A-10 Warthogs possibly available for sale..which nations would be interested?

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13 years 3 months

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I've seen a few posts in the past where people have argued that the A-10 Warthog would be a good CAS aircraft for different foreign air forces..till now that seemed to be just pipe dreams, with no A-10s having ever been exported. I'm not aware if they were ever offered for export, maybe they weren't, but with the A-10 facing cuts in the USAF, it does seem like Boeing may have found a way to keep the A-10 going for a couple more decades, if they do find an international customer.

So which foreign nations would be possible A-10 customers? And how relevant is the CAS role that the A-10 performs in today's battle space with advanced SAMs and MANPADS?

Boeing discussion international A-10 Warthog sales

Source: Flightglobal.com

Boeing has floated the idea of selling refurbished A-10 Warthogs to other nations as the US Air Force seeks to retire the venerable attack airplane.

The company is currently extending the service life of the air force’s A-10 fleet through a re-winging programme, and it recently delivered its 100th modification with more than 70 modifications left on contract.

At a Boeing-sponsored media event in San Antonio, Texas, today, the company’s chief engineer of off-Boeing programmes, Paul Cejas, suggested the US government might pursue international sales of upgraded A-10s. Dozens of A-10s are currently in near-flyaway storage at the air force’s boneyard facility in Arizona, and could be brought back into the operational fleet at any time.

Cejas says he has no exact customers in mind, but Boeing has "begun early discusssions."
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Original post

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19 years 9 months

Posts: 12,109

If the plan is to sell off the current operational fleet of A-10's then that is something that won't happen. If they want to bring out the ones they don't use, thats a different thing altogether. Given the heated political environment and the couple of influential politicians from Arizona, I don't see it happening anytime before FY19 or 20 IF EVER.

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13 years 3 months

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The article states that there are dozens of stored A-10s in near fly-away condition and those could be re-activated if required. So those would be the ones that would be offered, I guess. I don't see why politicians would have a big issue with A-10s drawn from the boneyard being offered for sale to international customers.

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14 years 3 months

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pretty much any nation needing counterinsurgency aircraft, several in latin america could be interested as well, as you could hang a lot of stuff underneath it

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13 years 3 months

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They claim to have had preliminary discussions, among themselves I suppose, since they don't yet have any exact customers in mind.

But what is the condition of A-10s in the boneyard? How many hours left on the airframe and would they need any re-winging like the 173 A-10s of the USAF?

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8 years 10 months

Posts: 234

I've seen a few posts in the past where people have argued that the A-10 Warthog would be a good CAS aircraft for different foreign air forces..till now that seemed to be just pipe dreams, with no A-10s having ever been exported. I'm not aware if they were ever offered for export, maybe they weren't, but with the A-10 facing cuts in the USAF, it does seem like Boeing may have found a way to keep the A-10 going for a couple more decades, if they do find an international customer.

So which foreign nations would be possible A-10 customers? And how relevant is the CAS role that the A-10 performs in today's battle space with advanced SAMs and MANPADS?

Boeing discussion international A-10 Warthog sales

Well that's easy. ISRAEL! If they were for sale. They won't have to heavily rely on F-16s for their CAS ***removed***

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14 years 3 months

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naaah... they just bought the F-35 to do that... ;)

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10 years 2 months

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PAF woukd love these for the current anti-Taliban operations, could probably get them via EDA and pay for upgrades via FMF.

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8 years 10 months

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naaah... they just bought the F-35 to do that... ;)

They won't have the F-35 until around 2017 and will only have a couple dozen.

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I think they would struggle to find buyers to be honest. A niche aircraft, but hardly an inexpensive one.

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PAF woukd love these for the current anti-Taliban operations, could probably get them via EDA and pay for upgrades via FMF.

I doubt the intensity of the conflict in Pakistan warrants a dedicated CAS aircraft. They would be much better investing the time and funds into JF-17s or the armed Burraq UAVs. They are already purchasing a handful of MI-35s.

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They won't have the F-35 until around 2017 and will only have a couple dozen.

