B-1.
>>65362676the A-10's bomb load is not that good actually. Even an F-16 can carry more.
>>65362687I've never been more proud.
>>65362676Because the retarded geriatrics in charge will screech about MUH FLYING GUN MUH VIETNAM MUH ARMORED BATHTUB MUH ELECTRONICS DON’T WORK and refuse to fund it.
>>65362676Strike Eagle.
>>65362667I find it wild warthogs were getting field mods in Iran that added fuel probes. Clearly the chair force has to like them a little bit to use them so heavily and greenlight such a thing. Maybe big fuckoff gun, despite what military analysts (AKA fucking nerds that weren't wedgied enough) has an application in modern warfare
>>65362676Practically everything in the inventory is a bomb truck these days. Even the C-17, thanks to Rapid Dragon.
>>65363060It's such a brute force solution, how could it not work?
>>65363060But could it stop it from being one shot by iranian missile tough?
>>65362676F-16, which can reach the target much faster, or an Apache, if you really need low altitude and gunfire>>65362680>>65362689I could see lasers working in AC-130 equivelent, ie a large plane with lots of power generation loitering over a target area for extended periods of time
Ehhhhhhhhwithout megawatts power supply I don't see lasers being actually useful in an attack role, unless you want to commit mass war crimes by infrared cooking a thousand people's eyeballs at a time, what collateral damage?
>>65362675There are more senators and representatives over 60 than under 40. We live in a gerontocracy, and will continue to do so until the day of the pillow.
>>65363204>There are more senators and representatives over 60 than under 40. Considering even the first congress had an average age over 40 that has probably always been true, and probably should always be true. Your example numbers aren't extreme enough, it's when they get into the late 70s and 80s it becomes truly an issue and many are. Fuck, the oldest one was born in the year Germany got its most famous chancellor.
A-10: Scourge of three brown generations.
>>65363101Hitting an A-10 is like smashing the town bike, I'd be more surprised if Iran somehow failed to hit any of them. I mean they're not fast, agile, or stealthy, they're borderline a sitting duck in the air
>>6536266750 years ago we built 700 flying pickup trucks, and a beat up old truck ship-of-thesus'd from 5 boneyard donors and a few aftermarket upgrades is still nearly as useful and in some ways even more adaptable (as we see with them running goddamn CAP missions now); they're for work not sitting pretty. Nothing new is going to match them on price or capability until a purchase commitment is made of comparable scale. Which isn't going to happen because of gerontocrats like these - they could've just as easily put forward an act directing the USAF to replace them with a 21st century successor, as >>65362676 observes, rather than beating around the bush with mandates to keep obsolescent planes in service. That would require actual leadership.
>>65363291>nearly as useful and in some ways even more adaptableThis is false
Cool. It’s more important for a military to be cool than anything else
>>65363301Keeping worthless garbage on life support for decades isn't cool though.
>>65363307Umm it’s called tradition sweaty
>>65363307And who are you to be the arbiter of what's good and cool? You sound like a fucking nerd. Bet your ass thinks the F111 is cooler which if we're talking about the Raven then yes, EW is sex, but no if not
>>65363126IMO the Apache is what needs to go, they're even more fragile than A-10s in the modern threat environment particularly due to their bases now being in range of artillery and (large)FPV drones. And their current mission profile hardly benefits from rotary lift. The USAF-Army compromise of the '60s ain't cutting it today and the USAF clearly doesn't wish to invest in the Attack mission. Let the Army do Thunderbolt III's.
>>65363316Apache is probably the best platform in current US inventory for dealing with shahed style kamikaze drones via the gun and APKWS, certainly has more of a reason to be in inventory than fucking A-10
>>65363314The F111 was a swing-wing aircraft which are automatically cooler than aircraft that aren't. Also it was more effective than the A10
>>65363310What if our tradition were to have the best airplanes in the world rather than dumping millions into rustbuckets that were obsolete fifty years ago?>>65363314I don't see what my preferences in airplanes have to do with the fact that the A-10 is long overdue for retirement. I wouldn't support a bill pressing the F-111 back into service either.
