Why Is It So Hard to Shoot Down an A-10 Warthog?

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The A-10 Warthog’s designers understood that battle damage in combat would be inevitable—and overengineered the plane to survive it.

The A-10 Warthog features a highly unusual design philosophy. Most aircraft are built to avoid being hit, and if they are hit, to remain in the air for long enough to fly to safety. The A-10, on the other hand, is built with the assumption that it will be hit, and is designed to carry on with the mission after the fact.

Accordingly, the core concept in A-10 design is redundancy across every critical system. Not only does the A-10 feature backups, but it features different types of backups using different physics. That’s why the A-10 is arguably the most survivable aircraft ever built. No single failure can take the plane down; every function has multiple, independent ways to work.

The A-10 Warthog’s Specifications

Year Introduced: 1977

Number Built: ~716 (all variants)

Length: 53 ft 4 in (16.16 m)

Wingspan: 57 ft 6 in (17.42 m)

Weight (MTOW): ~51,000 lbs (23,132 kg)

Engines: Two General Electric TF34-GE-100 turbofans (~9,000–9,275 lbs thrust each)

Top Speed: ~420 mph (675 km/h)

Range: Combat radius: 290 nautical miles (334 miles, 537 km); ferry range with tanks ~2,200 nautical miles (2,532 miles, 4,074 km)

Service........

© The National Interest