Despite strong provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, as
passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Bloomberg is reporting this morning that the Chairmen and Ranking
Minority Members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee are very
seriously considering an Air Force proposal to contravene the language, and
money, of both bills to proceed with the "divestiture" (retirement) of the A-10
in 2015.
(See Roxana Tiron's article "Levin: 'Big Four' Debating New Warthog Retirement Proposal." It was not
yet on-line at the time of this writing.)
A letter sent by the Project On Government
Oversight and other organizations
to the Chairmen and Ranking Minority Members of the House and Senate Armed
Services Committees (known as the "Big Four") outlines the money and bill
language in the NDAA that-technically-leaves the Big Four only very little
wiggle room and that literally mandates the continuation of the A-10 inventory,
as is, in 2015.
Another letter, sent by Senators
Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), John McCain (R-AZ),
Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) to the "Big Four" also makes clear that the effort to circumvent
the NDAAs' language is a serious threat.
Clearly a major fight is brewing on Capitol
Hill.
The fight may be around for months to come if the
issue slops over to 2015 and the Chairmanship of Senator McCain at the Senate
Armed Services Committee.
While virtually all observers had assumed that the
lopsided 41-20 vote on May 7 2014 in the House Armed Services Committee to
earmark $635 million specifically to retain the A-10, in full, in 2015 and a
voice vote-reported to be virtually unanimous-in the Senate Armed Services
Committee to provide less money but even more explicit language to preserve the
complete A-10 inventory in all respects in 2015 would be a clear message to the
Big Four.
That appears not to be the case; the meaning of the
Bloomberg article and the Ayotte et al. letter are clear. The Big Four are buying the Air
Force's proposal to allow the Air Force to continue to retire the A-10, doing so
by raiding its maintenance personnel.
The Air Force is arguing that the already
years behind schedule F-35A will not meet its artificially early "initial
operational capability" (IOC) date--years before initial operational testing is
finished--unless the F-35A force gets A-10 maintenance personnel. In
furtherance of this notion, the Air Force maintains that these maintainers
cannot come from other aircraft being retired, cannot come from civilian
contract personnel, and cannot come from activated Air National Guard and Air
Force Reserve personnel. They can only come from the A-10 force.
That the Air Force has already had 12 years to prepare for the F-35A's IOC is
also a factor it wants no one to consider. (See a good article on all this at
http://www.jqpublic-blog.com/ mission-air-forces-misguided- plan-kill-10-exposed-pure- politics/.)
The Air Force's gambit to continue its divestiture
of the A-10 flies in the face of the legislative history of the NDAA (and
legislative ethics), and it
flies in the face of military need. The A-10 has recenty been deployed to the Middle East to support
operations in Afghanistan, and I am informed that a second unit is about to
deploy to support operations in Iraq and Syria.
In each of the four wars America has fought since the first Iraq war in
1991, the A-10 has performed at a spectacular level in the many combat roles the
Air Force has assigned to it. We are informed of that level of
performance not just from the A-10 pilots who know the airplane best, but also
from Marines, Soldiers and Special Forces on the ground in close combat with our
enemies, from the ground controllers who work closely with the A-10 and all
other Air Force aircraft, and from the Government Accountability Office that
evaluated the A-10's performance in
Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
As that GAO report stated, our enemies also know
the A-10 all too well: when asked after the 1991 war, Iraqi prisoners stated the
A-10 to be one of two aircraft they feared the
most.
Senator Graham was accurate to say yesterday the people who most want
to see the US get rid of the A-10 are our enemies on the
battlefield.
(And, of course, the Air Force and perhaps the Big
Four.)
The F-35 will not be equipped and tested for the close air support role
until 2021, and when--and if--it is finally certified for that mission, its
capability compared to the
A-10 will very seriously degrade
American capability to support Soldiers and Marines engaged in combat.
The Air Force is on the wrong side of logic, ethics and military
effectiveness on the A-10 issue. That it wants to drag the so-called
Big Four down with it should not even be a close call. Apparently, however, it
is.
This debate tells us everything we need to know-but don't want to
hear-about how defense issues are considered in the Pentagon and
Congress.
That needs to
change.
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