attack

A-10 Thunderbolt II (Warthog)

The A-10 is the greatest close air support aircraft ever built, and it exists because the Air Force didn't want it. The Air Force wanted fast, sexy fighters. The Army wanted something slow and ugly that could kill tanks and stay over the battlefield long enough to matter. Pierre Sprey and the 'Fighter Mafia' reformers pushed the concept through institutional resistance, and Fairchild Republic built the thing around a 30mm cannon that fires depleted uranium rounds at 3,900 per minute. The BRRRT of that gun is the most recognized sound in modern warfare after the Huey's rotor. The Air Force has tried to kill the program repeatedly — too slow, too ugly, too single-mission. Every time they try, the A-10 goes to war and saves enough ground troops that Congress blocks retirement. It's been doing this since the Gulf War in 1991. The troops love it. The Air Force brass hate it. It won't die.