Warplane: How the Military Reformers Birthed the A-10 Warthog

by Hal Sundt

The A-10 is the Air Force's unlikely success story, an airplane designed to support the Army, and one that ground troops came to venerate. Originally conceived with the express purpose of destroying Soviet tanks, the Air Force only developed it to keep funding away from the Army’s response to the mission, the AH-56 Cheyenne helicopter. Inspired by the biography of a tank-busting German pilot in World War II, the engineering and design of the A-10 fell to Pierre Sprey, a precocious civilian who'd enrolled at Yale when he was just 15-years-old, and now, barely 30, was exiled to a Pentagon backwater with little, if any, supervision. The end result was one of the finest military aircraft ever built, a plane essentially constructed around a 19.5-foot, 4,000-pound cannon that fired 30mm depleted uranium bullets at a blistering rate. Looking like it was built from discarded airplane parts, it was probably the ugliest combat aircraft ever built, thus the “Warthog” appellation. But it was also an incredibly reliable ground attack aircraft, beloved by ground troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. Despite repeated attempts to replace it with stealth aircraft and drones, over 280 A-10s remain in service today, serviced by dedicated and imaginative engineers and maintainers, and defended by a fervent cohort of advocates descended from the Military Reform movement. This is the story of intra-service rivalries, Pentagon obsessions with speed and stealth over tactical simplicity, and an aircraft that shows no sign of obsolescence as it nears fifty years in service.

Genres: Aviation

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2023

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved the A-10 aircraft for more than 30 years. A friend brought over a big book on warplane history and right up front was the A-10. I knew other Air Force plans from my dad. All of the usual fast movers. I even built an F-14 model a couple years before Top Gun made it famous. The A-10, though, was very different. It wasn’t fast, it wasn’t sleek, but it looked like it meant business. The GAU-8 makes a big impression on a kid, though it was all of the little things that made the plane survivable that really struck me. Someone had thought it through.

The book here is about who did the thinking. It is about why the A-10 is the most formidable and dependable close air support aircraft in the world. The pilots love it, as to the troops on the ground. Congress and the generals don’t like it. But each time other airframes fail, the A-10 is there to pick up the slack. But the Air Force brass & Congress don’t want to admit that.

The man behind the plane was Pierre Sprey. He didn’t BS around. A genius that didn’t hold back what he thought about anything. I will start to use his term, “gold plated,” to describe aircraft that are mainly expensive fluff (F-15 for him, F-35 for me). He wrote a memo to the President that started the ball rolling for what became the A-10 & F-16. He advocated for a lot of simpler planes instead of a few super complicated planes that didn’t work all that well.

Pierre proved over and over again other programs were just boondoggles. I didn’t realize the GAO had analyzed Desert Storm and discovered the A-10 did a lot of the heavy lifting & the F-117 may not have worked all that well. But Lockheed & the Air Force didn’t want to let on their stealth fighter wasn’t as invisible as they claimed. It would have been amazing to listen to Pierre pick apart any Pentagon program.

I didn’t realize that I had heard Pierre’s name before. He started Maple Shade Records, a jazz label I had bought a lot of CD’s from. It is an amazing story of how he channeled his creative mind to recording better and simpler.

While the book is short, there is a lot I plan to follow up in the bibliography. There are a lot of papers that are publicly available. (Pierre helped John Boyd figure out the math for his E-M concept) While the book is about the plane, it is really a view into the world of Pierre Sprey & his thinking. I love the plane even more now that I know a bit about the people who made it happen.

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not quite what I expected, though that might not be saying much as I really didn't have a lot of expectations. Although Sundt has spent a lot of time with "Warthog" operators, the actual backbone of this narrative is the life and times of Pierre Sprey, one of the most notable of the military reformers who had their heyday in the immediate Post-Vietnam period. In as much as Sundt was the last man who had extensive personal contact with Sprey before that man's passing, this book is thus valuable as primary source material.

What this book is not is a systematic operational study of the A-10 in action, although Sundt does describe some paradigmatic incidents that demonstrate the worth of this machine. Some people might be happier with Gary Wetzel's on-going series of books published by Osprey in that regard, though Wetzel has only come out with books detailing the service of A-10 units in Afghanistan.

Hanging over this whole work is the matter of the long-term replacement of the A-10, always keeping in mind that close support of ground forces is the job that the USAF really doesn't like to embrace, but keeps getting dumped on their plate. There is no denying that the A-10 is way past its sell-by date as a viable system, but the F-35 is really too expensive to be doing the job in question. Maybe the real successor to the A-10 will wind up being a drone.

While there are very few things that I can "ding" Sundt on, it does kind of annoy me that he makes reference to the "Army Air Corps" in World War II, when "Army Air Force" would have been more appropriate. Also, Sundt refers to the Douglas Skyraider as being an ASW machine, which was only tangentially a possibility for the Skyraider; it certainly wasn't part of the original specification.

So, this isn't the last word on A-10 by a long shot, but I suspect any future books on the machine will include this work in their bibliography.

I'm being a bit charitable in my rating, as the packaging of this book is a little misleading, and I can see angles that Sundt didn't address. A book entitled "Sprey" might be a rather different thing. Then again, I'm probably not the reader that Sundt is addressing this book to, as the "Military Reform" gang is close to being forgotten, and a new generation of such folks would be greatly appreciated. Sprey's concerns about the U.S. government not getting value for its defense dollars are more true than ever.

[Focker D · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book claims to be about the father of the A-10, but yet the actual engineer that designed the A-10, Alexander Kartveli, is never even mentioned.

The author was somehow led to believe that Pierre Sprey designed and built the A-10, which is in no way supported by the historical record.

This is yet another example of where the “Fighter Mafia” reform movement claims influence far beyond what they actually accomplished in reality.

One of the worst books I have ever read claiming to be military history.

[Steve Schwartz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very accessible beautifully written book with very interesting characters that Sundt brings to life. The A-10 is a classic underdog. Baffling given all of the wartime examples of its value it has been defunded.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hal has written an authoritative history on the A-10 Warthog's development and how the A-10 is supposed to operate. Hal's allyship with Pierre Sprey - one of the top US Air Force reformers - makes the story come alive. Interspliced in the book are tales of A-10 pilots.

[Janet T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly engaging. 3.5⭐️ I did not expect to be enthralled by a story about a warthog.

[David Butler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book. I love simple, effective, wastless, perfectly functional design.