Here's Why America's A-10 Thunderbolt II (Warthog) Provided The World's Best Close Air Support

The A-10 Thunderbolt is unlike any “fighter” before or since, with survivability features designed to keep it flying during an attack run and make it back to base. The plane featured redundant engineering features designed to keep the plane flying though parts of it were shot away. The two General Electric TF-34 non-afterburning turbofans were moved behind the wing, in order to reduce the plane’s infrared signature and protect it from Soviet air defenses such as the SA-7 Grail shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile system. The A-10 pilot sits in a titanium “bathtub” protecting him or her from antiaircraft guns up to twenty-three millimeters—the primary armament of the ZSU-23-4 mobile air defense system. The flight-control systems and engines are also encased in titanium plate.

The A-10 is also designed to be flexible and maneuverable, both in the air and on the ground. The aircraft design stresses maneuverability at slow speeds, allowing the pilot to fly extremely low “nape of the earth” missions to mask its approach to the enemy and to avoid enemy antiaircraft fire. The A-10 is also designed to operate from short, unimproved airstrips in the event regular air base airstrips are put out of action.

The Thunderbolt II’s best attribute is its armament. The aircraft has eleven external hardpoints for carrying electronic countermeasures, fuel tanks, bombs and missiles. The A-10 can carry up to twenty-four five-hundred- pound bombs, four two-thousand-pound bombs or six AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles. This enables the A-10 to carry out a number of frontline missions, from close air support to suppression of enemy air defense, and strike key enemy targets such as fuel storage depots, radar installations and field headquarters.

The weapon that sets the A-10 apart from the rest of the aircraft world is the nose-mounted GAU-8/A cannon. The large, seven-barreled Gatling gun can fire armor piercing rounds at up to 4,200 rounds per minute, saturating a target area with lethal cannon fire. The GAU-8/A is mounted two degrees nose down and to the left, so that the firing barrel is always on the centerline.

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