Why Are They Retiring The A-10 Warthog?!

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]What's up, guys? Welcome back to my channel. And if you're new here, then welcome to our little corner of the internet. Today, we're going to be watching a video titled How Air Force Pilots fly the controversial 19 million A10 Wthog. Um, which I think I've watched a video on this plane before as well. And um I felt like I needed a seat belt for for my seat. So, it's been a while since we've done airplane videos or aircraft videos. So, I'm pretty excited for this one. Let's see what this is about.

[00:00:36]I know that 9G if if you go see, I've learned things about airplanes. I didn't know anything before this channel. 9G, you can go lights out. That's not good.

[00:00:51]This is the A10 Thunderbolt 2, more commonly known.

[00:00:59]>> I'm already nervous because last time I watched a video um like this where they were inside the plane. Um there was I wish I remembered his name, but he has a channel where he does aircraft videos.

[00:01:11]We've done some. And this person fainted inside the plane. Um, and I watched a video of him being in in another plane and I thought that he was going to faint again. Apparently, he wasn't the one like driving the plane or flying the plane. There was another person in front of him, but I thought that he was the one who was flying the plane and I thought that he was going to pass out again. And it was just I was so nervous during the whole video. It was horrible.

[00:01:42]>> Mr. Warthog.

[00:01:46]The Air Force uses the A10 for close air support.

[00:01:51]Missions that require the plane to fly low to provide cover and assist ground troops in battle.

[00:01:58]So, our whole mission in life and our whole job in life is to take care of the men and women on the ground. It's the only thing we think about. It's the only thing we train to. It's the only thing we talk about. It's exactly what this airplane is built to do.

[00:02:10]But these pilots may be among the last to be trained to fly it.

[00:02:18]For years, the Air Force has considered retiring the A10 in favor of the newer F-35 fighter jet.

[00:02:26]And that might finally be happening with Congress approving the Air Force's plan to phase out the A-10 over the next 5 to 6 years. But the public debate over the need for the A-10 continues.

[00:02:41]And while some A-10s are as much as 50 years old, F-35s cost about 60 million more per aircraft and weren't built.

[00:02:51]>> I I used to not be into airplanes like that. But this makes me sad.

[00:02:56]Don't retire them. There is no >> solely to support ground troops. There may be a day that I am called to potentially help save someone's life when they are having the worst day of their life. That comes back to my training and making sure that I know what I'm doing in the jet.

[00:03:12]>> So, how vital is the A10?

[00:03:16]That's that also that must be such high pressure job to have to like save lives, you know, like I don't know that someone's life is in your hands is just >> could the Air Force soon be without one of its most iconic war planes?

[00:03:38]>> So the only base that ATM pilots train at is at Davis Moth Air Force Base.

[00:03:44]Before they fly the A-10, pilots train in the T38 Talon during their initial flight training in Texas.

[00:03:53]>> They fly completely different um based on their flight performance and characteristics.

[00:03:59]>> The T38 is kind of like a sports car.

[00:04:01]It's quick, it's agile, it's fast. But the A-10 drives more like a Cadillac.

[00:04:07]After graduating from flight, >> I also thought that um if you know how to fly, you can fly any plane, but apparently that's not true. No >> training, new pilots move to their assigned posts.

[00:04:18]>> Really like the mission of the A10 and thought it was super cool. I like the idea that it doesn't matter what I'm doing that I'm strictly there for people on the ground.

[00:04:29]>> If you look at it, not the most attractive looking plane, if you will.

[00:04:32]Uh it's pretty pretty ugly. Doesn't have the sweatback wings. It's got, you know, big Hershey bar wings on it for like added stability. So, it's it's just a mean >> I think it has character >> looking airplane and that's ultimately like what a Warthog is.

[00:04:48]>> What sound does the A10 make when it fires, >> you know, like Bert?

[00:04:57]And that's actually just the noise of the bullets exiting the barrel.

[00:05:03]This is >> I'm pretty sure I've made a video about this plane before and you guys were commenting in the comments.

[00:05:09]>> The G8 Avenger. It's a 30mm Gatlin gun.

[00:05:12]It's built by General Electric and this is the largest Gatling gun ever built and put into an airplane. So, it's got it's seven barrels. It shoots at a maximum rate about 3,900 rounds a minute. There's almost no target that the GAW8 is not a valid weapon uh to use against. As we go around, the titanium bathtub is one of the features designed specifically to protect the pilot in the airplane. So this whole panel right here where you see these giant Phillips head looking fasteners, that whole panel is titanium. So you can you can hear all these are are hollow aluminum.

