It’s a deadly cannon with wings, and pilots like Idaho Air National Guard pilot Maj. Jeff Sliwoski love it. The jet is the A-10 “Warthog” and six of them from Boise’s Gowen Field 124th Fighter Wing were recently deployed to al Udeid Air Base in Qatar as part of exercises that focused on close air support.
Close air support is the A-10’s bread and butter.
The heart of the beast is a 30mm gatling gun mounted slightly off center on the nose of the craft. The GAU-8 gun fires armor-piercing depleted uranium and high explosive incendiary rounds at the rate of nearly 4,000 rounds per minute from its seven barrels. Each projectile weighs about 14 ounces and is fired from an aluminum shell case.
A single burst can shred a tank or other armored vehicles.
But the A-10 Thunderbolt II, which was first built for the U.S. Air Force by Fairchild in 1977, has more lethal weapons in its arsenal.
Under the wings, it can hold cluster and laser-guided bombs and Maverick and Sidewinder missiles.
And pilots are tucked in a titanium armor “bathtub” that can sustain heavy hits. It can even land with the landing gear up because of the toughness of the aircraft.
Sliwoski, a native of Soda Springs, first saw an A-10 flying in a Pocatello airshow back in 1989; then he saw one at a training range in Washington State.
“Seeing it in action was impressive,” Sliwoski said. “It’s still remarkable stuff.”
Sliwoski didn’t start out his military career with the goal of becoming a pilot of the legendary A-10s.
He wanted to join the military while attending Soda Springs High School and signed up with the U.S. Army one month after his graduation in 1995. His goal was to become a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces and he made the elite group as a mechanized engineer.
“The idea of throwing hand grenades and jumping out of airplanes appealed to me,” Sliwoski said.
Sliwoski became part of a free-fall attachment or HALO (high altitude, low opening) unit in Special Forces based out of Fort Lewis in Washington. It was an accomplishment achieved by less than 1 percent of the people who apply and Sliwoski is proud of it.
“It was an accomplishment to get that beret,” he said.
His training included sky diving in the middle of the night, and jumping out of both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.
“It was a lot of fun,” Sliwoski said about his role as a parachute trooper. “It was kind of a dangerous profession.”
Sliwoski served in the Special Forces for more than eight years, but he didn’t want to give up on military service.
After he saw an A-10 in action in Afghanistan, Sliwoski said he decided he’s like to start training to fly the deadly jet. That was in 2005 and now the major is a instructor-pilot and evaluator for the 124th Fighter Wing in Boise.
Sliwoski did his initial flying with the Indiana National Air Guard. But he applied for a job at Gowen Field and has been in Boise ever since.
“The most remarkable thing about the A-10 is your first ride is a solo,” Sliwoski said about the single pilot aircraft. “It’s built for one thing: to carry bombs and bullets.”
Sliwoski still remembers the first time he fired the 30mm cannon in the nose of the craft.
“You could smell the burned gunpowder in the cockpit,” he said.
The weapon is guided by helmet mounted sights, so it tracks where the pilot is looking.
And the A-10s can go “low and slow” which makes them extremely effective for close air-support for troops on the ground. There are 22 of the jets stationed at Gowen Field.
The one drawback for the aircraft is it is vulnerable to fast-flying jet fighters. If the combat arena isn’t secured by friendly air support above, the A-10s would be destroyed quickly. It’s one of the reasons the Air Force is looking to retire the planes.
But earlier this month, pilots from Gowen Field were in their A-10s in a combat scenario over the desert of Southwest Idaho in a combined exercise with F-18 Hornets and other fast-flyers flown by members of the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Air Guard.
Some of the fast jets served as air cover and some simulated the enemy. Friendly forces are called “blue sky” and enemy forces, “red sky.”
“They get a lot of combat experience,” said public affairs officer for the Idaho National Guard Col. Tim Marsano. “We’ve gotten some great experience because of the (Gulf) wars.”
Col. Marsano said the National Guard was a strategic reserve force that lacked a lot of experience prior to 1991, but all that has changed.
“We’re combat ready now,” Marsano said.