I'm glad Ukrainian forces have not been forced to fight with A10s.
A10s are obsolete and would not be able to stand up to Russia's modern Air Force. A10s would be worthless against everyone and everything.
I read that just recently.
Well, A-10s do require air superiority, which is definitely not the case.
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
They don’t scare the Chinese and are of limited utility (unlike Swiss Army knives). According to the SEC USAF.
A10’s would be useful substitutes for SU-25’s.
They are very similar aircraft built to the same spec for the same role.
Both sides have used a lot of SU-25’s in this war. And both sides have lost dozens of them.
They use them because neither has anything better, under the tactical circumstances.
The USAF can shape better circumstances and use different aircraft and munitions for this role.
A10’s would be very vulnerable to the Russian SAM umbrella.
That makes them useless beyond the immediate edge of the battlefield, just like the ex-Soviet SU-25’s. And they would risk high casualties even then.
They would be useful where the opposition has much less formidable air defense. More or less what was once called a COIN role - counterinsurgency. The A-10 is a formidable COIN aircraft.