...and they don’t want to fly the A-10s, nor let the Army have them.
“......and they don’t want to fly the A-10s, nor let the Army have them.”
The public perception persists, that the A-10 is some miracle machine that USAF is wilfully under-utilizing. Not the case.
The A-10 is an overspecialized design from the late 1960s, reaching the end of a service life that cannot be extended much further. Its avionics cannot be upgraded to modern modular digitized systems, so it cannot be integrated into any network-centric employment concept (conceded by anyone who knows, to be the road ahead). Its night capabilities are very limited.
It can haul a decent warload, but it is slow and short-legged. Despite all the spectacular footage of battle-damaged A-10s limping back to base, survivability is already severely in doubt in the modern battlespace, and worsens month by month. The most-admired subsytem on board, the GAU-8 30mm gun, is the least-capable, shortest-range system of all.
A-10s performed a small minority of close air support sorties in Afghanistan. The largest fraction in relation to the number of airframes deployed was performed by B-1Bs: very long loiter time, coupled with extremely large individual munitions capacity, coupled with the shortest response time of any platform. Just sweep back the wings to 65 degrees and dash at high speed to the troops in trouble.
And USAF cannot give the A-10 to the Army. By public law, the Army is barred from owning and operating fixed-wing warplanes.