Inside The Pentagon
June 5, 2003
Pg. 1
Air Leaders: A-10 Upgrades May Be Cut But Retirement Not Accelerated
Senior Air Force officers say their service is not planning an early retirement for the A-10, an aircraft optimized for supporting troops on the ground, despite assertions to the contrary in an opinion piece published last week in The New York Times. But these leaders acknowledge that extension of the Warthog's service life and precision upgrades to the aircraft may yet be terminated as the Air Force crafts its fiscal year 2005 budget.
Those cuts to A-10 modification efforts could ultimately produce a similar effect: hastening retirement for at least some of the aircraft, service officials concede.
Earlier this spring, some Air Combat Command officials may have considered terminating the A-10 fleet, although it remains unclear how high in the command chain such deliberations extended. These cuts and others were reportedly eyed as a source of funds to avoid a schedule slip in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's introduction into the fleet.
But senior Air Force leaders have dismissed outright mothballing of the A-10 as an infeasible and undesirable option, ACC Plans and Programs Director Maj. Gen. David Deptula told Inside the Pentagon this week.
Robert Coram, who wrote a book last year on the late Air Force Col. John Boyd and the defense reform movement, wrote in the May 27 op-ed that Deptula in early April “ordered a subordinate to draft a memo justifying the decommissioning of the A-10 fleet.”
Deptula says this week that did not happen. He told ITP his subordinate appears to have misinterpreted ACC discussion of potential cancellation of A-10 “Hog Up” life extension as suggesting the entire fleet would be terminated. Deptula said he learned of the staff misunderstanding in mid-April, shortly after tasking the subordinate to prepare a background paper on the budget option of terminating A-10 modifications. The general said he immediately made clear to his staff that A-10 retirement in the 2005 budget was not an option.
Later that month, Deptula put together a “tiger team” to examine the possible effects of terminating the A-10 life extension and precision upgrade efforts, according to an ACC memo reviewed by ITP.
Those modification programs would double the A-10's service life from 8,000 to 16,000 hours and install on the aircraft: an integrated targeting pod; an upgrade to the A-10's ability to generate direct-current electricity; a digital stores management system to help the pilot control weapons; two multifunction color displays to replace basic dials in the cockpit; a datalink situational awareness capability to exchange threat information with outside sources; and wiring for a 1760 data bus, which would allow the A-10 to employ guided weapons like the Joint Direct Attack Munition and the Wind-Corrected Munitions Dispenser.
“We need to address what effect will this [upgrade termination] have on the remaining A-10 aircraft,” including “how we will work with the Army to plan and conduct CAS [close air support], and how F/A-22 and F-35 procurement marries up with declining A-10 numbers,” Deptula writes in the April 28 memo.
The top ACC planner told ITP the essential question at hand is: “If these offsets are accepted, how do we replace the capability?” Deptula said the Air Force wholeheartedly wants to “support the surface soldiers whenever they are in need.”
Some alternative modes of providing close air support potentially offer more capability than the A-10 does, Deptula said.
“One reason we're keeping the A-10 is for the niche environments -- very, very low-threat environments where you're doing counter-insurgency operations,” he said. However, “close air support is a mission, not an aircraft,” said Deptula. “We're looking for ways to improve our ability to conduct CAS in threat environments not survivable for the A-10.”
He said the study team first convened in early May and continues to work on the issue. That is part of an ongoing Air Force process to build its “adjusted program objective memorandum.” Later this year, the service will submit to the Office of the Secretary of Defense program change proposals and budget change proposals. Early next year, the Air Force budget will be included in the Pentagon's FY-05 defense request to Congress.
E-mail correspondence between Deptula's subordinate and his ACC colleagues, obtained by ITP, indicates the ACC official believed he was “tasked by Gen. Deptula” to write a “persuasive” background paper “on terminating the A-10 fleet,” in addition to canceling A-10 life extension and precision upgrades. Responding to some colleagues surprised by his initial e-mail, the subordinate wrote on April 9, “The option of killing the fleet has been discussed at the two-, three- [and] four-star level in ACC for the past several weeks.”
Deptula says the action officers who engaged in “informal chatting” in these e-mails had a limited view into the overall budget process, and were incorrect in several of their depictions of events.
“That whole back-and-forth is riddled with errors and misunderstandings,” he said.
Deptula insists termination of the A-10 fleet is not on the table, but the point may ultimately be moot. While the Air Force leadership may not be itching to mothball the active-duty fleet of eight A-10 squadrons in 2004 -- as Coram's opinion piece alleges -- Warthog retirements could be hastened for the portion of the A-10 fleet that does not undergo all the planned upgrades and life extensions, Air Force officials acknowledge.
Deptula says funds will remain in the 2004 budget to extend the lives of 310 of 360 A-10s in the fleet. If Hog Up is cancelled as of 2005, funding would also remain in the outyears to continue upgrades for those 310 aircraft, he said.
If this budget scenario under consideration plays out, just 50 of the aircraft slated to begin Hog Up in 2005 would remain without the life extension and would be forced to retire early, Deptula said.
