FB-111H

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The designs in the sketchbook are real and can be purchased from here.

Found it! F-15B 291 got around. Here it is pimping to the French Air Force:

I'm no expert...... it seemed that it would be pretty easy to find 400m in a 600b budget. Maybe not.

No, the whole issue came about because Congress and the White House couldn't agree on a budget last year. USAF had planned to keep the plane around until 2028. The sequester was a bigger deal that a lot of people realize. The F-15C almost got the axe, as did the KC-10. I'm actually surprised that the F-15C survived.…

Between modernization and maintenance of the current fleet of all the aircraft, procurement of new and replacement aircraft (F-35, new tanker, new CSAR helo, T-38 replacement, etc...), training costs, research, development, test & eval, military construction, personnel costs (payroll, health care, moving allowances &…

As someone that has received CAS from A-10s, I can only say I'm REALLY sad to see that the stupid Air Force finally achieved their goal and gotten rid of it. As Tyler has shown, they've had a hard-on for scrapping the A-10 almost since its inception.

I think the the old school guys that thought up the CAS doctrine in…

I'd love it if the AF could keep a handful of A-10s in AFSOC out in the dry, salt-less air of Arizona for just such an occasion. I disagree with your number though, as I think 10-15 is too low IMO. You may deploy 10-15 overseas at a time, but you need to keep some back in reserves. You'll have to have a few on hand…

Yeah, things like LANTRIN, LITENING, Sniper XR and ROVER have evened the playing field in that regard.

I wonder what constituted a "kill" in these games? Pointing an RPG in the general direction of the aircraft and pulling the trigger? Being lit up by SAM RADAR?

Hasn't been updated in decades? That's bullshit. The A-10 has received many upgrades over the years.

1979 - Introduction of the Pave Penny Pod
1980 - The A-10 began receiving an inertial navigation system
Mid '90s - The Low-Altitude Safety and Targeting Enhancement (LASTE) upgrade provided computerized weapon-aiming…

Funny you should ask. One of the RF-AK missions was the rescue of a downed pilot. 8 A-10s got shot down during that, so now you had up to 9 pilots down. Mind you, they knew what they were getting into, they said "we can handle this" and pushed forward before DEAD could arrive. So, the answer would be - the same…

The F-16 and F/A-18 are both multi-role and both do their jobs very well. The F-15E was a successful adaptation of an air superiority platform. And in it's final years, the F-14 turned out to be a pretty good CAS platform itself. The F-22 actually has some really good air to ground capacity itself. It's not what I…

The A-10 was never designed for low intensity conflicts. It was designed to do one thing - stop Soviet tanks rolling through West Germany in the opening of WWIII. It was designed for - what was at that time - a high threat environment. Flying low, using the terrain to mask itself from Soviet/Warsaw Pact mobile…

Then why is it only doing 15% of the CAS workload?

Marines have never wanted the A-10. They've been happy over the decades with the A-4, A-6, F-8, F-4, Harrier, F/A-18, and now the F-35B.

Current F-16 squadrons tasked with CAS don't do things that much differently than A-10 squadrons. They'll each have some different tactics that play to their respective platforms' strengths and downplay their weaknesses as much as possible. They carry the same bombs, they carry the same IR sensor pods. They both fly…

Two weeks, two A-10 squadrons. How'd they do?

1 - Weather too bad, can't get below it to accomplish mission