Boeing 
and the Air Force rolled out the first re-winged A-10 ground-attack aircraft in a ceremony at Hill AFB, Utah, announced the company on Thursday. “This enhanced wing assembly will give the A-10 new strength and a new foundation for its continued service into 2040,” said Mark Bass, Boeing’s maintenance, modifications, and upgrades vice president, in a company release. Boeing is under contract to deliver 233 wing sets to the Air Force through 2018. The company is producing the wings at its facility in Macon, Ga. It supplies them to Ogden Air Logistics Center at Hill for installation on those A-10s in the fleet with comparatively thin-skin wings that have been prone to cracks in the past. Wednesday’s rollout comes at a time when the Air Force is proposing to eliminate five A-10 squadrons as part of its force adjustments to conform to the Obama Administration’s new defense strategic guidance. “We’re reducing 102 A-10s,” said Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz during a Pentagon briefing on Feb. 3. He added, “There’re still going to be 246 A-10s left in the inventory.”
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…