(dramatic music) (jet zooms) - Whoa, ho-holy. This is the A-10 Thunderbolt II, an iconic attack aircraft that's essentially a flying tank. (gun buzzing) Now you've probably heard the A-10 referred to by another name, the Warthog, and that's due to its fierce, aggressive, and distinctive appearance.
In fact, it's been said that the A-10 is the ugliest, most beautiful aircraft on the planet. Now, today I'm here at Moody Air Force Base with the 23rd Wing Flying Tigers to learn all about the A-10's incredible design and capabilities. But we're not just talking it theory because we're gonna have the chance to witness a live fire demonstration that I promise you won't want to miss.
So just a warning, you better strap in and prepare yourself because this is the A 10 Warthog. (exciting music) (jet zooms) (jet zooms) - Sam, welcome to Moody. - It's good to see you.
I'm here with Captain Josh Flores, call sign Phuego. Now, Captain Flores and I actually went to school together at the Air Force Academy. We graduated in the same class.
I always knew you'd be doing big things. But what can you tell us about this jet? What's it like to fly the A-10?
- Yeah, Sam one word, it's incredible. The jet was designed for close air support. It's close proximity to friendly forces.
So those dudes on the ground, when they need help, they call us. But the best part is sitting right above that 30-millimeter cannon. - Well, I can't remember an aircraft I've been more excited to see up close and in action.
But before we get there, I do wanna cover a little bit of the background on how this aircraft came to be. The A-10 Warthog is truly unlike any other aircraft in history. Developed back in the 1970s, it was built to fill the vital role of close air support that was set by the US Air Force.
They needed an airplane that was simple, effective, and survivable, one that could fill in the gaps of the US Army's helicopter fleet. Essentially, they needed an attack helicopter, but in airplane form. And that's exactly what they got.
The A-10 rose to fame during the Gulf War with various reports stating that it was responsible for destroying more than 900 enemy tanks, 2,000 military vehicles, 1,200 pieces of artillery and even two helicopters. But while its record is impressive, the design is really what's mind blowing. And starting from the front, you'll find the most iconic feature on the A-10, the 30-millimeter seven-barrel Gatling gun known as the GAU-8 Avenger.
It's one of the most powerful guns to ever be strapped onto an aircraft, making the GAU-8 Avenger the first gun in history to get its own plane. (bold music) - Well, Sam, this is the GAU-8 Avenger, our 30-millimeter cannon. You see it's got seven barrels there, can hold about 1,150 rounds of that 30 Mike Mike, shoots at 70 rounds per second for 3,900 rounds per minute.
We got three different types of rounds. You have your armor piercing, your high explosive, and then your target practice round. You can really think that high explosive is almost like an individual hand grenade comin' out of each barrel.
- So just doin' the math there, 70 rounds per second, 1,150 rounds total. That's, what, roughly 20 seconds of freedom you can pull that trigger. Can you guys do that?
- Well, we try not to for the sake of the gun. What we'll strive to do is about one-second to two-second bursts. It'll put about 100 rounds down on target just to save ammo for multiple targets and to keep the the gun healthy.
(jet zooms) (gun buzzing) (dramatic music) (jet zooms) (gun buzzing) All right, movin' on to the wings. We've got 11 hard points, or just pylons that are mounted on the wing and then under the fuselage itself. You can put a whole bunch of different stuff on here.
So we have your AIM-9 Mike right here, an air-to-air missile. You can carry a bunch of different bombs. So you have our laser-guided bombs.
You have the GPS-guided bombs, small diameter bombs, which give us a little more range, all the way down to the Mark 82, just dumb bomb body kit. You have the air to ground missile, AGM 65. It's a tank killin' missile, right?
Just what this jet was built for. This one's a Delta model, so it's IR seeking. Then you have the main gear well here.
And if you take a look at how big that tire is, it's built, basically, so we can take off and land from austere locations. Like, I'm sure you've seen the highway videos or any dirt strips. This jet was built for that.
- Yeah, and the few times I've seen the A-10 fly, I was actually impressed with kind of its speed and agility. I mean, I know it's not known for going fast or being agile, but you guys can dive pretty steep when you're doin' those strafe runs, huh? - Yeah, well you gotta think where we're going into, right?
We're strafing a target, we're dropping bombs on a target. Those people aren't gonna be real happy that they're getting shot at, right? So they're gonna start shooting back at us.
