USAF Plans A-10 Thunderbolt II Retirement

The US Air Force is considering retiring A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack jet, called "Warthog" – first designed as a tank buster to target Soviet armored vehicles in the early 1970s, due to budget constraints.

The Defense Department faces $1 trillion in budget cuts over the next decade, half of them due to automatic reductions in spending known as sequestration.

The US Air Force alone needs to save $12 billion in 2014, according to the service's Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh.

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