What if the Marines built a modern attack aircraft around one old idea: stay with the troops? The X-138A DevilHog is a clean-sheet answer to a problem Marine aviators have understood for generations. Troops in contact don't need an aircraft that screams overhead once and disappears. They need something that can stay, watch, strike, reverse, and come back again. Twin-boom. Twin-turboprop. Carrier-capable. Heavily armed. Built for persistence. But before the DevilHog can support a single Marine on the ground, it has to survive something almost as dangerous as combat: the system that decides whether it gets built at all. From the first sketches and engineering decisions to flight testing, live weapons, carrier operations, and a fight for the aircraft's future in Washington, DevilHog INBOUND follows the creation of an unconventional warbird designed around the mission instead of the bureaucracy. Written by a 20-year U.S. Marine veteran, helicopter pilot, and logistics expert, Keith Barton blends military aviation, engineering, tactics, acquisition, and the culture of Marines into a fast-moving story about what can happen when someone asks a simple question: What would we build if supporting the Marine on the ground came first? Old dog. New tricks.
