“Give the A-10 to the Marines, we are used to cast offs
and will put them to good use.”
Don’t know how workable that is in the real world, but the Warthog has always seemed to have a Marine like toe to toe, brawler appeal.
The Marines would not have them since they insist all their aircraft be able to sort of take off nearly vertically on sort of rough strips with sort of a payload for near the front line deployment.
It was the Marines insistence on this stuff that got us the fouled up F-35 and all of its compromises.
The Harrier was an OK airplane if you did not expect to use it in the intended configuration very much.