I hear ya. But I think the point about “retooling” is that if you have to go to the trouble of making A-10’s anew, you might as well put together something even better for the all the resources being spent.
We can’t build Saturn rockets for the same reason. So instead of retooling to make Saturn moon rockets, we’re better off making a better moon rocket.
Well, I can understand what you say to a point. However, the A-10 is a battle tested, battle proven weapon platform. It’s a, all the redundancies aside, a simple design. And should be relatively cheap in the overall scheme of things.
Sure talk (only) to the the guys that fly and maintain it and ask them: “I you could improve on this airframe, what would you want?”