But if Congress perceives Air Force support for the A-10 modification efforts is flagging, lawmakers may well decide to reprogram 2004 Hog Up and precision upgrade funds toward their own priorities, officials say.
With internal budget deliberations ongoing, no decisions have been made on any cuts to the A-10 modifications, Air Force officials insist. Budget options remain extremely fluid and “the savings may not justify using that option as an offset alternative,” Deptula said this week.
“Every year we will come up with proposed offsets that are just that -- proposed,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. Dan Leaf, the service's director of operational capability requirements. “That's where we are in the process to balance the books, given our limited funds.”
In fact, ACC officials, reluctant to take the A-10 cuts, may be counting on the fact that Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper will shield these upgrades from potential cuts, as he has reportedly done in the past. As recently as last year, the chief reportedly made clear to top service generals his personal commitment to the A-10 life extension and precision modifications efforts.
Army supporters in Congress are almost certain to question the Air Force commitment to its counterparts on the ground in the context of joint warfare, should the A-10 service life be cut short.
For these reasons, consideration of such reductions may, in the end, never even make it to the Pentagon comptroller's office.
“Every year that I was in the building and we did budget drills, the A-10 weapon system came up,” says retired Maj. Gen. Paul Weaver, former head of the Air National Guard. “But everybody said, 'You've got to be kidding me. This is a great aircraft.'”
“We go through this annually,” agrees Leaf. “The value of Hog Up and [A-10] precision engagement is unchanged.” He called the two modification efforts “key elements of a viable A-10 fleet.”
Jumper has come to regard the A-10 fleet investment as a tangible indicator of his commitment to supporting ground troops from the air, service sources tell ITP.
Air Force officers hotly contest Coram's fundamental assertion that the service hierarchy “deeply loathes the A-10,” saying such a characterization is seriously outdated.
“What was wrong about that [Coram] piece is the moral tone to it -- that there's a loathing of the A-10 and the mission,” said Leaf in a June 3 interview. “In my view, that's just wrong.”
During the Iraq war, Leaf served as the air component representative to the ground force commander in Kuwait, Army Lt. Gen. David McKiernan. Jumper created the new, high-level post with an eye toward improving air-ground integration after a breakdown in interservice communications in Afghanistan.
“To suggest that the Air Force isn't supporting ground forces just is not supported by the facts,” Deptula said.
This week, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Hal Hornburg said in a letter to the Times that of the nearly 20,000 aim points attacked by aircraft during the Iraq war, more than 15,000 “were in direct support of coalition ground forces.”
“In fact,” adds Deptula, “100 percent [of the air attacks] supported them. This was an integrated fight more than ever before.”
As it stands, the Air Force plans to invest more than $1 billion in A-10 upgrades and life extension, beginning in FY-04 and continuing through the outyears of the defense budget, senior officials said.
The price tag is up considerably since late 2000, when the modification efforts were believed to total just $300 million (ITP, Nov. 9, 2000, p1). Air Force officials say at least part of the reason for cost growth is a new Defense Department requirement to use a joint datalink common to all the services.
Even to Jumper, that might be an attractive pot of funds to raid as the pressure mounts from the ever-growing costs of maintaining an aging and deteriorating aircraft fleet. As operations and maintenance budgets skyrocket just to keep old aircraft functioning, there are fewer dollars available to buy new weapon systems. At the same time, cost estimates for both of the Air Force's new fighters, the F/A-22 and F-35, are exploding.
Since before the inception of the high-technology, stealthy F/A-22 fighter, Pentagon maverick Franklin Spinney -- who retired from government service last week -- has warned that the F/A-22 cost would rise precipitously in parallel with the inevitably rising cost of maintaining an aircraft fleet of unprecedented age. This “rising cost of low readiness,” as Spinney terms it, makes the modernization of important capabilities in the service nearly unaffordable.
Despite ever-growing Air Force budget toplines, this financial and operational “train wreck” will result in unacceptable trade-offs, as useful combat capabilities are sacrificed to keep the F/A-22 program alive and a dwindling force of old aircraft ready to fly, Spinney has said.
The budget environment makes for difficult choices as Air Force leaders attempt to select the least painful options from an array of bad alternatives, service officials say.
“We do face budget challenges that are leading to consideration of several difficult options,” Leaf said.
Pentagon observers note that service officials sometimes nominate “gold watch” budget items for cuts -- reductions they do not actually want to take. But the officers recommend the cuts in the confidence that they will be restored by a higher authority, using funds that do not come out of their own “hide.”
Air Force officers have begun calling them “nuclear offsets” -- those that, like nuclear weapons, can never truly be used.
Deptula's subordinate acknowledges in the e-mail back-and-forth with his ACC colleagues that the “A-10 fleet kill” is among several “nuclear offsets.” Others include termination of F-117 fighter modifications, killing the Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle, and cutting flying hours by 5 percent, states the correspondence.
These offsets “were to be touched if we wanted to fund all of our grounding, safety and must-pays,” the official wrote April 9. They will be examined more seriously “if and when we lose the JSF slip,” he writes.
