To be fair, we must have total arial supremacy to operate A10s. Any enemy air at all is a no go for the hogs.
A water cooled Maxim gun,on the other hand, as long as it doesn’t really have to move and can advance a belt, strip a round from the belt, chamber it, fire, extract, and eject it without issue, would be more useful in this case than an A10 as long as there’s hostile air around
We have had air superiority and we plan to have it in the future.
We will not have air superiority if the enemy has something better than the F-22s and F-35s.
And if that were to happen nothing we have on land will be safe and nothing we have floating in the ocean will be safe.