It's official: The U.S. Air Force will buy new wings for aging A-10 Warthogs that risked a one way trip to the boneyard. The Air Force has made clear its intention to keep the A-10 flying after concerns surfaced that the service was taking advantage of the issue to get rid of the iconic close air support plane.

Earlier this month, a Pentagon official in charge of the A-10 program announced an effort to re-wing 110 of the jets “was not going to happen.” Of the 280 A-10s still in U.S. Air Force service, 173 have received new wings to keep them flying into the 2030s. The original re-winging contract with Boeing was for 242 sets of wings, but the contract ended when it was no longer cost-effective for the company, and the Boeing production line is closing later this year.

That left at least 110 A-10s high and dry without new wings, a state that threatened to ground them for good unless a solution was found, reducing the number of A-10 squadrons from nine to six. The Air Force, focused on getting the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter up and running, didn’t include a new wing contract it its 2018 budget. Congress, however added funding a new wing assembly line and four new wings to get it warmed up.

Now, the Air Force has committed to buying more wings. According to DoDBuzz General Mike Holmes, the head of the Air Force’s Air Combat Command, announced last week at a Washington D.C. think tank that the service will buy more wings beyond the initial four. Exactly how many wings will “depend on a Department of Defense decision and (the Air Force’s) work with Congress”.

The U.S. Air Force has tried to retire the A-10 since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, allocating its mission to the F-16, and now the F-35A. Retiring the A-10 would free up $4 billion over five years, enough to fund about 44 F-35As, as well as free up nine squadrons of personnel who could be reassigned to other projects. The A-10’s popularity with the public, ground troops who received support in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Congress have repeatedly saved it from an early retirement.

Critics outside the service believe that the F-35A is ill-suited to replace the A-10, and that no other plane has the firepower, protection and performance characteristics that make it a viable replacement. The F-35A lacks the GAU-8/A 30-millimeter gun for close air support missions, the large number of hardpoints for carrying a variety of ordnance, and the armor and redundant systems to keep it flying after a hit.

Read more at DoDBuzz.

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