Both the F-15 and F-16 are 40+ year old aircraft. Same age as the A-10 +/- a couple years.

Bingo. Why restart production for an aircraft that’s 30 years out of production when you have an aircraft with similar capabilities and far lower hourly operating costs already in production?

The “hj” reply? Yeah, not knowing the context, I elected to ignore it.

They’re not that modular. Replacing a shot engine isn’t the same as replacing an engine as part of the regular maint. schedule. The structure has to be inspected, the mounting, surrounding systems have to be inspected and repaired. If it costs too much to repair it, then they’ll scrap it for parts.

No. The official story is still “engine failure.”

Why do I need a 30mm HE round to kill a human or a Toyota Hilux? 2omm kills both just as dead. As does a 25mm. I’d rather have an accurate 20mm shot than a burst of 30mm going everywhere.

There is NO mission that cannot and HAS not been performed by other aircraft just as effectively. Since 2001, the A-10 has performed only 20% of the total CAS taskings in Iraq and Afghanistan. The rest were performed by F-15E, F-16, F-18.

We’d have fewer aircraft than we do now. The F-15C/Ds we have are 3x past their structural life. At least one has broken apart in flight. These aircraft have been under constant stress of combat operations since 1990. You cannot expect them to last forever.

Sure. Got the money to build new airframes along with the tooling required to make the parts? Also, you’re going to need to boost the speed and range, so that’ll mean new, more powerful engines and a smaller gun (so you can put more gas in the fuselage). 25mm’s good for killing soft targets and it’s more accurate than…

I’m sick of the “A-10 IS INVINCIBLE” argument.

How many Soviet SAM sites were there in West Germany in the 1970s?
How many Tor M1s did the Soviets have in the 1970s?
How many SA-10s (“Bad”) did they have?
How many SA-20s (“Worse.”) did they have?
How many SA-20C (“Shit”) did they have?
How many SA-21s (“We’re fucked.”) did…

– Only the A-10’s cockpit has armor. The rest of the plane is standard aircraft grade aluminum. The A-29B standard that the USAF flies has armor for both the cockpit and the engine. The A-10 is NOT a flying tank.

- The engines are NOT shielded from ground fire.

The AF never liked the A-10 in the first place.

The AF generals do not give two shits about the ground troops.

In one operation or another, it’s been in constant use since 1990. These are aircraft that are 3x over their design structure life. They’re already on borrowed time now.

A-10’s thirsty too. It’s loiter time is measured in minutes.

You want an aircraft that uses the same targeting pods as the A-10, can carry more bombs than both the A-10 and the F-15E and has a loiter time measured in hours?

A-29B. Too bad Congress fucked that up.

People STILL whine about that. There’s a guy on FB now who’s going to do everything in his power to bring it back. I guess once his page gets 200K likes, the Pentagon will HAVE to bring it back, right?

The Jordanian’s problem was parachuting into an area that was totally under ISIL control and where CSAR wasn’t an option. Plenty of pilots - of both single and multi-engine aircraft had to punch out over Vietnam and Iraq and despite the abuse they got at the hands of their captors, they weren’t burned alive for the…

A Hog went low with it’s gun in Syria and got shot all to shit. He barely made it home. They pulled A-10s from Syria as a result. No one’s going to risk a repeat of what happened to that Jordanian pilot.

Nobody calls it “Thunderbolt II” except PR people. It’s the Hog. Always has been, always will be.