Song Parodies -> "A-10 Has Got to Go???"

Original Song Title:

"I Put a Spell on You"

^(MP3)

Original Performer:

"A-10 Has Got to Go???"

Parody Written by:

The Lyrics

Latest news of the shrinking US military and cuts include the legendary A-10 Warthog, one of the greatest strike aircraft in history. Again, it appears that the old excuses of age, slow speed, and vunerability have been brought up. But in ODS in '91 the 200 sent to Iraq and Kuwait destroyed 4200 tanks, AFVs, and artillery pieces and shot down 2 helos (the only ATA gun kills of the war). They performed over 8600 missions and were also used for fast FAC. I love the A-10 b/c it was based on a Junkers Luft '46 project and that is now acknowledged in modern A-10 books. The A-10 pilot sits in a titanium bathtub with extra armor all over the place and the a/c is powered by two separated GE TF34-GE-100 turbofans of over 9000 lb st each. It is slow at 422 mph, but has a height of 35,000 ft and ferry range of 2500 miles. Its huge GAU-8/A revolver cannon of 30mm can tear apart a tank with a 3 second burst and it has 11 pylons to carry 8 tons of ordnance including any combo of rockets, precision munitions, dumb bombs, and Maverick missiles. It would be insane to drop this strike a/c because there is no replacement for it. F-22 fighter production is halted and the F-35 is plagued by electrical bugs and overdue. Neither have the hitting power of the A-10 and are not suited to CAS or FAC. Good news though for our enemies that have 10s of thousands of armored vehicles in inventory: Russia, China, and N Korea. US military will be reduced to pre-WW2 vunerability with heavy reliance on drones fighting asymmetrical warfare unsucessfully. The USAF is stuck with old F-15s, F-16s, and bombers B-52H, B-1B, and just 20 B-2s. No way to fight a Third World War. USN and Marines have F/A-18s and AV-8B Harriers for carrier aviation. This is a bad decision. The cuts are placing us back in the mid-1930s.

A-10 has got to go???
Force cut crime

Pentagon using same old excuse
Outdated, slow
The plane has to go…

[Tactical blow]

Is twin-engine bandit
GAU spins ‘round
Mavericks are deadly
In ODS shot 2 helos down

[Plus 4000 assets on the ground!]

A-10 has got to go???
A force cut crime
This time

Sub-sonic cruise
Full pylons used (11 stations)
Burst fire bad news
To all tanks everywhere
And O’ don’t care
‘Bout impact of these
Low-alt “terrors”

[TAC planes not spared]

Cut-really?
A-10 has got to go???
A force cut crime
(Needed for inventory)

[Russia, China, N Korea future glory]

Tomcat and Nighthawk gone already…

Note: My only quarrel with A-10 history is mention of the gun as the largest ever mounted for a strike aircraft. Technically not true as the Germans modified the Italian Piaggio P-108A bomber to fire a nose mounted 102mm gun! The Stuka carried twin BK 37mm cannons, the Me-410 carried BK 50mm cannon, and the Hs-129 carried the BK 75mm cannon. There were prototypes of the Ju-88 DUKA 88 with 88mm cannon.The Stuka gunpods fired 4800 rpm as well... albeit in 7.92mm cal. And the Germans invented the motorized revolver cannon in WW2 with the Mauser MK-213, tested by Fw-190s in the field. They were 20 and 30 mm versions made for the Me-262 jet and the Fw Ta 152. Copied postwar as the Aden and DEFA cannons for Britain and France. US had a version too so the old hand-cranked Gatling had no real connection to the GAU modern development. Germany has the best fighter cannon with the BK-27 that fires 27mm rounds at 1800 rpm for one barrel. New version has dual-feed as well. Was considered for the F-22 but US won't allow dominance of German weapons for US troops, airmen, or dual/quad sea versions for USN ships.

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Editor - February 27, 2014 - Report this comment

Just the headnote and the footnote, please. Skip the redundant parody.

