Narrator: This is the A-10 Thunderbolt II,
more commonly known as the Warthog.
The Air Force uses the A-10 for close air support,
missions that require the plane to fly low
to provide cover and assist ground troops in battle.
So, our whole mission in life and our whole job in life
is to take care of the men and women on the ground.
That's the only thing we think about.
That's the only thing we train to.
It's the only thing we talk about,
and it's exactly what this airplane is built to do.
Narrator: But these pilots may be among the last
to be trained to fly it.
For years, the Air Force has considered retiring the A-10
in favor of the newer F-35 fighter jet.
And that might finally be happening,
with Congress approving the Air Force's plan
to phase out the A-10 over the next five to six years.
But the public debate over the need for the A-10 continues.
And while some A-10s are as much as 50 years old,
F-35s cost about $60 million more per aircraft
and weren't built solely to support ground troops.
There may be a day that I am called
to potentially help save someone's life
when they're having the worst day of their life.
That comes back to my training
and making sure that I know what I'm doing in the jet.
Narrator: So, how vital is the A-10?
And could the Air Force soon be without
one of its most iconic war planes?
So, the only base that A-10 pilots train at
is at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
Narrator: Before they fly the A-10,
pilots train in the T-38 Talon
during their initial flight training in Texas.
They fly completely different
based on their flight performance and characteristics.
Orians: The T-38, it's kind of like a sports car.
It's quick, it's agile, it's fast.
But the A-10 drives more like a Cadillac.
Narrator: After graduating from flight training,
new pilots move to their assigned posts.
I really like the mission of the A-10
and thought it was supercool.
I like the idea that it doesn't matter what I'm doing,
that I'm strictly there for people on the ground.
Crouse: If you look at it, not the most
attractive-looking plane, if you will.
It's pretty ugly and doesn't have the swept-back wings.
It's got, you know, big Hershey-bar wings on it
for added stability.
So it's just a mean-looking airplane,
and that's ultimately what a Warthog is.
[Warthog firing]
You know, like, "brrrt!"
Brrrt!
[Warthog firing]
Orians: And that's actually just the
noise of the bullets exiting the barrel.
This is the GAU-8 Avenger.
It's a 30-millimeter Gatling gun.
It's built by General Electric.
And this is the largest Gatling gun
ever built and put into an airplane.
So, it's seven barrels.
It shoots at a maximum rate of about 3,900 rounds a minute.
There's almost no target
that the GAU-8 is not a valid weapon to use against.
As we go around, the titanium bathtub is
one of the features designed specifically
to protect the pilot in the airplane.
So this whole panel right here,
where you see these giant Phillips-head-looking fasteners,
that whole panel is titanium.
So you can [knocking],
you can hear all these are hollow aluminum,
and that's rock-solid titanium right there.
This was one of the first fighter types
that incorporated that into the design of the airplane.
And it's the only one I know about
that has a full bathtub encompassing the pilot.
Behind this panel right here,
this is our single-point refueling system right here.
So pull that cap off and fill the airplane up with fuel.
We have four fuel tanks
for a total of about 11,000 pounds of gas.
If I'm topped off, I can fly for about three hours,
and then once you add in aerial refueling,
we can fly pretty much indefinitely.
And then as you're looking towards the back of the airplane,
you can see we have a lot of hard points,
a lot of weapons stations on the airplane.
There's 11 in total, and between those
we can carry up to 16,000 pounds of ordnance
on those 11 weapons stations.
This is a MK-82 bomb body.
So a 500-pound bomb body.
Just a blast-and-fragmentation-type weapon that,
you drop it, it's unguided on impact, and it detonates.
This is a GBU-31.
This is a 2,000-pound bomb
with a GPS guidance kit on the back of it.
So it's a coordinate-seeking weapon,
meaning I can input a GPS coordinate
and that's exactly where that weapon's going to go.
Narrator: But how does the A-10 stack up
to the F-35 meant to replace it?
Supporters of the F-35 say it has a huge stealth advantage,
but detractors say it doesn't have
the durability the A-10 does
thanks to features like the titanium bathtub.
Another concern is how F-35 pilots are trained.
Insider reported that according to a 2022 training memo,
no F-35 pilots are required to execute
close-air-support training simulations in 2023 or 2024.
For A-10 pilots, close air support
is at the center of their training,
which starts here, in a virtual-reality simulator lab.
So, they're going to start off in the VR lab,
and that's going to give them the site pictures
and the references on the ground
and the references in the aircraft for the first time.
Joe Martin: So, simulators are extremely important.
They're able to practice everything in a safe environment
with professional instructors before they get out
and actually fly them on their own.
Narrator: Students familiarize themselves
with the A-10's control panels and starting procedures
before moving on to the flight simulator.
Instructor: We're going to open our air-to-air refueling
door at this point.
Martin: He was doing aerial refueling.
It's a mission that the students actually perform
in the aircraft pretty early in their training pipeline.