The latter reference is to an apparent ACC effort in the budget process to recommend to Air Force headquarters that the Joint Strike Fighter production schedule be extended further into the future to save annual expenditures. Another ACC colleague believed that recommendation had already been rejected.
According to the correspondence trail, the Air Force has already vetted the termination of Hog Up and precision modifications on Capitol Hill.
But Deptula says that with the budget process in such a preliminary stage within the Air Force, congressional consultation on this issue has not taken place.
One ACC officer wrote in April that Air Force budget programmers went to Capitol Hill “without the [A-10] fleet on the plate, got the JSF thrown back at [them] and then started to re-look at the [A-10] fleet kill.” The programmers also eyed some offsets from the F-15 and F-16 programs, “which have mysteriously disappeared,” this officer wrote at the time.
In his letter this week, Hornburg wrote that the A-10's average age is 23 years. He noted the “Air Force intends to keep the A-10 in its inventory for many years to come, but the aircraft will not last forever.”
Some A-10 advocates insist the Warthog offers capabilities that cannot be duplicated by other existing aircraft. Coram noted the A-10's 30 mm cannon -- the biggest and most lethal on a fighter jet -- two engines mounted high for increased protection, a titanium “bathtub” surrounding the cockpit to protect the pilot from ground fire, a bullet-resistant cockpit canopy, a heavy-duty airframe and foam-filled fuel tanks. The author calls the plane “one of the safest yet most dangerous weapons on the battlefield.”
In the Warthog, “we get an aircraft that is survivable in a small-arms, AAA [anti-aircraft artillery] environment, but is forced to operate in that because of its flight characteristics,” said Leaf. Unlike the service's other attack jets, the A-10 is optimized for slow flight at low altitudes, close in to the ground fight.
“It has good loiter time, good payload and can operate from austere bases,” Leaf said.
Deptula says his study team has spent the past month trying to piece together combinations of other attack planes and weapons that could substitute for A-10 capabilities if some of the Warthogs retire earlier or do not receive precision upgrades. In his view, it may be possible to forego some upgraded A-10s if other weapon systems can offer the same battlefield effects in threat environments in which the Warthog cannot survive.
The ground support mission itself is not in any jeopardy, he said.
“The Air Force is committed to providing CAS for the future. Period,” Deptula said. “We have a spectrum of capabilities that can provide a spectrum of missions.”
But some officers believe no combination of other attack planes and weapons can adequately replace the A-10's unique abilities.
A-10s “are the only ones carrying the weapons necessary to fight the close-in fight,” writes one Warthog advocate in the ACC e-mail correspondence. Laser-guided bombs and JDAMs “are wonderful weapons, but cannot usually be used when friendlies are within a kilometer, or as close as 100 meters or less (and yes, this is regularly happening). There is no replacement” for the A-10's standard weapons load-out, which includes the Maverick missile and 30 mm gun, this officer contends.
He adds that when providing air support to troops in contact with the adversary, “you must I.D. both the friendlies and the enemy. This means using your Mk-1 eyeball and point-and-shoot small [fragmentation] weapons, not generally capable or available up in the 'safe area.'”
The officer was referring to a 15,000-foot ceiling above which the lighter and faster attack planes -- like the F-16 and F-15E -- generally operate. Many Air Force officials believe these jets -- as well as bombers like the B-52 -- can adequately support troops in contact with enemy forces, using Global Positioning System-aided munitions directed at coordinates called in from the ground.
“If our brothers on the ground are pinned down, taking fire, and face loss of life/equipment/mission,” the ACC officer wrote, “then there must exist an aircraft and the pilots to fly them who will have the capability and balls to mix it up and save the day. Hawgs can do this because where [F-16] Vipers use tin foil, we use titanium; where they use 20 mm [guns], we use 30; where they have a single-many-times-replaced engine, we've got two under-powered yet healthy ones.”
Given the A-10's higher risk of getting shot up as it flies slowly at low altitudes -- even though the planes can often limp back to base -- Deptula thinks they are unusable against well defended adversaries.
Leaf says pilots have long held hot debates over the merits of flying the slow-but-well-armored A-10 at low altitudes vs. flying lighter jets, which decrease risk by flying very fast at higher altitude.
“There is this myth that the A-10 is the only CAS platform, and that's not true,” Leaf said. “But that's the emotional side of the Warthog.”
If the Air Force ultimately truncates the A-10 life extension and precision engagement modifications, “we'd have less force structure but we could deliver the same fundamental capabilities from other platforms,” he said.
That said, the service “would like to retain the A-10 and we would like it to be as capable as possible,” Leaf added.
“Clearly there's a reason” for the planned modifications, he said. “Hog Up will provide the service life extension just to keep the aircraft flying. Precision engagement will ensure it's flying with real capability.”
“There have been discussions on getting rid of the A-10 ever since it was built,” said Weaver, the retired Air Guard leader. “I didn't see it happening then, nor do I see it happening anywhere in the near future. The Army loves it and so do the people who fly it and maintain it. What we need are more funds to upgrade and enhance its combat capabilities.”
Weaver added: “I don't feel politically it could happen at this time.”
-- Elaine M. Grossman
Ugly but well hung!
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