Is all of this haste to dispose of the A-10 really all about freeing up resources to get that overpriced turkey otherwise known as the F-35 into service? At least I've seen that written and stated in several discussions about the retirement of the A-10. If that is true then retiring one of the most successful CAS aircraft in history would not be a mistake, it would be an act of monumental stulidity. Especially since the A-10 is still pretty useful. Unless the USAF has a replacement lined up because I don't see the F-35 as an adequate replacement for the A-10 in the CAS role (never mind the fact that using the F-35 for CAS missions would be a waste of F-35s). Selling off mothballed A-10s would be a bad idea as well if it is done in large numbers since as far as I know manufacturing major airframe spares for the A-10 is not economical nor is restarting production and using mothballed aircraft for parts would seem useful. The Brits retired all but a few operational recon Canberras and scrapped the surplus airframes in a fit of frugality. Years late they were reduced to cannibalizing museum exhibits for spare parts. I'd prefer to keep surplus airframes in storage for future use.

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Afghanistan, Iraq

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10 years 6 months

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Afghanistan, Iraq

Afganistan has shown preference for Russian stuff (Mi-35) A-10 is possible though but unless they start taxing poppy export i dont see them having money for it. Iraq has Su-25 + Mi-28 + Mi-35. IMO its too late for this most of the market for CAS aircraft has been captured by Su-25.

Only countries that will buy A-10 are hardcore US allies Saudis or ROC etc.

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Maybe the Jordanians. Iraq market is cornered by Frogfoots, the Pakistanis will probably ask for subsidies. The Saudis tend to go for sexy fast movers.

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Retiring 350 A-10's for 350 F-35A is a good trade.

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Is all of this haste to dispose of the A-10 really all about freeing up resources to get that overpriced turkey otherwise known as the F-35 into service? At least I've seen that written and stated in several discussions about the retirement of the A-10. If that is true then retiring one of the most successful CAS aircraft in history would not be a mistake, it would be an act of monumental stulidity. Especially since the A-10 is still pretty useful. Unless the USAF has a replacement lined up because I don't see the F-35 as an adequate replacement for the A-10 in the CAS role (never mind the fact that using the F-35 for CAS missions would be a waste of F-35s). Selling off mothballed A-10s would be a bad idea as well if it is done in large numbers since as far as I know manufacturing major airframe spares for the A-10 is not economical nor is restarting production and using mothballed aircraft for parts would seem useful. The Brits retired all but a few operational recon Canberras and scrapped the surplus airframes in a fit of frugality. Years late they were reduced to cannibalizing museum exhibits for spare parts. I'd prefer to keep surplus airframes in storage for future use.

A-10 would be very vulnerable in a modern battle field where the enemy has the Pantsir-S1, Tor, or even modern ManPads. A-10 is good at what it does right now against a non modern enemy. That is why it would be perfect for Israel. And before you bring up chopper gunships, gunships can fly really slow and hide behind hills and trees and pop up and take a shot and quickly pop down.

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Maybe the Jordanians. Iraq market is cornered by Frogfoots, the Pakistanis will probably ask for subsidies. The Saudis tend to go for sexy fast movers.

The Israelis and the Jordanians would probably use aid too

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fact is: it will be efficient on any battlefield in which it will be used. It gets a bit tiring to always argue about fighting the next Death Star when all the conflicts you get involved into are against oponents from the last century at best

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if you want ONE ideal customer for the A-10, it would be the USMC. Perfectly suited for CAS, long loiter time, lots of ordnance and sufficiently simple to be used on advanced airfields... but then, of course, it is not the latest and shiniest toy in town, so they'd obviously turn it down

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if you want ONE ideal customer for the A-10, it would be the USMC. Perfectly suited for CAS, long loiter time, lots of ordnance and sufficiently simple to be used on advanced airfields... but then, of course, it is not the latest and shiniest toy in town, so they'd obviously turn it down

TBH, the Marines would not be interested in the A-10 for very obvious reasons. They are focused on being an expeditionary force. Even though they were forced to operate as such over the past decade, they do not want to be looked at as a second army (a therefore expendable).

With the refocus on expeditionary and amphibious warfare, pivot to the Pacific and all that, there is no room for the A-10 in that structure. Second, exactly how are they going to incorporate the A-10 onto LHA or Carriers? That would be why they have used, traditionally the same aircraft as the Navy (Though all the squadrons of a MAW are not sea based, they are interchangeable with the Marine squadrons based on Carriers).