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A-10 USAF from Academy on the way
A-10 Warthog is one of the most underappreciated planes in terms of scale modeling. That goes for all possible scales. There are kits out there – true. But this jet was never approached with the attention and passion it deserved nevertheless. Modeling-wise, the kits of the A-10 are few, with some of them having decent quality especially for the time of their release. However, it is far from what we are getting Hornet-wise or Eagle-wise and most likely will never be even close. In the same time, A-10 is a relatively modern jet, that stood against time and it is flying for almost half a century. Very successfully at that. Alongside the others mentioned.
Despite all this, still no new tooling of it. Tamiya, Great Wall Hobby, Kinetic, Meng and others, rather active quarterscale-jet-wise last decade, are turning a blind eye to the A-10 for reasons unknown. Kitty Hawk approached Su-25 and maybe they would’ve done the A-10, both planes representing the very same idea on the both sides of the Iron Curtain. But the company gone belly up quite unfortunately. And this is only a speculation. They might’ve never considered it. Once again, there were no real signs of new A-10 out there.
This was up until just now, when Academy published a render of an A-10 USAF in their catalogue. USAF being a rather odd designation, since Warthog is in service with the US Air Force, Air Force Reserve Command and Air National Guard. Latter two part of the USAF in general. However, no matter the reasons Academy had to announce it that way and not “Warthog”, we can only hope that their A-10 will be at the level they demonstrated with their F-4 a decade ago. Their MPC /multi-colored plastic/ tooling was brilliant and was considered the best F-4 immediately after its release. Even though overshadowed by Zoukei-Mura and lately Tamiya toolings, their F-4 still holds quite honorably to this day.
If Academy live up to that standard they showed the World in 2012, why not finally see a decent A-10 in 48th scale on the market? Yes, the plane looks slow to many. It looks a bit ugly. But it is super-effective war machine in real life and we must give it the credits it deserved throughout more than 4 decades of active service. We should hope for nothing short of perfection from Academy with this one. So many options with the engines, control surfaces, weapons and the wide and quite visible cockpit. It is 2022. We need a new A-10 Warthog. And not a mediocre one. Let’s see what Academy will deliver this year.
