You seem to forget that the A-10 is only about 50 years old. The armor, redundant controls, and flight capabilities (such as being designed to fly while missing half a wing, half the entire tail, and an engine) are there to keep the pilot safe. They have landed after being hit more than once, and entirely due to it’s design.
The A-10 isn’t an air superiority fighter; it’s an attack craft and does that job well enough than any grunt on the ground is disappointed when a request for air support is answered by anything BUT an A-10.
It needs an update, sure, but it is far from useless.
You seem to forget that the A-10 is only about 50 years old. The armor, redundant controls, and flight capabilities (such as being designed to fly while missing half a wing, half the entire tail, and an engine) are there to keep the pilot safe. They have landed after being hit more than once, and entirely due to it’s design.
Yeah, it was also designed to kill tanks with the gun which it doesn’t do. As for flying with missing half a wing, it hasn’t happened with an A-10. An F-15, an unarmored plane, has landed missing a whole wing in real life. Many planes, all unarmored, have taken hits and survived.
The A-10 isn’t an air superiority fighter; it’s an attack craft and does that job well enough than any grunt on the ground is disappointed when a request for air support is answered by anything BUT an A-10.
Grunts have no clue. Literally, they listed the A-10 having a copilot as a reason why they prefer it.As in they misidentify aircraft as the A-10.
The A-10 also only did that during low-intensity, counterinsurgency operations. Against infantry with technical. The M-61 is perfectly capable of destroying technicals. Go lookup a video of it in action and tell me it’s not capable and you need the GAU-8.
Yes it can do the job, it doesn’t do it better than multirole fighters that you are going to have anyways. It actually does it worse. It was restricted to 20nmi from the border in Desert Storm during day time. It was assigned to destroy enemy vehicles with standoff munitions from medium altitude, to keep it safe from AAA. Meanwhile F-16 did low level attacks with unguided bombs on SAM units that had organic AAA defenses.
In any case the US has a huge military budget so wasting money on the A-10 is not an issue.
You seem to forget that the A-10 is only about 50 years old. The armor, redundant controls, and flight capabilities (such as being designed to fly while missing half a wing, half the entire tail, and an engine) are there to keep the pilot safe. They have landed after being hit more than once, and entirely due to it’s design.
The A-10 isn’t an air superiority fighter; it’s an attack craft and does that job well enough than any grunt on the ground is disappointed when a request for air support is answered by anything BUT an A-10.
It needs an update, sure, but it is far from useless.
Yeah, it was also designed to kill tanks with the gun which it doesn’t do. As for flying with missing half a wing, it hasn’t happened with an A-10. An F-15, an unarmored plane, has landed missing a whole wing in real life. Many planes, all unarmored, have taken hits and survived.
Grunts have no clue. Literally, they listed the A-10 having a copilot as a reason why they prefer it.As in they misidentify aircraft as the A-10.
The A-10 also only did that during low-intensity, counterinsurgency operations. Against infantry with technical. The M-61 is perfectly capable of destroying technicals. Go lookup a video of it in action and tell me it’s not capable and you need the GAU-8.
Yes it can do the job, it doesn’t do it better than multirole fighters that you are going to have anyways. It actually does it worse. It was restricted to 20nmi from the border in Desert Storm during day time. It was assigned to destroy enemy vehicles with standoff munitions from medium altitude, to keep it safe from AAA. Meanwhile F-16 did low level attacks with unguided bombs on SAM units that had organic AAA defenses.
In any case the US has a huge military budget so wasting money on the A-10 is not an issue.