

( the old crew on the forum will now begin heckling and throwing stuff like beer bottles ( empty ) etc )

-The A-10 is useful. Just less so. Maybe even a lot less so.
- Because it requires the Mk 1 eyeball so much, its frat recored from Desert Storm to OIF was little or no different. ( the only thing that scares Marines is when you tell them an A-10 is going to fill their job request

-The A-10 can take lots of damage and keep going. Hmmmm.. It got all that damage because it can't go very high with a full load of weps ( yeah that artwork on the plastic model box sure looks impressive ). and the weps it does have, like the gun and dumb iron and a few mavs requires going down and STAYING in a environment full of trashfire, AAA and small SAMS/MANPADS. All while an F-16 can drop a wep in near any weather from 30K and much higher and hit with a sub 4 meter CEP by request of the ground FAC or what ever. The A-10 mean while orbits slowly around at low level and gets shot to pieces by weps that can't touch the F-16 as described. If I am going to get up close and personal with a slow gun platform, I would prefer the AH-64 which, oh btw is now netcentric and can have target cues feed to its display by things like JSTARs before it even arrives and watch video from UAVs...and is a great night killer. Oh yeah, one more thing: When an F-16 comes down to strafe ( still needed these days ) it doesnt stick around, down fast --- gun --- up fast back on its purch out of ground threat range ( all my ranting here assumes large SAMS have been killed for the most part ). The A-10 doesnt have this option. More times than not, it is always in threat range from the usual suspects I mention. More: Because of its poor altitude performance, it aint going to be laser bombing from high like the other fixed wings. It is still in engagement range or near engagement range of stuff it has limited ability to avoid.
-The A-10 is a great tank killer. In its day yes, but at a cost ( re: the desert storm A-10s that were broken down and buried in the desert because they were so shot up ). Great for its day, but that day was a day where quanities of reliable PGMs and PGM shooters was limited. Today.... again without engaging trashfire, AAA, small SAMs/MANPADs, if there is a formation of tanks on the move, CBU-105 WCMD / SFW BLU-108b will kill off tanks by the bushel dropped from 30-40k and miles away. ( combat proven ). Tanks in fixed positions. Again, out of engagement of threats the A-10 has no option but to drive through.... tanks can now be plinked in near any weather from again..... 30-40k.
-A-10 by todays standards is over-rated. It is useful to get in and out of garbage fields in "Indian Country" ( I question the idea of basing them in an area where in one mortar attack, they can all get taken out in one roll of the dice a la Ben Hoa AB in Vietnam where in one night, we lost most of our night interdiction abilty, when a gaggle of B-57 night bombers got taken out on the base ) Plus all the supplies you have to fly in or worse....convoy in to make the unit of A-10s run. ( think about this all you follow_the_air_force_times_off_a_cliff_theologians who want to put the ultra expensive jump JSF in indian territory. ) We will see I suppose. COIN ops needs to be much thiner than we are running it anyway and I don't believe in dieing for dirt we dont intend to keep ( a complete dif subject

-Well anyway, the A-10 is payed for. And if some good netcentric add ons are put on it where it can be yet another bandwidth eater

-The goal shouldn't be to try and find a mission for JSF. The goal should be to cancel it outright. The money can best be used elsewhere.