Upgraded A-10C will help US ground troops in Iraq, says USAF general

[CGowen]

The deployment of the newly upgraded Fairchild Republic A-10C Thunderbolt II bomber-attack aircraft in Iraq next month will make it easier for the US Air Force (USAF) to provide close air support to ground troops, according to the commander of USAF's Air Combat Command, General Ronald Keys.

However, more extensive upgrades are still needed to keep the aircraft on top of its game, he said.

General Keys said the USAF's modernisation plans for the A-10 'Wart Hog' have been held back from their full potential by bureaucratic wrangling and congressional resistance.

"This is not the super Hog we envisioned but this is a better-than-average Hog," Gen Keys said during a ceremony to announce initial operational capability of the A-10C at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia on 21 August.

"The hardest wars we fight are not on the battlefield but the wars we fight in the halls of Congress, they are fought in the Pentagon, they are fought in these programmes, to make sure the money is paid and eventually the programme is operating."

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http://www.janes.com/news/defence/jdw/jdw070824_2_n.shtml

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Keep the aircraft on top of it's game..... and that would be? Dropping

tons of tnt from above on people who never would have lifted a finger against any U.S. interest and spraying human flesh with 30mm cannon rounds spruced up with depleted uranium. I'm impressed, anyone else impressed?

[zeemike]

2. Me too I am impressed

And the new super wart hog can kill many more with each sortie. And it probably has new ways of killing,, more terrible than before.
Yes we are relay making progress that is for sure.

[CGowen]

3. I wonder if putting them into Iraq this month has really something to do with Iraq and not Iran

with all this talk about picking targets, etc.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2975034

[zeemike]

6. Very good point n/t

[93ncsu]

7. I'm impressed ...

Anything that can help keep our fine men and women in the armed forces alive is OK by me. They won't be coming home before January 2009, so we might as well give them the tools to stay alive.

[madrchsod]

4. the plane that was to be scrapped

is now the darling of the air force. sometimes old war horses refuse to die.

[bemildred]

5. Not much money in old warhorses, unfortunately.

New stuff that don't work now, you can make a lot off of that.