Historically, without this lesson,
it's usually taken about 10 to 15 minutes
of talking to the students
through getting the successful hookup in flight.
Whereas now that we're able to have them practice
with this lesson, they go out on that first flight
having already done it before.
Instructor: We want to take a look at our air speed
as we're in formation with the tanker.
Martin: Now the feedback we're getting from instructors
is that they're just going right up to the boom
and they're getting their hookup on their first try.
For the VR sim, you're getting the muscle memory.
So the first time we practice it in the jet,
we know physically what we're doing with our hands,
and we know where our eyes should be, where we should gauge,
and then our IPs are helping us fine-tune those things.
Narrator: After spending a month in the simulator
and learning the basic operations of the aircraft,
pilots begin flying training missions in the A-10.
Capt. Lindsay "MAD" Johnson has five years of experience
flying the A-10.
Today, she's training for a new role
to be a pilot on an A-10 demo team,
where she will highlight the capabilities of the Warthog.
I am about two hours shy
of 1,200 hours in the A-10 itself.
They call it a crawl, walk, run process.
So I did it in the sim multiple times,
and then we go out to the airspace for my first time
with a floor -- not actual floor,
but a simulated floor of 5,000 feet AGL.
And then I go here, 2,000 feet AGL,
1,000 feet AGL,
and then 500 feet AGL
until I got through my first certification.
Narrator: After Johnson completed a few rolls and dives,
she moved on to simulating a strafe,
which is an attack on enemy ground forces,
a technique used in close-air-support operations.
Johnson: So, when we do close air support,
we are egressing, as they say it,
from in front of the target area.
I'm going out about 2, 2 ½ miles away
at about 500 feet,
and then I'm turning back around this way,
and as I'm about just outside of a mile,
I'll pop to about 30 degrees nose high,
which allows me to get high enough
to be able to see if there is
what would be designated as the friendlies
and what would be designated as the enemy on the ground.
And then as I visually acquire that out over my canopy rail,
I'm then rolling in using both ailerons.
My throttles are already in max, I'm rolling in,
and then I'm putting basically my nose position down
on what we consider to be a 20-degree wire.
So rather than flying straight and level,
I'm 20 degrees nose low towards the ground.
I learned about the A-10 growing up.
I knew I wanted to do something
kind of to pay homage to my dad's time in service.
I was young when September 11th happened. I was 9.
And he deployed two months after September 11th happened.
That kind of stuck with me,
and I knew I wanted to do something
that was going to give back to my country as well.
Narrator: The A-10 debuted in combat in 1977,
making it just shy of 50 years old,
which is one reason many want it to be retired.
For years, the Warthog has been the subject of debate
between the US Air Force and Congress.
Some members of Air Force leadership
have suggested retiring the A-10
to focus on developing more modern aircraft,
like the $80 million F-35.
John McCain: Why would you want to retire
the least expensive, most accurate close-air-support system?
I don't want it retired, senator,
but the Air Force has to get bigger to do all this.
Narrator: But Congress has fought those requests
due to the success of the A-10
in recent conflicts with ISIS and the Taliban
and the plane's overall cost efficiency.
Bryen Sandoval: It's tried and true.
It's very rudimentary with the systems that it has,
but why fix something that's not broke?
It's been in every conflict
that the United States has been in since Bosnia, Grenada.
Pretty much every contingent
that the United States has been a part of,
the A-10 has been pretty much a leader of all that.
Narrator: Last year, Congress approved
an Air Force proposal to retire 21 A-10s,
reducing the total fleet to 260,
with plans to decommission the remaining planes
in the next five to six years.
People don't realize how much maintenance
actually goes into keeping these aircraft airworthy.
It's not like a car.
When we wake up in the morning, we jump in the car,
start it, and drive, right?
These have starting issues. They have leaks.
They're 40, 50 years old. They all have
somewhere between 13,000 to 15,000 flight hours on them,
and that exceeds the actual life expectancy of the airframe
by 5,000, 7,000 hours.
Narrator: A-10 critics may use the plane's
maintenance issues to fuel their argument,
but the cost of maintaining the F-35
jumped 15% between 2018 and 2021.
Once we all finish, we'll go to
the different assigned bases.
So I'll be going to Korea next.
It's just fun to fly.
It does a job that no one else does,
and you're good at that.
That is your thing. That's the A-10's thing.
Narrator: After completing the six-month
training program at Davis-Monthan,
newly certified A-10 pilots will begin their careers
as fighter pilots in the US Air Force.
The plane was built well before I was alive,
and knowing just the generations of people
that flew the plane before me
were looking at the exact same gauges that I'm looking at,
so it's a pretty unique experience.
I knew as a younger child that I wanted to fly the A-10.
My grandpa was in the Army.
He's seen the A-10, when he was in the Army, do things.
And so that was even more just, like,
a further drive to pursue the airplane.
Well, everybody knows us for the gun and its capabilities.
A thing that we take most pride in as an A-10 community
is protecting the lives of the men and women
that are on the ground.