The Fort Lauderdale Air Show will feature a demo team from the A 10 Warthog. Credit goes to MediaPunch, IPX, and AP.
Nobody was going to help. In March, Alexander Gorgan was lying in a three-foot-deep trench defending a snow-covered village north of Kyiv from Russian shelling. The platoon commander shouted into the radio, "Can you strike back?" Is it possible to hit them. Is it possible to cover us? We need to be given cover. We need people to help us. Do you want to cover us? There wasn't anything to fight back with.
Gorgan was pinned down and alone in that hole and he wished he could hear the Warthog coming over the horizon. During the first Gulf War, Gorgan saw news footage of American A 10s bombing Iraqi tanks. He was flooded with images of a small plane with two jet engines on its back and a gatling gun. Gorgan wasn't sure if God was going to save him. There has to be something tangible that can help you, and I thought about the A-10). I would be lucky to hear the sound of his cannon.
In the next six months, Gorgan, a low-level infantry officer in the Ukrainian military with high-level connections, would work with a band of other Ukrainians and retired American A10 pilots to try and get their hands on some of America's fleet of aging Wart. They wanted to turn the tide of the war by protecting Ukrainian infantry units from Russian bombardment. It has been difficult. For fear of provoking Russia into a wider war with the West, the U.S. is hesitant about giving weapons systems and training toUkraine. The A-10 is well-designed to attack tanks, but it is vulnerable in areas where Russian jets and anti-aircraft missiles are still active. The decision to transfer the planes has been put off in both Washington and Kyiv.
Gorgan asked Ukrainian military leaders and their foreign allies to help set up a secret training center after working with a Ukrainian businessman. The facility, which has been operating since early May, uses sophisticated flight simulations to prepare a group of Ukrainian A-10 pilots for when the U.S. supplies them with the planes. In late July, TIME was allowed to visit the training center, but the reporter had to be blindfolded on the way to and from the facility to avoid knowing its location. Military trainers in action and built with off-the-shelf components and guidance by retired U.S. military officials, they have produced a Warthog training facility on the fly.
The secret training program is one example of how the outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainians have used invention, social media and a general disregard for protocol to surprise effect in its war against Russia. It might have been necessary to create an expensive, controversial and covert operation approved at the top of the U.S. government in order to stand up a sophisticated pilot training program. The Ukrainians have created a program similar to a special access program in order to get a new weapon. Bill Taylor, who has known Gorgan for more than 15 years, says the Ukrainians have surprised everyone with their innovation.
There is a historic mission to provide aid and arms to Ukraine.
The reporter was blindfolded at the rendezvous point for the trip to the training center. The walls of the two rooms were covered with photos of the A 10 Warthog and a couple of posters that said to keep calm and kill Soviet tanks. The instructor asked that his name not be printed in the paper. Putin says that he only knows force. We will deal with him if we get the instruments. He says the A-10) is a decisive instrument. The number of targets we would be able to hit would be different if the U.S. gave it to Ukraine. They weakened their offensive positions. The infantry moved from defense to offense in confidence.
Five Ukrainian pilots went through training on the simulation. It could have been mistaken for a gaming convention if it wasn't for the uniformed personnel. There was a computer tower that gave off a technicolor glow when the stations were linked up. Most of the components were from a niche of the gaming community that builds flight sims for fun.
The pilots wore ski masks under their virtual reality goggles to keep their identities a secret. Some of the pilots in the air force have died in the war. The military usually spends millions of dollars on jet fuel when training a fighter pilot. Generals are less valuable than they are. Before the Russian invasion, the identities of active fighter pilots were a closely guarded secret, and all of them lived with the risk of being assassinated.
Getting the training facility up and running has been made more difficult by the fact that the program is kept secret. He didn't want to feel as powerless as he did in March. In between missions running convoys to and from the front lines, Gorgan opened his laptop and tried to figure out how to get A-10s into Ukrainian skies. The op-ed was written by former US Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker and former Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove.
Breedlove laid out a detailed list of obstacles that stood in the way of the project. He said that the airspace over Ukranian wasn't secure enough and that there wasn't a large enough group of pilots ready to fly the aircraft. Breedlove says the A-10) is an incredible tank-killing machine. It works best in environments where anti-aircraft batteries have been destroyed. If you were flying for an air force that had a really good ability to do suppression of enemy air defenses, jamming, noise jamming, specific targeting radar jamming, and doing all those things, you might be able to work A-10s into a high threat.