Hobbyist - February 27, 2014 - Report this comment

Slow??? If they take away the A-10 then the Army will have to rely on attack helos to counter tanks and they are far slower than the subsonic Thunderbolt II! That also means that the only real strike planes around would be the Panavia Tornado IDS and the Su-25 Frogfoot. Guess the grunts will have to use more TOW missiles, because drones can kill terrorists in cars with ease but there are none that can attack a tank on the open field. AA can bring those down with ease on a saturated battlefield. What a shame!

Patriot - February 27, 2014 - Report this comment

We should give some of them to Israel. Lots of armored targets in Lebanon and Syria ;-)

Patrick - February 27, 2014 - Report this comment

The A-10 has been the star of most of the air shows in this area. There used to be a squadron stationed in Kansas City at the old Richards Gebaur Air Base. Often the massive gun would be displayed on a moveable rack. The A-10 was once challenged by the Piper Enforcer, a reworked P-51 Mustang with a turboprop engine. I have recently seen videos of the Brazilian Embraer Tucano being touted as a close support aircraft for the USAF. It's just a modernized Enforcer. A fine machine for Third World air forces to shoot down unarmed Cessna's being flown by drug smugglers or Christian missionaries, but no way could it carry the firepower of the A-10, which is designed around the huge cannon, rather than having some sort of gun hung under the wings as an afterthought. The phase out of the A-10 is just part of a proposal which would also reduce the strength of the US Army to levels seen before WWII. In other words, about the size of the old Reichswehr. But as our foreign commitments recede, we at least will have the SA/SS (TSA, FBI, BATFE, DEA, NSA, Homeland Security) to keep the American people safe from the sort of thing that happened in Ukraine.

Rob Arndt - February 27, 2014 - Report this comment

The A-10 is a dedicated strike aircraft and tank-buster used for CAS and FAC. The S American Tucano/Super Tucano is a COIN aircraft... so they are in different classes altogether. The PA-48 Enforcer was the last development of the P-51 originating from the Cavalier Turbo Mustang III. A proposal for a CAS ground attack cheap mass production machine. Its capabilites were far less than the A-10 which only has 2 real competitors in the world- the German Panavia Tornado IDS and the Russian Su-25. The Tornado can out-fly the A-10 hitting the deck at over 900 mph with incredible TFR and it can out-carry the A-10 at 10 tons with nuclear bomb lob capability too. It has 2x 27mm Mauser BK-27s to fire 3600 rpm. The Su-25 is very resilient and can take hits to the engines and survive due to an armored bulkwall between them. It carries less than the A-10 at 5 tons, but can fight aircraft with AAMs as well as armor and has a 30mm gun too. The best COIN project in the world was the Russian Aeroprogress T-720 which is basically a Japanese Shinden-type modernized for COIN warfare. See here:
http://sobchak.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/t720.jpg
Btw, the US Army is downsizing to under 400,000 troops (Reichswehr was set at 100,000) :)

Rob Arndt - February 28, 2014 - Report this comment

@ (Fake) Editor... what's wrong with informative history? Or are you going to claim you know everything about the A-10 already (which would be false)? I think people should know about this legendary aircraft and WHY it is important to retain it in inventory. There are so many military aircraft in the world but just 3 real dedicated strike fighter threats that arm a handful of nations. The A-10 is all the US has. Although the F-15s, 16s. and 18s can be overloaded to take on extended strike duty, none are tank busters and none could carry that gun. Attack helos are just too vunerable to MANPADS and AAA and are way slower by 100s of mph compared to a jet. The Tornado and Su-25 are very good, but they don't cause terror for enemy armor crews like the A-10 does. It is more than a Thunderbolt II or a "Warthog"- it is equivalent to a modern Stuka (psychologically and in terms of lethality). Please take this into consideration as a wall of footnotes would be just as lengthy. Thanks

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