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A-10
ORLANDO, Florida–The U.S. military and its industry partners are unprepared for the likely onslaught of maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) demand that will come with future aircraft fleets, especially collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) that could number in the thousands in just years, according to a panel of experts here.
The panel at Aviation Week’s Military Aviation Logistics and Maintenance Symposium, hosted alongside MRO Americas, included two retired generals and a longtime industry expert. All were unequivocal about how unprepared they see the American support system ahead of a generational changeover in the fleet.
“We are not ready,” said Tim Garnett, Oliver Wyman partner and head of aerospace and defense Americas. “We’re going to throw money at this problem–money is not going to solve it.
“This is a call to arms,” he added.
Warren Berry, a former deputy chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force for logistics, engineering and force protection who has since founded and runs consultancy Lógos Solutions, explained the lack of capacity is across the military and private sector. “What keeps me up at night is I don’t know that we have the surge capacity,” he said.
Lee Levy II, former commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center and founder and CEO of the Levy Group, noted that annual budget windfalls–embodied by the Trump administration’s potentially $1.5-1.7 trillion fiscal 2027 defense spending requests–do not fix what can only be addressed by a sustained, multiyear spending plan. Otherwise, government and industry will rightsize itself for the long-term financial outlook, as it has now.
“We got the industrial base we paid for, or not paid for,” Levy said. “We are where we are for good reasons.”
In particular, Levy predicted that CCAs–despite their commission to be attributable, or losable–will become assets desirable for sustainment. That has been the history of military aircraft, he noted, pointing to the B-52 that formally entered service in 1955 and is still being sustained in the B-52H. Industry was not fighting the government for the opportunity to maintain B-52s while Levy was in uniform, and he doubts any company wants the A-10 work now. The Air Force has tried for several years to retire the A-10 and again in recent days acknowledged some will stay in active use through 2030.
After spending what could be billions of dollars in buying CCAs, Levy doubted government and military leaders will opt not to try to extend their useful life as they have with so many other military aircraft.
“We’re going to have to tech our way out of it,” he said.
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