Probably the last dedicated ground attack aircraft of the USAF is the A-10 Thunderbolt. Designed for battlefield survivability and produced from 1976 until 1983, Thunderbolt II was almost history in 1990 and had it not been for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, would have been phased out. It was and still is an aircraft that the USAF really does not want, but in order to keep the Army from having fixed wing ground attack aircraft, the Air Force took on the mission (sounds like the same dysfunctionality that permeated the Luftwaffe in WWII, doesn't it?).

Desert Shield and Desert Storm showed that the A-10 was a very useful aircraft and all the design parameters worked as planned. Though all the early aircraft are in the boneyard, the later versions have been steadily upgraded to carry the latest munitions and have the latest avionics.

One place that the aircraft has proven to be useful, though not used in the sort of numbers it has been elsewhere, has been in the war in Afghanistan. Though called 'Operation Enduring Freedom', there is much doubt that freedom will really exist once the US and NATO pull out, letting the truly oppressive Taliban a chance to take over again.

This book is on the deployment of those A-10 units in the Afghan theater of operations. Most of the units flying the aircraft had an opportunity to participate to some extent or another. The book goes to 2007 and while not the end of the A-10 in the theater, does mark an end of constant deployments. I should also mention that the A-10s involved in this book were not the newer A-10Cs but the older 'analog' aircraft.

Typical of books like this, you are immediately immersed in jargon. Each time a work or phrase of jargon is used, you are told what it is, but for those of us who do not keep up with this sort of thing, it can very much detract from the complete understanding of what is going on. I guess it is just the nature of the beast as I ran into this when the F-15E units book was done as well.

As with other books in this series, there is some background history on the A-10 and the reason it was sent into combat. What follows is a diary format of each of the units and some of their more interesting missions. This is enhanced by photos, though not as many as I've seen in other books. There are also multiple pages of full color profiles of the aircraft that were involved with explanations that include units, bases and time periods.

In all, it adds to the growing collection of books in this series. I found it be an interesting read and anyone who likes the A-10 or this period of history should pick this one up.

July 2013

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