If it can take 1/10 the damage that an A-10 can I’d be surprised. A-10’s work and have a mission record to grossly prove it. If they need a local tactical aircraft, they should stick to the overall A-10 design and just build new ones of those. A-10’s would probably come in no more than 30-40% over this crafts unit cost, and that’s not considering that the tooling and stuff associated with the A-10’s original production run is probably still lying around.
If it isn’t broke, but your taxpayers are, DON’T fix it...
My instinct is to agree with you. I thought the same basic thing about turning the Wisconsin, Missouri and New Jersey into museums. There is nothing that compares with that kind of survivability and firepower in our arsenal.
Hate to tell you, but Congress ordered the A-10 tooling destroyed after the Gulf War. There will never be any more A-10s.
~If it can take 1/10 the damage that an A-10 can I’d be surprised. ~
Bingo, leave these toy shturmoviks to the Third World where it belongs.
Let them hunt narcos and their own civilians with these things. It won’t survive a single CAS mission against real soldiers or well-equipped rebels.