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Why did the USAF stop using the A-1? The same reasons the USN did, one imagines.
By the time they stopped, the youngest airframes were nearing the twenty-year mark. There were other planes that could do the job of delivering ordnance to the ground. Those planes could get to the operational area faster and work synergistically with the rest of the strike package and the constraints of the friendly airfield (be they traditional ones or carriers on-station somewhere). And the USAF in particular already had a newer model of the A-1 coming on-line within a few years. It was called the A-10.
You know, for that CAS mission the zoomies don't want and never do.
as soon as the AH-56 was good and killed in funding, the USAF started work on canceling the PAVE/COIN program, and with it, the A-10. The last A-10 rolled off the assembly line at Fairchild in
1982.
Yes,
Forty two years ago.
This is part of why it costs so damned much to modernize/upgrade, and why the cost of maintenance has climbed-literally no new airframes since the first full year of the
Reagan administration. To contrast this;
F-16's
are still being built.
F-18 and variants?
still being built, new ones off the line, full spares and support.
F-15 (in multiple variants?)
still in production, with annual production
numbers (Notably, F-22, which was supposed to replace the '15? no longer in production aftr the first batch.)
F-35 was sold to congress as intended to be
cheaper than F-22, this influenced the decision to cease production.
So the entire A-10 force, the youngest airframe is 42 years old as of 2024. (41 currently).
Going through the Air Force inventory, contemporaries in terms of duration of service for
flying airframes without new production includes platforms like B-52 and C-5A. Front line combat, the only older airframe still in service is the B-52, which with the re-engining program and regular updates, is a fleet of "Ship of Theseus" (every part's been replaced at least twice, the only continuation is the serial number plate.)
potentially a situation in 2021 where an A-10 pilot may literally be flying the same bird his grandfather flew at his age.
not just the same number plate, the same
aircraft.It's
due for replacement, past due even...but F-35 is not the replacement it has been touted as. Bitter experience with "Does everything by design" includes F-111 (only became reliable late in production, in a narrow role, instead of the all-things-to-all-commanders it was pushed by McNamara as being in the early sixties, since retired in the 1990s.)
while a large portion of why so many supersonic birds show up in CAS roles in asskrakistan has much to do with the simple fact that more of them have been built, and most of them are
still being built, fighter pilots need flight hours, and there are more
of them.
Because they're still being built. Nobody worked their ass off to cancel them before they even saw front-line service, as happened with A-10, beginning late Carter Administration onward.
Pentagon brass were trying to get the extant airframes
retired out of service before the 1991 gulf war, which bought a reprieve, they began again as soon as the gleam wore off that conflict in the 1990s. It's been forty one years and annually, there's a push in the Pentagon to 'replace them' with something else.
The reason is because airframes like A-10 aren't designed or developed to 'turn and burn' with other fighters, and the role doesn't lend to 'Stealth' characteristics when the ground fire can be viable using mark one eyeball or low-tech radars (ask the F-117 about that one, or the Serbs, who shot one down with 1950s missile tech.)
The demands of the role aren't smexy demands, you're not going to get an "Ace" flying a plane optimized for that unless they count helicopters and grounded aviation most of hte time (and if you're using something LIKE an A-10 or Frogfoot for that, you have bigger problems).
USAF retired the A-1 (gave it to the Vietnamese) because, in part, prop aircraft were a niche tech by 1972 for the United States (same reason USAF didn't want to give PA-48 a chance to compete in PAVE Coin despite being exponentially cheaper, with half the footprint, half the bomb load on an airframe a fraction of the size. It took a literal act of congress to give Piper a hearing.)
They were also offloaded because they were
old, wearing out.
They (A-1 skyraiders) were also highly effective at missions we were already losing F-105s, F-4s, A-4's, etc etc. on over vietnam. (all aircraft that cost significantly more to procure, train pilots for and maintain, than the old, 'obsolete' skyraider fleet.)
of related tangential interest, a Vietnam-era light bomber:
which is also a Korean War medium bomber:
and was designed for World War 2.
THOSE didn't make it in service past the 1960s outside of firefighting waterbombers and museum pieces.
