Interesting. Always thought the “JUG” inspired the modern day A-10.
Without the A-10 there can be NO CME’s air support as we know it.
Sure fighter bombers can drop bombs and strafe targets but they’re so fragile they could be shot down by small arms fire.
It would take a hell of a lot of small arms fire or yet heavy machine gun fire to take out an A-10.
If the Air Force takes the A10 out of the inventory it will not only be a big mistake for the Air Force.It will also be a mistake that cost the lives of infantry on the ground and the pilots flying Aircraft not up to the capability of the A-10.
And Hanz Rudel was a hired consultant to Fairchild, who built the A-10.
There is a functional idiocy at work here in that the Air Force ‘owns’ all of the fixed wing combat jets not belonging to the USN and USMC. The A-10 should belong to the the force that uses it, the US Army. Like the USMC, the pilots who do ground support need to come out of the training and ethos of the ground troops to appreciate their vital need. NOT SAYING that those A-10 pilots have done anything but a good job, it is just that their bosses in the USAF tend to look strategically not tactically which is the role of the A-10.
The A-10 and its successors should belong to the Army, PERIOD! Given the trend to “Joint Basing” and shared resources, I fail to see why we should eliminate the capability in the A-10 because it does not match the future requirements of the USAF.
The B-25. Just look at their tails.
The parallels between the Ju-87 and the A-10 contiue deeper. The Ju-87 was outstanding in the permissive airspace of the Spanish Civil War and the invasion of Poland, but losses to Allied fighters were so great that it had no effect against the Allied invasion of Normandy.
Likewise, the A-10 is surpurb in Iraq and Afghanistan, but wasn’t goung to fare well in a Soviet full scale invasion of Europe or in a neer-peer future conflict.
It's worth noting that the Stuka had pretty well disappeared from the Luftwaffe by the time of the Normandy invasion. Its air-to-air capability was almost nil, and the Stukas got shot out of the sky by P-47s and P-51s.
While I'm in favor of the Air Force keeping the A-10, in a war against a "peer" air force such as Russian or Chinese, the A-10 wouldn't survive long unless protected by F-15s or F-22s. The A-10 can operate and survive only under conditions of air supremacy.
I prefer the IL-2 Sturmovik for comparison to the A-10, rather than the Stuka. The Stuka’s glory days were the Blitzkrieg when the Reich over-ran hopelessly out-matched enemies. I think the IL-2 was better at low flying strafing runs like the A-10, while the Stuka was basically just a dive bomber.
An interesting article but some what off the mark.
The A-10’s Statement of Work (SOW), what the AF wanted to achieve, mentioned replacing the A-1 in the Search-and-Rescue mission (Call Sign “Sandy”) and in the close air support mission supporting Special Operation Forces in Vietnam.
Probably the best source of the A-10’s historical background is “Muck” Brown. “Muck” started leading the charge to keep the A-10 on active duty starting in 1990. Some of his professional articles, not published in AF professional journals, mentioned the SOW and why the A-10 community needed to return to their roots.
Almost a quarter of a century later the A-10 is being saved from the boneyard at DM (for the third time) because nobody does it better.
NOTHING we have or will have is as rugged or can do the same job as the A-10. As someone pointed out, just one lucky shot can take out an F-15, 18, 22 or 35. It takes one very luck single shot to take out an A-10 and the pilot in his armored bath tub.
They do have problems working in areas of elevated ground levels such as the mountains of Afghanistan.
It would be stupid to cut out this paid for, recently upgraded, service life extended, low cost to operate, rugged, reliable and effective platform.
At $22 mm a copy the Embraer toy-COIN aircraft is more of a joke than it is already when compared to the A-10.