Aircraft updates a boon for crews

Sun., June 14, 2009

Associated Press

BOISE – A fleet of aging Warthogs is providing job security for the Idaho Air National Guard and Gowen Field in Boise.

Crews at the airfield in the desert south of Idaho’s capital city are retrofitting 120, or about a third, of the nation’s 350 A-10 Thunderbolts – known due to their ungainly appearance as Warthogs – with new equipment and software to keep them in operation for decades to come.

The planes are flying here from bases in Georgia, Arkansas, Nevada and elsewhere, marking the use of Gowen as a one-stop shop aimed at making repairs more quickly.

At home, without specialized equipment and a trained force, such repairs might take a month; in Boise, they take just 10 days, helping return pilots to the air more quickly.

“We think if we are very proficient in the first couple of months, maybe more work will come our way,” said Capt. Eric Newman, one of the project’s supervisors.

The Warthog project includes 45 jobs in Boise, more than making up for the positions transferred from Gowen Field when the military shuttered the Air National Guard base’s C-130 cargo plane squadron until making a final flight in March.

The planes stem from a design begun in the late 1960s and early 1970s; priority is given to aircraft from units scheduled to head into overseas service, where A-10s are often called upon in Iraq or Afghanistan to deliver crucial ground support to troops under fire.

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