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To: I cannot think of a name

That would also be anyone who had anything to do with the A-10’s spiritual progenitor, the IL-2 Shturmovik. Early two seat IL-2s had the same idea - armor for pilot, none for backseater. Let’s just say this turned out to be a horrible idea and that nobody who saw the results was at all inclined to try that again. And in the 70s, there were still people in the West German government who had fought on the Eastern Front of the ETO who had seen the results of that idea first hand. Neither the Russians nor Germans were interested in repeating that.

But yes, titanium is a fungible material these days, if a bit expensive - but most of the expense these days is due to how hard the stuff is to work and form and not rarity of availability. I mean, they even make gearshift knobs and, er, ‘adult toys’ from the stuff now.


124 posted on 10/21/2019 6:46:29 AM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: Spktyr
I think the problem was size. Casting wasn't an option as one bullet would cause the whole thing to split. Seems like (the memory gets fuzzy over the years) there was only one vendor and they did some kind of ‘open forging’ that was expensive as heck and eventually the environmentalist or OSHA shut them down from doing it. I saw one of these things sitting on the ground at Hagerstown once, and it was impressive looking.
127 posted on 10/21/2019 7:40:32 AM PDT by I cannot think of a name
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