Actually, Sprey's been out of the business for decades. For the better part of the past 30 years, he's been making jazz music. Some of his work was sampled by Kanye West for 'Jesus Walks.'

Even when he was working at the Pentagon, he had a reputation for being "difficult." In 1969, he was referred to by NAVAIRCOM as:
"In…

Sprey didn't design the F-16. He didn't do any engineering work on it.

I wish I could give this more stars.

If your proposal is unlikely due to the budget restraints, why even perpetuate the false hope of the Army A-10?

I replied because those questions point out just some of the flaws with the whole "give them to the Army" sport-bitching. If there was actual validity to your proposal, you could have answered those questions…

"The A-10 needs to be folded into and operated by the army air-wing with the helicopter force."

- Where will all these A-10s be based, both here and abroad?
- Who's going to fly them?
- Where will the new pilots' basic flight training take place?
- How long will that take to get these pilots proficient so they can go to…

Yeah, Tullahoma is used to that thanks to Arnold. Chattanooga on the other hand....

I was in Chattanooga at the time. For a stretch, those flights lasted the better part of 2003 year. Since the flights were above 10K feet, they didn't talk to local ATC. Everyone was calling Dobbins and every AFB and NAS in the region looking for answers but getting none. Conspiracy theories ran wild until someone…

Bingo on the "...get an operational squadron..." thing.

Lockheed used to fly F-22s over SE Tennessee all the time before delivering them to the USAF. It was a shakedown flight the AF mandated and one of the performance goals was that each plane had to prove it could super cruise. This area got picked because it was the…

Yup. That's why Gen. Hostage has said he needs every last F-22 he can get. They can do things the F-35 guys can only daydream about.

IDK about the F-35 having any speed advantage though, not like the F-111's ability to dash. F-35s can't super cruise and their exhaust puts out a lot of heat even in mil setting, so AB…

Yup. The A-10's CIRCM isn't built in; it's carried on external pod under the wing. So you've got to go out there every day with one under the wing. That's one less weapon station you've got that can carry a bomb. And when you're losing another weapon station to a sensor pod. Frankly, that altitude you mentioned seems…

Great. Unfortunately, even if the plane manages to get back home, you're still down a plane. It's either a write off or you've got to divert manpower away from hanging bombs on working planes and turning them around towards getting the damaged plane back into the fight.

"Survivability" is not getting hit in the first…

"What is the manoeuvrability like on the F-35?"

Not great. The adjective "pig" gets thrown around a lot. IIRC, at one point it was likened to that of the F-4 or an fully loaded (CFTs topped off with gas and loaded with weapons) F-15E.

The wing loading of the A and B models is pretty low. At one point the A was going to…

You mean like an F-15E loaded with SDBs?

+ Quick to respond to a call from JTAC.
+ Capable of attacking from beyond range of MANPADs.
+ Can attack before whomever has the MANPAD know they're there or where they are exactly.
- Even with internal fuel and CFTs, gas (and loiter time) is a factor.

The alternate would be…

"never was the end all solution to begin with, but it still has its place."

Very true. And to avoid any confusion, my comment wasn't directed towards you specifically.

Based on that FA article, I'm surprised he didn't pitch the A-10 as a C-130J replacement.

See the problem about contested airspace. This is a problem for the AC-130 too, so it comes down to redundancy. Why have two platforms that can do the same job when one is 40 years old and the other is brand new and can loiter for much longer than the Hog can?

Two things:

1. Standoff ranges. the AC-130 has long been vulnerable to MANPADS and that's just going to get worse. The current generation of MANPADs has a range greater than that of the AC-130's guns.

2. Gun Accuracy. The further away you are from the target, the less accurate your gun will be. See #1.

There will always…

Vipers were able to get there first, drop their bombs and depart the airspace so whomever was controlling that airspace, be it JTAC or an airborne asset, could control in the next flight - which in this case, happened to be A-10s. One of the Vipers needed to get gas since he was mid-refueling when the call came in and…

Is no one else bothered by the fact that the Hogs were so slow to get there, that the Vipers had to - and could - go in first and drop all their bombs while waiting for fresh planes with fresh bombs to arrive?

Eh. The scheme's not *that* unique.