Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh subtly knocked Congress for forcing the service to keep the A-10 around until 2022 during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense hearing Wednesday.
“The platforms and systems that made us great over the last 50 years will not make us great over the next 50 years,” Welsh said at the hearing, the Air Force Times reports.
Welsh said the Air Force does not have 1,500 idle maintainers just waiting to start work on the F-35, which is a key part of the argument the Air Force has made in the past to justify retiring the A-10, namely that there aren’t mechanics and engineers around to maintain both platforms. Either the service needs more funds for additional airmen, or the service will have to transition mechanics from one platform to another, Welsh said.
While Welsh neglected to mention the A-10 explicitly, the service has aggressively tried to retire the jet, especially over the last year, meaning the point about relying on old jets was likely not lost on members of Congress.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James also said the service hoped for a more generous budget from the Obama administration to help modernize systems. This budget gap has resulted in the Air Force having to delay the purchase of five F-35s and to put off planned upgrades for the F-16.
Legislators have fought against the Air Force to keep the A-10 around, since there is wide-ranging skepticism that the F-35 is capable of fulfilling the same close air support role the A-10 has filled. The Air Force caved, and the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2017 budget document released Tuesday reflects that concession. A total of $3.4 billion will be allocated to keep the A-10 around at least until 2022, mostly because of its success in the fight against Islamic State.
The Air Force desperately wants to make sure that new generation platforms like the F-35 move ahead despite the astronomical cost, but the recent budget reveals that the service is dropping production by 20 units.
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