In recent months, officials in both Kyiv and Washington have put off decisions on whether to transfer the planes.īut working with a Ukrainian businessman and former classmate, Gorgan urged Ukrainian military leaders and their foreign allies to help set up a secret training center. And while the A-10 is well-designed to attack tanks, it is vulnerable in contested airspace like that over Ukraine, where Russian jets and anti-aircraft missiles remain active.

is skittish about providing weapons systems and training to Ukraine for fear of provoking Russia into a wider war with the West. Their hope was to protect Ukrainian infantry units from devastating barrages of Russian artillery, and to turn the tide of the war. Over the next six months, Gorgan, 46, a low-level infantry officer in the Ukrainian military with high-level connections, would work with a band of other Ukrainians and retired American A-10 pilots to try and get their hands on some of America’s fleet of aging Warthogs. “I would be really lucky to hear the noise from his cannon.” “In that situation, there really has to be something tangible that can help you, and I thought about the A-10,” Gorgan told TIME. Gorgan believes in God but at that moment, he wasn’t convinced God was going to save his life. Images flooded his mind of the stubby attack plane with two bulbous jet engines mounted on its back and a gatling gun for a snout. As a kid, Gorgan saw news footage of American A-10s bombing lines of Soviet-made Iraqi tanks during the first Gulf War. Pinned down and alone in that hole, Gorgan’s thoughts turned to the savior he wished he could hear coming over the horizon: the low bbrrrrrrrtt of an American-made A-10 Thunderbolt II jet, known as the Warthog, a cold war relic designed specifically for destroying Russian tanks advancing on infantry units. Cover us!” But there was nothing to hit back with. He could hear a platoon commander in a foxhole nearby shouting into the radio: “Can you strike back? Can you hit them? Can you cover us? Please give us cover. Alexander Gorgan was lying in a three-foot-deep trench dug to defend a snow-covered village north of Kyiv in March, and Russian artillery shells were shattering the frozen ground on all sides.

A10 tank buster video