“And what is stopping an A10 from using precision weapons?
At one third to one fifth the price we could flood the zone.”
Nothing, however there’s also nothing particularly great about the A-10 as a CAS platform either. Its 30mm gun is optimized for killing tanks, not terrorists.
If you want low, slow dedicated 30mm antipersonnel CAS I recommend the Apache. On the other hand, the F-16 carries a wide variety of precision ordinance, can respond more quickly on the battlefield, is cheaper to fly, and also performs air-to-air roles.
The A-10 is an outdated tank killer that would be toast in short order on the modern battlefield against even second-tier opponents.
Then design a purpose built “cheap” ISIS killer. Do we really need an entire fleet of fifth generation when the grunt work will be killing terrorists for the next 100 years.