A B-1 costs about $58,000 per flight hour, vs. $23,000 for an F-16, or $17,000 for an A-10.

This is nothing new. “Strategic” B-52s were hitting “tactical” targets (Republican Guard tanks) in 1991.

The last B-1B and F-16 were bought decades ago, what the hell does their per unit cost have to do with anything? Answer: not a goddamn thing. What matters are the effects.

In 2005, US Navy pilot Stanley Jones, son of a US Army officer and himself an F/A-18 pilot with combat experience over Afghanistan as well as a…

For the love of god, the Pentagon needs to stop building every plane in the inventory to fight a future war that will probably never happen

It will always be the Mk-1, human eye ball that will make it or break it in fighters!

- Reduce the RCS
- Massive lifting/control surfaces (the tail surface of the Raptor is greater than the wing area of an F-16)

He’s got the same intel Ben Carson had.

carries a hell of a lot more firepower allowing for sustained engagements much longer than the sleek f35

John Boyd also once told a room full of TOPGUN instructors (F-4 pilots with MiG kills) that it was impossible for the F-4 to kill a MiG-17.

A-10 takes hits, it’s going home. It’s not going to take hits and keep on fighting. Aside from the armor around the cockpit, it’s built from the same stuff as an F-16 or F-15E.

Hell, to that point, a B-1B can loiter for hours and has a way bigger payload than the F-15E. Two pilots decreases the workload and the toilet means they don’t have piddle packs to take up space.

- You will also have the extra bonus of “psychological warfare” . The Taliban are very familiar with A-10. They will stop messing with your infantry formation and try to bugger of ASAP in order to get rid of that flying beast.

Since a single A-10 can stay around 4 hours with a single refueling of gas just get a formation (4 planes) make them shifts in pairs, every 4 hour 2 Warthog switches in shifts, and with just 2 shifts you have 12 hours air cover right on your grunts.

Also, that’s what the JTAC was there for.

They had already taken casualties before the F-16s got the call; that was why they called for support in the first place.

Who said strafing was the most effective method? Even the A-10 delivers most of it’s firepower via PGMs nowadays.

Air operations conducted over Afghanistan since 2001
20,000 CAS sorties flown just last year alone.
One F-16 gets hit with a lucky shot, and you’re suddenly an air power expert having panic-shits about every aircraft that isn’t an A-10.

Oh yeah? Tell that to these guys...

F/A-18 during the day...

F-15Es were doing strafing runs as far back as 2002. The 4th FW even developed a night-time air-to-ground gunnery training curriculum for F-15E crews.

The only armor the A-10 has is around the cockpit. The rest of the aircraft is built from the same stuff as F-16s and F-15s.

The only aircraft built from titanium was the SR-71, but that was because of the metal’s ability to resist heat from Mach 3 flight.