It seemed like it was impossible for Ukraine to have A-10s. Gorgan was determined to learn everything he could about A-10). He found a lot of internet nerddom devoted to the Wart hog. There was a video on the internet that showed a way forward. One channel uploaded obscure but publicly available footage from 2020 of A-10 pilots in the U.S. Air Force's 355th Training Squadron at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. The instructor pilot in the video, Maj. Drew Glowa, looks like he just stepped off the set of a movie. Virtual training can be used to quickly train pilots new to the A-10). It was possible for Ukraine to get a class of pilots ready.
Before the Russian invasion began, Gorgan ran a law office, had a wife and three kids, and was a local official. He didn't have much military experience. He could have avoided being conscripted if he'd been a father of three. He accepted a commission as an infantry lieutenant, even though he didn't want to serve. The majority of his peers are colonels. He wasn't going to be able to push the brass to create an A 10 training program.
Andrii Vavrysh is anentrepreneur and real-estate developer. Vavrysh was asked to meet Gorgan near his barracks. They sat in Vavrysh's Land Rover for two hours. The destruction it brought to Russian-made tanks in the Gulf War was caused by the development of the A-10s. Gorgan feels like a preacher. Vavrysh agreed to help bankroll the project, buy the virtual reality headsets and replicas of the A-10) controls. Vavrysh made his own pitch in the office of the deputy minister of defense. The idea was brought to the attention of the Ukrainian Air Force.
In an interview with Time in June, Polishchuk said that most countries wouldn't start training pilots until they get a formal request. Ukraine doesn't have a lot of time to spare. The training for the planes needs to start in advance. There are some political signals that we may get these weapons at some point. Start training to use them. The Ukrainian military was able to speed up training on other weapons systems. The Ukrainian troops were trained to use the howitzers in about three weeks. People need to sleep, rest and take weekends, so we need to take longer. We can't do that He says that our people are very motivated.
The military set up a way to train pilots for an aircraft that the U.S. hasn't agreed to give. The Ukrainians have been able to repel the Russians for a long time because of their creativity and initiative. Oleksiy Arestovych is an adviser to the office of the president. If our power were centralized, everything would have fallen apart.
Inside Zelensky's world.
The senior ranks of the Ukrainian military are considering a formal letter of request for the A10 but haven't made a decision on when to ask the Americans for the planes. In July, the Secretary of the Air Force was asked if the U.S. would give Ukraine A-10s. There is a chance that older U.S. systems are a possibility. We will be open to discussions with them about what their requirements are and how we might be able to satisfy them.
In conversations between the Pentagon and Ukrainian leaders this summer, the top priorities have been on providing long-range rocket systems, AGM-88 HARM missiles that track and destroy Russian anti-aircraft batteries, and more. Significant training and major investments in infrastructure, sustainment, and other areas are required for fighter jets like the F-15 or the F-16.
The Ukrainian pilots were helped online over the past few months by both active duty and retired American A-10 pilots who told them where to look in open source online forums to find the right software and manuals to use in the virtual training center. The American pilots and instructors were very cautious in the way they helped us because they are not allowed to have any direct contact with foreign military personnel. They made it clear that they couldn't give any classified information. Without advice from the American pilots, we wouldn't know what to look for in the old manual and software systems. One of the most effective tools of modern warfare is internet searches and persistence. With a bit of initiative and an internet connection, you can reach out to anyone.
The instructor had the reporter sit at one of the simulation and help adjust the virtual reality headset while he was in the training room. The plane's electronics were rendered in detail in the virtual cockpit with computer graphics. The Sidewinder is a bomb designed to take down enemy aircraft in the air.
The distinctive snorting sound of the gatling gun on the nose of the plane was made famous by the Warthog. The features of the simulation were realistic enough for the instructor to pull the ejection lever and allow the virtual plane to crash in a field of grass. The instructor said that Europe and America know that Putin is a threat. Children are dying because of the threat on our territory. We want the weapons to protect them.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
