The A-10 Thunderbolt II, better known as the Warthog, is a uniquely useful aircraft. It’s the United States Air Force’s only dedicated close-support fighter, and in that role, the Warthog is, as the saying goes, the best that’s ever been. It’s not stealthy, it’s not pretty, it’s not sophisticated. What it is is a flying 30mm rotary cannon with the payload capacity of a flight of four B-17s. The pilot sits in a titanium bathtub. It’s slow, but it’s tough, and it has enormous capacity for destroying equipment, facilities, armored vehicles, and just generally ruining a bad guy’s whole day. To operate effectively, it requires uncontested air supremacy, but in the conflicts we’ve been fighting the last few years, we’ve established that within a matter of hours.
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The Air Force, though, doesn’t seem to care much for the Warthog, and has been trying to get it out of service. Now, though, there’s a new bill in Congress to keep the ‘Hogs flying for a few more years: It’s called the Bolstering Recognition, Resurgence, Retention, and Remembrance of the Thunderbolt Act.
That’s right. It’s the BRRRRT Act.
Introduced Monday as H.R. 9780 by Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., the BRRRRT Act (Bolstering Recognition, Resurgence, Retention, and Remembrance of the Thunderbolt) gets its name from the bone-rattling “BRRRRT!” sound the jet’s 30mm Gatling gun makes when fired.
Rep. Don Davis, D-N.C., is co-leading the bill. He and Hamadeh both sit on the Armed Services subcommittee that writes fighter force-structure policy, with Davis as the committee’s vice ranking member. Four Republicans also signed on as original cosponsors, including members from Georgia and Missouri, home to the last two A-10 bases.
The bill comes as the Air Force has ramped up A-10 divestment yet has not identified the aircraft that can, and will, take on the close air support and combat search and rescue missions the Warthog has assumed for decades. The service says those roles will be filled by some combination of platforms like the F-35A, F-15E and F-16.
I was never an aviator; as far as my deployments went, my only time on aircraft was on the chartered commercial planes and Air Force channel flights that carried me from hither to yon. That’s fine; not everyone can be a pilot or air crew. (Not everyone can be a logistics puke, either, and I was a pretty good one.) But in Desert Storm, we saw the A-10s operating, and they were impressive.
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We’ve learned another lesson in the war on Iran in how useful a flying Avenger cannon can be, and that’s prompting a lot of people to take another hard look at keeping them around. The BRRRRT Act proposes to keep at least 126 Warthogs flying.
Following heavy A-10 involvement in Iran, including the recovery of downed F-15E aircrew, the service announced it would keep squadrons flying at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, and Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, into 2029 and 2030, roughly 54 jets across three squadrons.
Reaching 126 aircraft would mean halting retirements already scheduled and towing aircraft back out of the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona.
The bill gives the Air Force 90 days after enactment to explain how it will restore depot work, training, sustainment and flight testing, programs that were all cut in anticipation of retiring the fleet.
The current National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has some provisions for keeping some A-10s flying as well. But that doesn’t sound as cool as the BRRRRT Act.
This bill will probably end up going nowhere, sadly. The A-10s will stick around a little while longer, but the Air Force has stopped training Warthog drivers, and depot maintenance operations on the A-10 are wrapping up. That’s too bad. There’s still a place in the modern battle space for a dedicated, low-and-slow, dedicated close air-support airplane, and the A-10’s a very, very good one.
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