I hear they serve cake on these flights!

That looks a lot like a cake.

Where is cake on the menu?

Yes, I'd like to place an order for cake.

Where does the cake go?

Is this cake?

Freedom isn't free
It costs folks like you and me
And if we don't all chip in
We'll never pay that bill
Freedom isn't free
Now there's a hefty in' fee
And if you don't throw in your buck 'o five
Who will?

The only one obviously being "emotional" is you.
You're the one throwing out insults instead of any facts to support your claims.


As I said before, parts have been and can still be manufactured for the A-10. The decision to pay for such a thing or not is irrelevant to that fact. That's just a financial decision. That…

Whether or not you wish to respond to it is up to your discretion, but as for reading it? I most certainly do expect that of you. You made an emotional (non-logical) case for it, accused me of being ignorant of the platform (without offering anything to qualify that statement) and then you decide that you're going to…

No offense intended...

Because NATO preferred air interdiction (deep strike) to stop the Soviet war machine, not slow moving tank-killers. That's why the Brits, Germans, Italians and French developed platforms such as the Tornado and Jaguar. They could perform both CAS and deep strike behind Soviet lines. They A-10 couldn't do that. It's…

Because they never wanted them in the first place.

Read the bottom half of page 131.

S-300's performance envelope is insanely diverse. It can engage targets very low altitudes up to high altitudes both near and far away. That's what's making it so complex in the first place. It's no accident that Russia moved those into Crimea ASAP.

This.

Additionally, if the A-10 is so goddamn "perfect," then why didn't any NATO partners buy it? West Germany was where the feared Soviet tank invasion would take place, so why did they choose to build the Tornado with Italy and Great Britain? Why didn't South Korea - under constant threat from North Korea's army on…

Most of these missions are flown by F-16s and F-15Es and have been for years. All an A-10 is is a slower version of the F-16.

We lost a lot of A-10s in ODS due to their low level tactics. They may make it home, but they're still out of the fight because they're too badly damaged. Or you have to pull guys that should…

Survivable? The F-16 and F-35 wouldn't have gotten hit in the first place. That's survivability.

And even the X-15 had to be launched from a B-52 mothership.

If it's contested airspace, you'd need days/weeks of SEAD before they can do that.

I think Boeing shot themselves in the foot on a few occasions and I suspect that part of the reason goes back to their corporate culture. Senior leadership had been in the commercial business for so long and all, and now here all of the sudden they've inherited a tactical aircraft program...

A single wing has some…

They used the canopy from a Harrier II on the X-32 as well. And IIRC, one of the JSF prototypes used main landing gear from the A-6 Intruder. Recycling parts to build a prototype is nothing new since it allows for a quick, low-cost and temporary solution.

But that practice of recycling components like that generally…