As early as next year, a series of weapons tests is scheduled to take place under a stipulation in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The NDAA holds that, until the service proves that the F-35 can adequately conduct air-support operations in combat, they cannot retire the A-10, a Cold-War era ground-attack aircraft affectionately known as the "Warthog."
The seven-barrel, 30 mm GAU-8/A Avenger in the Warthog’s nose is the cannon Pleus was referring to, which fires at a fixed rate of 3,900 rounds per minute.
In May 2016, test pilot Lt. Col. Raja Chari told Defense News that the service should clarify its needs before deciding on a platform.
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The rotary cannon used on the Marine Corps’s AV-8B Harrier II jump jet is designed to be mounted on the Air Force’s variant. The GAU-22/A can hold 182 rounds and is a four-barrel variant of the 25mm GAU-12/U Equalizer. Plans are in place to mount the cannon externally, both on the Navy’s F-35 aircraft carrier variant and the Marine’s F-35B jump-jet variant, with the ability to hold 220 rounds.
According to Pleus, the Defense Department’s Operational Test and Evaluation Office will facilitate the comparison test, and he believes that the A-10 would outperform the F-35 in a no-threat environment, suggesting, "as you now start to built the threat up, the A-10s won’t even enter the airspace before they get shot down — not even within 20 miles within the target."
"Where are you getting your bang for your buck? A single-platform A-10 that only does CAS and can’t do anything else and it has to be in an uncontested environment is probably not a realistic place for us to be continuing funding…for the future," he said.
