{"id":184720,"date":"2012-02-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-06T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/02\/06\/what-a-surprise-14\/"},"modified":"2012-02-06T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-06T05:00:00","slug":"what-a-surprise-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/02\/06\/what-a-surprise-14\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The USAF is determined to avoid having a meaningful close support capability.  Case in point, they are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/news\/2012\/01\/airforce-5-a10-squadrons-cut-013012\/\">cutting 5 to 10 A-10 squadrons<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>The A-10 Thunderbolt II provides the type of close-air support that ground-pounders love and the Taliban dread. Although the A-10s are workhorses in the war on terrorism, the Air Force in its new budget request is planning to get rid of five squadrons.<\/p>\n<p>As part of the Defense Department\u2019s efforts to trim close to $500 billion in spending over the next decade, defense officials said Friday that the service intends to cut five A-10 tactical squadrons and two other squadrons as well.<\/p>\n<p>The Thunderbolt squadrons to be stood down encompass one active-duty, one Reserve and three National Guard units. The remaining two squadrons disappearing are a Guard F-16 tactical unit and an F-15 training squadron.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Let&#8217;s be clear about this:  The F-35 and the F-22 cannot take over this role effectively.<\/p>\n<p>The A-10 can deploy and loiter over the battlefield for hours below 15,000 feet, while the two supersonic stealth jets can loiter for something like 15 minutes before calling bingo fuel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The USAF is determined to avoid having a meaningful close support capability. Case in point, they are cutting 5 to 10 A-10 squadrons: The A-10 Thunderbolt II provides the type of close-air support that ground-pounders love and the Taliban dread. Although the A-10s are workhorses in the war on terrorism, the Air Force in its &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1008,1006,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-defense-procurement","category-military","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}