Congress puts confidence in new A-10 wings
07 DECEMBER, 2017 SOURCE: FLIGHTGLOBAL.COM BY: LEIGH
GIANGRECO WASHINGTON DC
A third of the US Air Force’s Fairchild-Republic A-10C
fleet is riding on pending funding from Congress, with money for new wings
expected in both the fiscal year 2018 defence policy and appropriations bills.
The resilient A-10 dodged retirement once again in the
air force’s 2018 budget, but that doesn’t spare a significant portion of the
fleet from a boneyard fate.
With the the existing wings approaching the end of their
service life, more than 100 aircraft in the almost 290-strong A-10 fleet will
be grounded if the USAF does not receive funding for new wings, according to
Congressional testimony this week.
Although the USAF did not request funding in its original
fiscal year 2018 budget, its wishlist for programmes the service could not fit
into the president’s FY2018 budget request included $83 million to start the
programme at four wings. The House and Senate’s combined National Defense
Authorization Act defence policy bill approved $103,000,000 million for new
wings. The bill is waiting President Donald Trump’s approval.
In addition, the House Appropriations defense
subcommittee mark added money to the air force budget to retool and open a line
for A-10 wings, USAF Secretary Heather Wilson tells Senate lawmakers this week.
The Senate Appropriations committee is working on similar legislation now, she
adds.
“If that comes through, we will work on executing that so
we can get that line back up so that we can re-wing,” she says. “I think the
amount would be the tooling in the first four or five sets of wings for the
A-10.”
Wilson noted the challenge of balancing modernization
efforts with managing new platforms, but the legacy Warthog does not appear
under threat on her watch.
“I happen to be kind of a fan of the A-10 myself,” Wilson
says.
Original post: flightglobal.com
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