They’ve been able to adapt the B-52 to more missions and changing threats better. Originally, the B-52 was to penetrate Soviet airspace. When that became to dangerous, it became a standoff ALCM carrier. When nuclear arms reduction treaties took effect, the B-52 went back to being a conventional bomber.

A-10’s a…

I’m sorry, what were you were saying about “survivability?”

I no one told the guys at Seymour-Johnson, Lakenheath or Mountain Home that, because they’ve been doing it for over a decade.

Airframes can ( and have) been updated/upgraded

Oh yeah, the Saudis have a poor reputation in that regard and I’ve heard some horror stories out of Rucker and Vance about students from various Middle East nations just not giving a shit during their training flights and when they DO fuck up (which they do, a lot) they just dismiss it and say it’s all part of Allah’s…

Militarily, we’re not bad at them. Our military leadership learned the lessons of Vietnam and applied them well here, IMO.

The challenges were twofold:
Afghanistan is scarred by decades of war. It’ll take decades for them to recover and the presence of destabilizing elements only prolongs that. Can that be overcome?…

Everyone in the package was at altitude on the way home, taking turns hitting the tanker. There was a line/stack of thirsty aircraft. The A-10s couldn’t climb to the tanker track and requested that the tankers drop to their altitude. Tankers refused. The tankers weren’t going to tell everyone else who was already…

How many Soviet SAM sites were bases in West Germany?

Wait wait wait... can it fly missing 1 and a half wing or just half a wing? This morning someone claimed it was 2/3 of a wing. Does the A-10 even NEED wings to fly?

B-52s haven’t been flying low level combat pulling 3-4Gs with combat loads for the past 14 years. Nor have they been deployed to hot spots all over the…

If the Pentagon acted on the advice of every blogger who had an opinion on these matters, we’d all end up with a bunch of B-52s powered by outboard motors.

Your loss.

F-4 was adopted by the USAF in the 1960s, they came to be one of the biggest users of the type, improving it by giving it an internal gun, flown by the Thunderbirds and later adopting it into a SEAD platform that served for nearly until 1996 and you claim that the USAF couldn’t wait to kill it for 36 years???

Then why didn’t the Marines, NATO, Israel, South Korea, etc. never buy the A-10 in the first place? Fairchild marketed the A-10 overseas, but it never got any export orders.

The A-10 was designed to fill a role in Europe in the 1970s - stop a Soviet tank invasion head on. The US Army had AH-1 and M60 MBTs and a…

Why do you need a GAU-8 to kill a guy in a Toyota Hilux? But if you want a big gun (and lets be honest, who doesn’t?) we’ve got ya covered...

I’m well aware of the A-16 and the YA-7F; they were both part of the program to explore a possible A-10 replacement. Along with the gun pod, the A-16 had a fuselage mounted IR sensor called FalconEye that gave it some impressive night vision. The gun pod was a dud (NY ANG tried them out in the opening of Desert Storm…

What’s the loiter time of an intercontinental B-1B?

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Nope. No agenda there.

It cites an op-ed...which is basically a letter to the editor...about a USAF general - widely known for his gusto - who has been barred by the USAF from conducting business with the government because he used his influence to keep a dying…

A battery of Tor M1s would tear the shit out of any A-10 flight. Look into the S300 and S400 series; the later models are nightmare fuel.

We’ve been involved in 3 major counter-insurgencies in the past 50 years - two of which the A-10 participated in - Vietnam, Post-invasion Iraq 2003, and Afghanistan.

The Taliban is still a major political player in Afghanistan and Iraq is a mess with ISIL taking over portions of the country. The A-10 did not shift the…

I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in their Blackhawk helicopters...