[00:05:42]And that's rock solid titanium right there. This was one of the first fighter types that incorporated that into the design of the airplane. And it's the only one I know about that has a full bathtub encompassing the pilot. Uh behind this panel right here, this is our single point refueling system right here. So pull that cap off uh and fill the airplane up with fuel. Uh, we have >> I feel like I I would have to go to school to just understand this part here. How many buttons? Buttons. What are these for?

[00:06:12]Oh my god. No, I could never.

[00:06:15]>> Four fuel tanks for a total of about 11,000 lbs of gas. If I'm topped off, I can fly for about 3 hours. And then once you add in aerial refueling, uh, we can fly pretty much indefinitely. And then as you're looking towards the back of the airplane, you can see we have a lot of hard points. Uh, a lot of weapon stations on the airplane. There's 11 in total. And between those, we can carry up to 16,000 pounds of ordinance on those 11 weapon stations. This is a Mark 82 bomb body, so a 500 lb bomb body.

[00:06:40]It's just a a blast and fragmentation type weapon that you drop it, it's unguided on impact, and it detonates.

[00:06:47]This is a uh GBU31. It's a 2,000lb bomb with a GPS guidance kit on the back of it. So, it's a a coordinate seeking weapon, meaning I can input a GPS coordinate, and that's exactly where that weapon's going to go.

[00:07:04]>> But how does the A10 stack up to the F-35 meant to replace it?

[00:07:10]Supporters of the F-35 say it has a huge stealth advantage, but detractors say it doesn't have the durability the A10 does, thanks to features like the titanium bathtub.

[00:07:22]Another concern is how F-35 pilots are trained. Insider reported that according to a 2022 training memo, no F-35 pilots are required to execute close air support training simulations in 2023 or 2024.

[00:07:39]For A-10 pilots, close air support is at the center of their training, which starts here in a virtual reality simulator lab. So, they're going to start off in the VR lab and that's going to give them the site pictures and the references on the ground and the references in the aircraft for the first time.

[00:07:59]>> Put that up. Hear the EQU kicking on.

[00:08:04]>> So, simulators are extremely important.

[00:08:06]They're able to practice everything in a safe environment with, you know, professional instructors before they get out and actually fly them on their own.

[00:08:14]Students familiarize themselves with the A-10's control panels and starting procedures before moving on to the flight simulator.

[00:08:22]>> We're going to open our airto-air refueling door. At this point, he was doing aerial refueling. It's a mission that the students actually perform in the aircraft pretty early in their training pipeline. Historically, without this lesson, it's usually taken about 10 to 15 minutes of talking to the students through getting the successful hookup in flight. Whereas now that we're able to have them practice with this lesson, they go out on that first flight having already done it before.

[00:08:50]>> We want to make sure we want to take a look at our air speed as we're >> I don't think that's the same thing though. It must feel so powerful to be flying the plane for the first time regardless because But this is really cool though. I think in Finland I did my driver's license in Spain, but I think in Finland you have simulations for driver's license as well, which is just wild >> information with the tanker.

[00:09:14]>> Now, the feedback we're getting from instructors is that they're just going right up to the boom and they're getting their hookup on their first try.

[00:09:20]>> For the VR sim, you're getting the muscle memory. Um, so the first time we practice it in the jet, we know physically what we're doing with our hands and uh we know where our eyes should be, where we should gauge, and then our IPS are helping us fine-tune those things.

[00:09:35]After spending a month in the simulator and learning the basic operations of the aircraft, pilots begin flying training missions in the A-10.

[00:09:49]Captain Lindseay Mad Johnson has 5 years of experience flying the A-10. Today, she's training for a new role to be a pilot on an A-10 demo team where she will highlight the capabilities of the Warthog.

[00:10:04]I am about 2 hours shy of 1,200 hours in the in the A10 itself. They call it like a crawl rock run uh process. So I did it in the sim multiple times. Then we go out to the airspace for my first time with a floor, not actual floor, but a simulated floor of 5,000 ft AGL. And then I go here 2,000 ft AGL, 1,000 ft AGL, and then 500 ft AGL until I got through my first certification.

[00:10:35]After Johnson completed a few rolls and dives, she moved on to simulating a strafe, which is an attack on enemy ground forces, a technique used in close air support operations.

