Helicopters will be forward based at unimproved airfields, so they don’t need as much of a loiter time, because time on station will be so much shorter.

I was really only using the Mavericks because that’s what the other guy was harping on about. The APKWS will be nice, but will also likely be easier to integrate onto the A-10 since its already able to carry the dumb-fire version right now. AFAIK the A-10 and O/V-10 Bronco are the only fixed wing planes in USAF…

Where do you get this stuff? I know several A-10 pilots with combat experience and all of them say the gun is their primary weapon especially for CAS

I think their are two definitions of cas. Contested airspace and close air support. The fighter bombers are for the former, attack aircraft are for the later. The a10 isn’t to clear the airspace, it’s supporting ground troops

I can post isolated incidents of aircraft doing CAS causing friendly fire too! Oh look, here is an article about F-16 committing a friendly fire attack. Here is an AH-64 blowing up a friendly M-113. This time it’s a B-1B. Then there is that time a B-52 bombed a hill held by an American Special Forces team. An AC-130…

For the same cost of each F-35's hour of flight, we can pay for 2.5 A-10 flight hours. On top of that the F-35 can only carry 4 mavericks(they don’t fit in the internal bay and only 4 of the 6 external hardpoints can carry them), vs the A-10's 6. So now, instead of 12 mavericks(I rounded down, since you can’t have…

Drones won’t be used for close support for political reasons and attack helicopter have a very low mission capable rate (friend is a very busy apache mechanic), cost more to maintain and are significantly less survivable. The a10 doesn’t just have one great cas trait...it has them all and for an amazingly low price…

Well attack helicopter loiter time is lousy, and the other two don’t do low and slow, or land without an improved runway so...not really.

On the search for the dearly departed Rogoway.

I still maintain that the key reason is that the F-16 conformal tanks are ugly as sin, and we need a cool looking air force.

I shouldn’t have laughed at that, but I did anyway.

If this was Russia, they would have dropped this unguided pod into a civilian area and killed 27 people.

Too bad Rogoway ain’t here anymore. He would have loved that one!

The Answer is always Super Hornet...

Relax. Tyler was great and we’re all going to miss him. But a replacement hasn’t been hired yet. Collins is literally the main guy from a blog called Truck Yeah! I thoroughly enjoyed this post.