Proud to say that I helped build the originals, working in the Farmingdale plant on Long Island, (once Republic Aviation). The production run would have been longer bit, as I got it through the grapevine, the Air Force was plumb fed up with the corruption and the unions in that plant. They weren’t wrong; I was there.
The wings I worked on were always overweight, because the machine tools they were milling the lower skins on were so bad. The new wings that Boeing built for them just have to be a whole lot better.
I have one other A10 story: Not too long after Desert Storm I was talking with a retired A-10 pilot. The comment I remember is: “Chad, it was like making war on your dog”. Without an form of air defense, the Iraqi armor was just so many practice targets. He said that a lot of the vehicles they shot up were unmanned. The crews had simply fled into the desert.