[00:10:48]>> So, when we do close air support, we are egressing, as they say it, from uh in front of the target area. I'm going out about, you know, two 2 and 1/2 miles away at about 500 ft. And then I'm turning back around this way. And as I'm about just outside of a mile, I'll pop to about 30° nose high, which allows me to get high enough to be able to see there is what would be designated as the friendlies and what would be designated as the enemy on the ground. And then as I visually acquire that out over my canopy rail, I'm then rolling in using both ailerons. My throttles are already in max. I'm rolling in and then I'm putting basically my nose position down on what we consider to be like a 20 degree wire. So rather than flying straight and level on 20° nose low towards the ground.

[00:11:39]I learned about the A10 growing up. I knew I wanted to do something kind of to pay homage to to my dad's time and service. I was young when September 11th happened. I was nine and he deployed 2 months after September 11th happened.

[00:11:54]that kind of stuck with me and I knew I wanted to do something that was going to give back to my country as well.

[00:12:03]>> The A10 debuted in combat in 19 >> that's so beautiful because it's definitely not like for everyone, let me tell you all. Um, but I have so much respect though.

[00:12:18]It's already like hard in itself and then the situations you can find yourself in >> 77 making it just shy of 50 years old which is one reason many wanted to be retired.

[00:12:33]For years the wardog has been the subject of debate between the US Air Force and Congress.

[00:12:40]Some members of Air Force leadership have suggested retiring the A-10 to focus on developing more modern aircraft. like the $80 million F-35 >> more.

[00:12:51]>> Why would you want to retire the least expensive, most accurate close air support system?

[00:12:57]>> I don't want to retire, Senator, but the Air Force has to get bigger to do all this.

[00:13:01]>> But Congress has fought those requests due to the success of the A10 in recent conflicts with ISIS and the Taliban and the plane's overall cost efficiency.

[00:13:12]>> It's tried and true. It's very rudimentary with the systems that it has, but why fix something that's not broke? It's been in every conflict that the United States has been in since Bosnia, Grenada, pretty much every contingent that that the United States has been a part of. The A-10 has been pretty much the leader of all that.

[00:13:29]>> Last year, Congress approved an Air Force proposal to retire 21 A-10s, reducing the total fleet to 260 with plans to decommission the remaining planes in the next 5 to 6 years.

[00:13:43]People don't realize how much maintenance actually goes into keeping these aircraft airorthy. You know, it's not like a car. You know, when we wake up in the morning, we jump in the car, start it, and drive, right? These have starting issues. They have leaks.

[00:13:55]They're 40 50 years old. They all have somewhere between 13,000 to 15,000 flight hours on them. Uh, and that exceeds the actual life expectancy of the airframe by, you know, 5,000 7,000 hours.

[00:14:07]>> A10 critics may use the plane's maintenance issues to fuel their argument. But the cost of maintaining the F-35 jumped 15% between 2018 and 2020.

[00:14:21]>> What what happens to you when you finish the training?

[00:14:24]>> Uh once we all finish, we'll go to the different assigned bases. So I'll be going to Korea next.

[00:14:30]>> This is fun to fly. It does a job that no one else does. And it's you're like you're good at that. That is your thing.

[00:14:36]That's the 810 thing. After completing the six-month training program at Davis Monthan, newly certified A-10 pilots will begin their careers as fighter pilots in the US Air Force. The plane was built well before I was alive and knowing just like the generations of people that flew the plane before me were looking at the exact same gauges that I'm looking at. So, it's it's a pretty unique experience. I knew as like a younger child that I wanted to fly the A-10. My grandpa was in the army. He has seen the A-10 like when he was in the army do things and so that was even more just like a further drive to pursue the airplane.

[00:15:09]>> While everybody knows us for the gun and its capabilities, a thing that we take most pride in as an A-10 community is protecting the lives of the men and women that are on the ground.

[00:15:27]Oh, I love that.

[00:15:34]What a beautiful video. I just I love hearing their stories of how they ended up flying exactly this plane. And I didn't even know you can choose like I didn't know you can choose what what you want to fly. And like I mean I guess yeah but like every plane has such a different purpose and I have so much respect for the people who fly these planes because that's just wild. Um, it's just such a such a respectful job to have and to want to want. Yeah.

[00:16:07]Um, but wow. Thank you guys so much for joining me for this video. I really hope you enjoyed it. Comment down below which is your favorite um aircraft, American aircraft. And well, not American but in general in the military. Please leave a like, subscribe if you haven't yet, and I'll see you guys in the next video.

[00:16:29]Bye.