Exactly - fighting Mid-East dictators and terrorists with a super-expensive F-35 is like chopping fire-wood with a samurai sword.
So we need $850 million per year to maintain the existing fleet of ships for five years. Obola has been running annual deficits of $1,000,000 PER YEAR for years and years. And they can't find that small amount of money to fulfill the most basic requirement of government -- national defense?
Obola and his democrat henchmen (and many Republicans in cahoots) make me sick. This is an almost trivial amount of money at the national level to maintain the most effective close support gunship ever built. It is perfectly designed for wiping out our muslim enemies in the ME.
“In a sane world, they’d be building more of these or coming up with a modern, low-cost replacement.”
The forum might consider thinking in something besides pre-radar terms. In the historical timeline, that means pre-WWII terms. Pre-1937, in fact.
The industry cannot build more A-10s, because the original production machinery has been dismantled, and Republic (initial prime contractor) has been out of business almost 30 years. Rebuilding all the physical plant would cost more than anyone wants to spend. Probably not feasible anyway: manufacturing processes have changed in the past 40 years. Aircraft design has changed so much it would not matter, it would be pointless to build them the old way.
“Low-cost replacements” are always yearned for but are just not worth it - if one wants superior capability, one pays. End of discussion.
Certainly, A-10s - on the chopping block, but not gone yet - should be thrown into action if that’s what’s available, and thanks to the drawdowns precious little else is.
USAF selected the A-10 for inactivation because it is rapidly becoming insupportable, in a day-to-day logistics sense. Rather less glamorous than performance in action, but ultimately just as final as any direct hit. One cannot fly without engines, wires, cables, rivets, screws, tires, control knobs, ball bearings etc. And if one cannot fly, one cannot get to the fight.
The A-10 suffers from other limitations that degrade performance in modern combat. It predates modularity, so its avionics are far more costly to upgrade - when upgrade is possible at all, and the chances for such shrink daily. It hasn’t any night vision capabilities, no terrain following systems, none of the digital communications systems that enable more modern systems to coordinate actions more effectively. Upgrading - if possible, a result by no means assured - would take time and cost more than for newer systems, which have such capabilities designed in from the start.
The argument that the A-10 tolerates battle damage and keeps working better than modern systems is unverifiable. DoD keeps records on all of this stuff and almost all are classified.
Even if that were not the case, ever since air combat began before WWI aircraft designers have explicitly recognized this principle: it is better (not to mention easier) to avoid being hit than to take hits and keep flying/fighting. This principle has been verified, and gets reaffirmed in each new engagement.
All the fuss about armor and the like contain less substance than hot air: adding armor is an ill-considered afterthought, a desperation ploy, a losing proposition because armor is dead weight. It means fuel that cannot be carried, bombs and bullets that have to be left at the base. Lower chances for mission success.
Much admiration is occasioned by the A-10’s GAU-8 30mm gun, and it is quite spectacular. But it’s the least capable weapon the airplane carries. Other munitions far outrange the gun, and afford a higher kill probability per pound of ordnance expended.
And the Air Force cannot give the A-10s to the Army: by law, the Army cannot have fixed wing combat aircraft. Of a certainty, the A-10 has accomplished impressive performances, and has saved the tails of a number of ground troops; but those troops are impressed only by what they can see. The perspective of a footsoldier is pretty narrow; there can be a lot more going on than his/her 10 linear feet of the front line. Aircraft can save him/her, or hit something else miles (or continents) distant, that will not only save the individual footsoldier, but thousands of them.
Is the forum that certain, that it wishes to give veto power over every weapons system everywhere, to the footsoldier?
Yep - no better close, in your face support aircraft. Was at Myrtle Beach in the late '70s when the transitioned from the A-7 to the A-10 - awesome piece of equipment with good survivability traits - 35, or so, years old and still relevant.