These planes are going to be for the Afghan Air Force. They’ll be flying low and slow to provide ground support, so I think one of the main considerations would be how much damage they can take from ground fire and still get the job done. This article doesn’t really address that issue. Obviously, there’s politics involved in awarding the contract to an American company.
How many times has The Afghan military killed American dossiers in the last year. Why are we going to give them ANY attack aircraft?
Autocorrect,,, that’s American soldiers