definitely durable, designed to fly with the loss of one half a wing. sounds like something I would need to fly.
I’ll never forget when the AF brought their simulator to town and I took my kid. He was in fourth grade. We both got in and he flew right to the mission destination and I was going around in circles. He could have been a navigator (ironic because that was his nickname when we went on adventures) but chose to be a dumbgrunt instead.
I was a little upset when I learned the Corps didn’t have A-10s. I don’t even think he got to see one on deployment. I used to watch them fly overhead when I was hanging out his diapers near Willow Grove. Got quiet during Desert Storm.
I used to see them flying out of Davis-Monthan when I spent some time in Tucson. After watching F-16s roar around in the pattern making more noise than you’d think a single-engine’d plane could ... the A-10s seemed to be silent as birds and almost hovering like a chopper. ;-)