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The A-10 rolled onto the tarmac in 1976. The brass still hated the thing. It survived only because of pork-barrel politics—it was built by Fairchild Industries in Bethpage, Long Island, home district of Rep. Joseph Addabbo, who was chairman of the House appropriations' defense subcommittee. The plan was to build 850 of the planes. By 1986, when Addabbo died, Fairchild had built just 627, and the program came to a crashing halt. No more A-10s were ordered, and 197 of those in existence were transferred to the Air National Guard and allowed to rot.

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We don't need this guy Kaplan to speak for us unless he gets all his facts straight. This paragraph is all BS. I don't care to read any more of it.

Mc/I + P/A

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A-10 was built as part a doctrine designed to negate the Soviets numerical advantage in mechanized armor, the A-10 was never a controversial program, in fact if a person takes the time to research it from "cradle" to "coffin" it terms of R&D, procurement, and then service life, it has been a model program, and one very few aircraft programs can match. The U.S Army would have given anything to add the A-10 to its aviation program, but despite the fact that the A-10's simplicity went againt the emerging "hi-tech" doctrine shift of the USAF in the late 80's..........There was no way the USAF was going to allow the Army to step on its toes.

I know this guy Kaplan, read alot of his work.......He reminds me alot of Oliver Stone, very good at truth bents, and spins........But lacks sound research to back him up, thus he adds drama and manufactured quotes to shift the focal point away from his groundless facts.

If your not having fun, your not doing it right!

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A-10 was built as part a doctrine designed to negate the Soviets numerical advantage in mechanized armor, the A-10 was never a controversial program, in fact if a person takes the time to research it from "cradle" to "coffin" it terms of R&D, procurement, and then service life, it has been a model program, and one very few aircraft programs can match.

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Thanks for the kind words, "model progam", wow. Maybe you are right, but at the time it seemed controversial enough to some. Every little performance shortfall, engineering or test delay, test failure or bad planet alignment was used against us by people who wanted the money. Aside from those in the Pentagon that were against the A-X from the beginning ( a deal was struck with Congress...no A-X then no F-15, capish?), the biggest threat I remember was the "fly-off" against the A-7. We were very concerned that the Texas congressional delegation had enough juice to shunt a good portion of the money their way. That would have eliminated our economies of scale and the resulting unit costs would have killed the program early. As it turned out we did pretty well. The A-7 threat was defeated, even though it was a pretty good, but different, jet. Technical problems for the A-10 were solved in time. Some performance specs were eased. The utility of the concept was demonstrated. Inflation adjusted production costs were good. We managed to keep the program going for 713 jets out of a planned total of 733. In government procurement, I guess that is relatively uncontroversial.

Mc/I + P/A

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<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>…the biggest threat I remember was the "fly-off" against the A-7. We were very concerned that the Texas congressional delegation had enough juice to shunt a good portion of the money their way. That would have eliminated our economies of scale and the resulting unit costs would have killed the program early.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Yes I seem to remember something about the A-7, A-10 fly off at the time. Yes if it was not for political in fighting we could be the best-armed county in the world at very little cost! So who is keeping the V-22 alive?