>Introduced Monday as H.R. 9780 by Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz.Is he sabotaging us to save his swarthy kin?
>>65363316Just roll the Air Force back into the Army. All they want to do these days is waste money on aircraft they won't use. They need someone to wrangle them into going their damn jobs.
>>65363316the V-280 could work, or a similar design. The added speed and range would help protect them while grounded, and as >>65363321 says helis make great at shooting OOA-drones
>>65363321The A-10 carries more APKWS, intercepts faster, and has an extra 50+nmi engagement envelope before shaheds start hitting it's own base and disrupting sorties. Try this any simulator; DCS, Nuclear Option, even a Warthunder custom lobby with the V-1 mission. The fixed-wing option is far superior.
>>65363333That's one of the better compromise options under current interservice-political arrangements, true.
>>65363324Swing wings are gay and I'm tired of pretending they're cool. The tomcat's biggest cultural legacy is softcore gay porn, the tornado is such a massive hunk of shit it got overshadowed by a fixed-wing plane a decade older than it, and the flogger is the fucking flogger. Also fuck effectiveness, do you think we keep the AC-130 in service because it's effective? Or the Missouri? No, we do it because it's objectively cool as shit
>>65363346The Missouri isn't in service
>>6536269333% greater payload fraction at $11k/hr vs $14k/hr. For low-threat environments the A-10 remains the clear winner on efficient payload delivery.
>>65363370At least in conventional setups. An AC-130 is 350% more at 12k/hr, if going the rapid dragon weaponized pallets route.
God, wasn't McCain dying supposed to finally let us kill the A10?
>>65362667remove the cannon and replace it with modrn avionics, replace all the missile racks with rocket pods and hey you got an expensive drone popper
>>65363335the A-10 doesn't have a radar, an apache does
>>65363402Replace the gun with a sensor net and then the missile sprues with ones capable of launching drones, then you have a flying tank that can act as a drone mother ship
>>65363507Doesn't much matter in this day and age (for this particular target), Link-16 can mark contacts to intercept on the HUD+MFD and visual(laser)/IR contact is required for APKWS.
>>65362667It's not funny anymore. Get rid of these uncs and invest in loitering munitions.
>>65363203>without megawatts power supply I don't see lasers being actually useful in an attack roleA single, unmodified, used Tesla Model S or Model X battery pack for a couple thousand bucks can easily supply that much power.
>>65363376>if going the rapid dragon weaponized pallets route.which restricts you to super expensive precision ammunition only vs a few dumb 30mm HE shells, that has to be factored in IMO
>>65362667The US military has a massive and inefficient budget, so they can kind of afford keeping a legacy one trick pony around for very specific missions.If it were any other military, they'd be replacing A-10s with UAVs and light fighters just so they wouldn't have to keep maintaining them
>>65363511I think the Chinook concept does it better, with an A-10 you have an aircraft that can quickly get to where it needs to be, and have guided rockets that can take Geran 2 and Geran 5s with ease. Out of an A-10 the range might be about 8-11km which is a heck of a lot better than the ground range which is only about 5km. At that range you have about 30 seconds to track and engage one of them. In the air you have about 60 and if the A-10 could track/engage multiple it would be a capable aircraft for drone popping.
>>65363562I would think having a bunch of aircraft with radars that can land, launch, and loiter just about anywhere they want would be immensely helpful in detecting and beating down widespread drone attacks at a moment's notice. I'm not saying the A-10 can't do the job just fine, but I am saying that it's time to let the old bird retire and get something more fit to the task of modern low-threat COIN/drone swatting.
>>65363588I don't think they can. Do you have a source for the "megawatts of power" they can output? Peak power on those case is well less than a megawatt.
>>65363595>which restricts you to super expensive precision ammunition only vs a few dumb 30mm HE shells, that has to be factored in IMOIf you were put inside a bomb casing you would be a dumb bomb.
>>6536337027% more expensive to operate with 33% greater payload is more efficient though.
