First introduced in the 1990s, the BLU-109 warhead has a one inch thick hardened steel case that can break through four to six feet of reinforced concrete. Despite its overall weight, the bomb has less than 600 pounds of explosive inside. The Air Force is in the process of purchasing a new, more reliable version of the weapon, known as the BLU-137/B.
As of August 2017, A-10s assigned to the 447th were averaging 750 strikes against ISIS every month, according to the Air Force. This makes the Warthogs “one of the most feared and combat effective aircraft in the fight,” U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Andrew Walck explained in the official news segment.
It seems likely that the A-10s have already been flying from Incrilik in support of the Raqqa operation.
“It’s nice to see the bombs get loaded and the jets come back without them,” Senior Airman Joshua Coll, who leads one of the teams that loads weapons onto the Warthogs at the base in Turkey, told the service’s reporters. “That means that hostile targets died. That means we got the mission done. We either took out a high value target or we’re saving our troops on the ground.”
With the GBU-31(V)3/Bs added to their arsenal, the A-10s look set to keep flying increasingly diverse missions, and more of them, against ISIS.
No comments:
Post a Comment