So we need that maneuverability to get out of the way, return back to kind of a safer location before we can roll in again. - Now the damage the A-10 can inflict on the battlefield is only half of what makes this platform so incredible. The other half is the damage the A-10 can withstand itself.
When flying close air support missions, oftentimes you're in the direct line of enemy fire. And so durability is vital. The A-10's design allows the aircraft to survive direct hits from armor piercing and high explosive projectiles.
Its two engines are mounted on the rear fuselage, giving them the best chance of surviving anti-aircraft fire. The canopy is made up of bulletproof glass, and the cockpit is surrounded by an inch-and-a-half thick titanium tub that protects both the pilot and the flight controls. Even if the gun itself were to malfunction and explode, it wouldn't be able to penetrate the cockpit due to the robust titanium design.
So when A-10 pilots are flying in enemy territory, taking on enemy fire, what's going through your head? I mean, I know this aircraft is incredibly durable, so that's gotta be pretty comforting, knowing it takes what quite a lot to bring this thing down. - Yeah, absolutely.
So I mean, you have the first thing, you have the titanium bathtub that's right under you, protecting it from small arm fire, right? But there's also tons of redundancies built into this jet, from the hydraulics to the electronics to our targeting system. One of the most iconic things is the manual reversion flight control system.
So, there have been jets that lost all of their hydraulic fluid where traditionally you'd need that to fly, right? You just flip this little lever over and then you're flying like with pulleys and cables like you did 60 years ago. So it does, it takes quite a lot to take it down, and it's pretty comforting knowing that.
(exciting music) So I'm in the cockpit. There are a couple of things that I wanna point out that are unique to the A-10, starting with our radios down here. So the A-10 has four different radios.
A couple of those are for interflight between the flight lead and the wingman. But there's one specific radio that's important to the A-10. That's the LARS radio.
That's a combat search and rescue specific radio that lets us talk to downed air crew. So when we're doing our CSARs, it helps us communicate with them and find where they're at. Moving on, we've got our armory control panel here.
That arms up the gun and any other weapons we have on the jet. We've got our two multi-function displays here where we can throw up a moving map that lets us see pretty much the whole battlefield or targeting pod or any other sort of information we want to get. We've got our countermeasure system here to protect us while we're flying.
And then finally our computer where we input grids and coordinates so that we can plot those on that moving map. Most importantly though, we have the center stick, right? You got your pickle button out here for bombs and missiles and then you got the trigger down here.
- So when you're sitting here and you pull that trigger, I mean, I imagine the recoil is pretty crazy. What's that feel like? - So surprisingly, there's not really any recoil, right?
I've heard a lot of people say, you know, when you shoot the A-10, it stops in flight. That's not true. (Sam laughs) But it does shake violently, and you can see in our HUD the whole thing shakes and you almost lose what you're lookin' at.
You can feel the vibrations throughout the cockpit and then you can smell the gun gas, all that gunpowder come through the cockpit. It's pretty awesome. - Now, an A-10 being a relatively slower jet than like a fighter jet, how many Gs do you guys typically pull on a mission?
- So, it depends. We can pull up to just a little over seven Gs. That doesn't happen too often, but typically on a mission in our safe escape maneuver getting away from the ground, we'll pull anywhere between four to five Gs.
So that's pretty standard what you see on any kind of sortie that we fly. - And you guys do wear G suits though, right? - Oh yeah, we wear a G suit every sortie we fly.
- So when it comes to the targeting and accuracy of the weapons, I mean, is there anything you're doing up here? Is that a complex process? How precise is it?
- Yeah, so it's kind of a a two-part answer there. As far as targeting, you know, we'll get the grids that we put on our computer, and then we can look in our targeting pod. That's really gonna give us very specific location where that is.
Now, when it comes time to roll in, the A-10 has a very unique feature called PAC, precision augment control. And what that does is it basically freezes the flight controls. So when you're down final and you're pointing your gun, your cross hairs aren't moving.
It's to pretty much ensure that when you're down final, you're gonna get the most accurate shot. - And I know your helmet's a little unique too. I see you got a cool little monocle there.
What's that all about? - So, right here, you have the helmet-mounted queuing system. And what this allows the A-10 pilot to do is wherever we look down on the ground, we can slave our targeting pod to wherever we're looking.
