The Air Force hopes to retire all 326 A-10 Thunderbolts, including the 18 planes stationed at the Harrison Township base.
The $523 billion defense budget bill that passed the Senate last Friday and heads to the president for his signature freezes the A-10 Thunderbolt II deployments in place for fiscal year 2014. But the Air Force chief of staff has made it clear he believes the planes, which provide low-altitude firepower to support Army ground troops, are obsolete.
With the Pentagon facing increasing pressures to reduce their budget, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh has said ther aircraft such as the F-16 jet fighter and the long-awaited F-35 aircraft could provide all support for ground troops and also perform other missions. The A-10 is considered a one-dimensional weapon.
“We’ve delayed this until they have a plan in place that’s credible, and they haven’t done that yet,” said Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee and is co-author of the defense authorization legislation.
The 107th Fighter Squadron at Selfridge consists of 455 Guardsmen who are A-10 pilots or engage in maintenance and operations. The unit is also comprised of 180 full time employees -- 21 serve on active-duty status and the remainder are uniformed civilian technicians.
The squadron’s latest deployment overseas was in fall and winter of 2011 when the unit spent four months stationed in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
“I can’t speculate on the future of the mission,” said Penny Carroll, a Selfridge spokeswoman. “We are following closely the (2014) defense bill, hoping it stays intact.”
In addition to the Air National Guard squadron, Selfridge is also home to other national security agencies, such as the Coast Guard and a high-tech Department of Homeland Security facility that works with local law enforcement agencies.
But Levin conceded that the loss of aircraft would be a “big hit” for the sprawling base – the largest military installation in Michigan.
An effort would be made to find “substitute” aircraft if the A-10s are retired, Levin added, “but we’re trying to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The attempt to eliminate the nation’s A-10 fleet at a savings of $3.7 billion annually has already drawn a sharp response from more than 30 U.S. senators and representatives who sent Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel a detailed letter objecting to the preliminary plans.
“We oppose any effort that would divest the A-10, creating a CAS (close air support) capability gap that would reduce Air Force combat power and unnecessarily endanger our service members in future conflicts,” the members of Congress wrote.
The Warthog, a “tank buster” aircraft, is designed to fly low and slow over an open battlefield. For decades, the Air Force has attempted to scrap the A-10 while the Army has praised its ability to protect troops with bombs and rotary machine guns.
According to Agence France-Presse, Welsh said last month “if we have platforms that can do multiple missions well and maybe not do one as well as another airplane, the airplane that is limited to a specific type of mission area becomes the one most at risk. You only gain major savings if you cut an entire fleet.”
Welsh’s counterpart in the Army, Gen. Ray Odierno, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in November and said: “The A-10 is the best close air support platform we have today. It’s performed incredibly well in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
When the military brass in 2012 attempted to put the 107th Fighter Squadron at Selfridge and their 24 A-10s on the chopping block, the proposal united Macomb County’s elected officials and business community to oppose the plan. The Selfridge Base Community Council coordinated a lobbying campaign and Gov. Rick Snyder, Oakland County Prosecutor L. Brooks Patterson and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing joined the cause.
Because the proposed cuts in A-10 aircraft carried such a widespread national impact, 49 governors and every state’s National Guard adjutant general united in opposition to the move.
The result was a Pentagon retreat, with military officials agreeing to a small realignment of the nation’s A-10 fleet that reduced the 107th from 24 planes to 19. The A-10 contingent at Selfridge now consists of 18 planes.
Critics say Air Force crews assigned to other multi-purpose planes spend only a portion of their time training for close air support missions, while the A-10 squadrons have a singular focus. Relying upon the Warthog’s maneuverability and the extensive armor that protects the aircraft, the A-10 can bombard enemy ground forces from as close as 50 meters.
As the A-10s manned by Air National Guard forces have demonstrated far more cost-efficiency than squadrons flown and maintained by Air Force active-duty personnel, the bipartisan group of lawmakers took a few shots in their correspondence to Hagel.
“It would be difficult for DoD (the Department of Defense) to justify the divestment of the A-10 while the Air Force continues to expend millions of dollars on conferences, air shows, and bloated headquarters staffs, while also struggling to meet statutory audit deadlines,” they wrote.
Congressional advocates say recent funding increases to modernize the A-10s would be undermined and essentially wasted by idling the entire fleet. They also charged that the Air Force’s apparent acceleration of an A-10 divestment is “short-sighted and primarily budget-driven,” without regard to the impact on future battlefields.
“Many soldiers and Marines are alive today because of the unique capabilities of the A-10, as well as the focused close air support training and dedicated close air support culture of A-10 pilots,” the letter said.
U.S. Rep Candice Miller, a Harrison Township Republican, co-signed the letter but Levin and his brother, Rep. Sander Levin, did not. On Wednesday, Sander Levin said: “We understand what’s at stake for Selfridge. We think it’s a vital resource.”
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