Warplane: How the Military Reformers Birthed the A-10 Warthog
Warplane tells the story of the development and service life of the A-10 Warthog: the “Forrest Gump” of airplanes, a singular character whose story coincides with almost every major development in aviation and military engineering history of the last 100 years.
Praise for Warplane
"This is a terrific and important book, a vivid, beautifully written, account of how a group of extraordinary individuals – one in particular – created a unique machine. The story of the A-10 “Warthog,” is the saga of a weapon that is most notable for saving lives rather than taking them. Hal Sundt makes it clear that America has something precious in the A-10, not just the airplane itself and the features that make it so effective, but the spirit of dedication and integrity in the community that produced and nurtures it."
— Andrew Cockburn, author of The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine
“This is a fascinating book, and an important one. I love narrative nonfiction that combines personality, history, technology, mystery — and the larger consequence of the story for all of us. Hal Sundt has done just this.”
— James Fallows, author of National Defense
“The narrative of its development is a lively, insightful example of conflicting views on Pentagon expenditures (in the billions of dollars) to engineer designs that may—or may not—be valuable for certain aspects of national defense.... Complex arguments about costs, effectiveness, and speed vs. battlefield utility are described in terms accessible to non-technical readers. Likely to be of interest to military buffs, aeronautical designers, engineering companies, and legislators.”
— Library Journal
“Sundt draws you in with a cast of bold truthtellers. They share a set of ideas about making things – in this case, the 50+ year old A10 - in ways that make rare sense. It works for the people who fly it and meets the perilous but simple purpose of protecting the lives of soldiers fighting on the ground. This continuing story makes a case too seldom made for the value of actual experience, of realistic testing and measuring results to make things that work. You will not read the daily news of multi-billion dollar fighter jets the same again.”
— Valerie Fletcher, Executive Director, Institute for Human Centered Design