The Warthog is an endangered species. Air Force brass wants to kill the A-10 because they need the personnel and the money to support the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

This is the second time they have tried to kill off the venerable close-air support workhorse. And congressional leaders, who refused the Air Force request last year, plan to refuse again for the 2016 budget year.

The debate puts the Air Force leaders, many of whom spent careers flying over the battlefield, at odds with the soldiers and Marines who want the A-10 to continue laying down withering gunfire to push back enemy attackers.

But the Air Force insists that several other aircraft, from the F-15E to the B-1 — and the coming F-35 — can also fulfill that close-air support mission.

To press the point that other platforms can do close-air support, the Air Force offered fighter and bomber pilots who have flown close-air support missions.

"You could put us in a Cessna 172 with an AK-47 and we would do CAS," one of them boasted.

The Air Force also contends that the aging Warthog doesn't stand a chance in contested airspace against sophisticated enemies such as China and Russia. Never mind that the A-10 was originally fielded to destroy Soviet tanks.

Certainly, the A-10 could face much more challenging systems, but it's continued to demonstrate relevance during more than a dozen years of war in a part of the world that seems to be exponentially deteriorating. And some of the Air Force's 283 Warthogs were among the aircraft hastily shipped to Eastern Europe as a show of force against Russian expansionism.

The A-10 may not be the ultimate aircraft for all of this century's wars. But it's proven its value on today's battlefield.

The Air Force should find another way to fund the F-35, and wave off on retiring the A-10 before its time.

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