Actually, it has not been survivable for over thirty years. During the Cold War talk between Apache and Warthog pilots was which of the two platforms (AH-64 vs A-10) would survive the longest if the Soviets ever came streaming through the Fulda Gap.
I am not saying the A-10 is useless. It is a very effective weapon ...just that against a credible opponent (i.e. not Somalia, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Libya, Panama, Grenada) like China it is useless. Well, I guess I am saying it is useless against a non third-world opponent.
Let me tell you what my prayer is. That the great minds who form US military policy are strategic thinkers, rather than people who crow and fluff themselves over past US victories and think everything is ok. Those past US victories have been due to superior weapons used by the US forces, superior strategies, superior support, superior situational awareness. Superior people. They have also been against countries that are simply not formidable! Take Iraq ...a very poor IADS (the KARI system was a mix of Soviet and French SAM systems aimed at preventing a repeat of the Israeli and Iranian air attacks against the Osirak reaction ...yet even that poor SAM system managed to shoot down dozens of Allied aircraft and required proper planning to take it down), an airforce that was largely limited to short-range missiles and lacking even radar-warning receivers to warn the pilot of a radar lock, and strategies out of 1960s USSR. Or Somalia? Skinny half-starved people high on khat and shooting like their bullets will be guided by Allah. Or Afghanistan? Grenada? Panama?
The US will not always be fortunate to fight against third-world powers. The world is changing, and in the future you will see countries like China and Russia start to exert themselves, and lower powers like Indonesia and Pakistan possess area-denial weapons. Already, looking at China, the entire South China Sea is literally a no-go zone for ANY known US asset apart from the Virginia class, Seawolf and Ohio submarines. No air asset can operate there - not even the vaunted F-22 (a scenario gamed by DARPA showed the fueling tankers getting shot down and the Raptors running out of fuel and crashing into the sea). This is now - in 15 years the Chinese IADS and area-denial will only get better.
Hence my prayer. That the military minds with actual power have the force of will and strategic thought to look at current and future threats rather than wanking at the A-10. The A-10 requires a totally sanitized IADS environment otherwise it is dead! There is a reason it has all those redundancies - because in anything but a sanitized environment it is simply a target.
The only way the US will stay ahead is by taking upcoming threats seriously. This may end up with the US overestimating the threat and thus having weapons that are far better than what the adversary has (e.g. how the MiG-25 was misread as a Soviet superfighter and made the inception of the F-15 much easier; or how the Alfa submarines and their vaunted titanium hulls made the US come up with the Sealwolf supersub), but it is far better to overestimate than to underestimate.
It is better to be working on a 6th generation fighter when the rest of the world is trying to catch up on 5th gen, rather than to bow before the A-10 when it is a useless piece of equipment in any airspace that is not third-world.
Russia and China can knock down A-10’s in their airspace, but both have weaknesses in projecting force into the areas that the U.S. cares about.
The U.S. isn’t invading Russia or China.
Ever.
There simply aren’t U.S. interests there.
For that matter, geopolitical decisions and priorities are changing.
Russia doesn’t gain anything from invading Europe. It would in fact lose its largest customer of natural gas and have to prop up Greeks who refuse to work.
China isn’t invading its biggest customer, the U.S.
...and every U.S. oil well that gets fracked means that Africa diminishes in importance for the U.S.
What the world is coming to is a point where the regional and Super-Powers only need to project force into lawless badlands or into the occasional invaded minor country.
Russia is an oil exporter. China is an oil importer. The U.S. is headed toward oil neutrality in the next 5 years.
Which is to say, the major geopolitical goals of the world’s largest powers no longer clash.
China has some issues with Taiwan and India. Handled properly there won’t be another global war.
Just regional wars or war-flashes.
...and that means more and more drones. Zap. There goes another bad guy, and they aren’t putting up many IED’s in the sky to fight back.
They’ve got small arms, and the new main battle tanks can dispatch with them.
Dude Chill out! I only used the A-10 as an example of 1 weapon that can be used against a tank! Yes it’s old and out dated but I’m sure there is a new weapon system that will make this wonderful new tank obselete!
I do know which seat I’d rather be sitting in though! LOL