I thought the A-10 was a relatively cheap aircraft. Lot of bang for the buck. They are going to replace it with an unproven plane that that costs multiples of what the warthog costs.
Exactly; their reasons don’t make sense. The replacement can’t protect helicopters. It is just not a close air support craft.
I am not sure how much that cost is exactly relevant here, as the A-10 was designed in the 70’s with most of the current fleet built in the 80’s. Costs for airplanes have changed a lot in the intervening 30 years.
I think an important, but neglected point is that the A-10 effectively replaced the by then worn out A-1 Skyraiders that had been designed for the Navy as multi-role strike craft (replacing both the Avenger and the Dauntless). The Airforce went to the Skyraider after they found the P-51 did a very bad job in close air support, and they had already removed the P-47s from the inventory.
I think we get 7 or 8 A-10’s for the price of 1 F-35.