So I'll look down on the ground right there, and I'll tell my targeting pod, "I want you to look also at that spot," and that really helps us expedite the targeting process. (bold exciting music) ♪ Let's get out and reach it ♪ (exciting music continues) - Now, before we can witness the live fire demonstration, the aircraft of course needs to be loaded. However, on the A-10, that process is a little bit unique.
This is the ammunition loading assembly cart, also known as the Drgon. And it's made specifically for the GAU-8 Avenger. And we're about to get an up close look at how it works.
♪ The kid's on the wind ♪ ♪ We're ready to jump ♪ ♪ No parachute ♪ ♪ We're flyin' straight to the sun ♪ - So what you're about to see is us actually use the ALA. And what we're gonna start with is we're gonna start with the rounds that enter this section right here. They travel all the way down these chutes.
They travel around and through this table, and they go out of that head into the jet. So the reason why we have to use this machine is because it would be physically impossible to take all those rounds and put 'em into the jet one by one. It'd also be unethical.
It would take forever. So this machine is to expedite it. It's to make it quicker and a lot more efficient so that we can get the rounds in the jet so they can do their job.
- So how long does it take to completely load up the A-10 gun? - So that's a great question. It's gonna take on average around 30 to 45 minutes to install all rounds, and if it's necessary, to take rounds out of the jet as well.
- So 45 minutes to load it. About 20 seconds, I learned, to completely get rid of all that. Pretty crazy.
(bold exciting music) - All right, so if you come follow me, I'll show you the rounds that we're gonna put into the jet. - All right, what do we got here? - All right, so right here you've got your ammo cans.
It's 575 rounds per can, and it takes two cans to fully upload the jet. - So literally stacked from bottom to top, We have 30-millimeter rounds. For those of you watching, this is one right here.
So it actually is probably a little bigger than a Coke can and Coke bottle, I guess. And what do you say, it weighs about three pounds? - About three pounds.
And you know what? I think it's time that we fire up the dragon and load it. (exciting music) - So the A-10 gun is now fully loaded, and I was just told we're gonna have a few other surprises in store to drop out on the range.
This right here is what I've been waiting for. So if you're ready, let's get it. (bold music) - I'm here at the Grand Bay Bombing and Gunnery Range, just a few miles to the east of Moody Air Force Base.
And this is gonna be our playground for the live fire demo. Now, I'm standing on a tower about 500 meters away from the impact area, which consists of a strafing zone and various conexes that the A-10s are gonna target. I was told this is the closest I can be for safety, which I am totally okay with.
Normally, I'm up for getting a little bit closer for the action, but for this, nah, I'm cool hanging back. (bold exciting music) (jet zooms) (gun buzzing) So that sound you just heard from the 30-millimeter gun is probably the most iconic gun sound in the world. And if you listen closely, you'll actually hear two sounds.
The first is the rounds actually hitting the target 'cause the rounds travel faster than the speed of sound. And the second sound is the gun itself. It's a lot more mechanical sounding, and that's 'cause of that seven-barrel spinning and firing.
It's pretty cool. (bold music) (gun buzzing) Now, if you look on the bottom of the A-10, you may notice some black paint at the top, and that's actually a false canopy. It was designed to confuse the enemy on whether the A-10 was right side up or right side down.
And especially in air-to-air combat when an aircraft is turning left or turning right, even a split second of indecision from the enemy can make all the difference. (gun buzzing) (gun buzzing) So, if you remember back when Captain Flores mentioned when he fires the gun in the cockpit, he can actually smell the smoke. Well, when the A-10 was originally being developed, they realized that the gun could actually damage the engines and choke them out 'cause they weren't getting enough oxygen from all that smoke from the gun.
So what they did is they modified it and built a special combustion chamber, which is what are on these aircraft now. So now there's no issue. When you're firing that gun, aircraft can fly just fine.
(bold dramatic music) (jet zooms) (gun buzzing) (explosions booming) (jet zooms) (flares whooshing) Well, there you have it, the incredible A-10 Warthog. I hope you enjoyed getting an up-close look at this iconic aircraft. I know I'm gonna need a little bit of time to recover after this one.
It was pretty crazy. I do wanna thank the 23rd Wing for helping make this video happen. Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already so you don't miss out on any future videos, and I'll catch you next time.
