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With regards to your F-15 and A-10 time and your friend's, my jealousy cup runneth over! And, fwiw, I think the A-10 is a very handsome machine. To be truly ugly, something just about has to be British, with the notable exceptions of the Spitfire and the Vulcan.

Perhaps you can answer something for me. The Powers That Be want to phase the A-10 out and maybe use it for FAC while replacing it with the F-16. The argument is that faster is better, even though it is softer. WTF, over? My money's on the A-10. Care to compare?

>>Perhaps you can answer something for me. The Powers That Be want to phase the A-10 out and maybe use it for FAC while replacing it with the F-16. The argument is that faster is better, even though it is softer. WTF, over? My money's on the A-10. Care to compare?>>

Yes. Quickly.

The A-10 was originally designed to be a close air support (CAS) aircraft that was dedicated to killing Soviet tanks. The gun on the A-10 is unmatched and does that job quite well—see Gulf War.

The A-10 is being used as a airborne FAC right now. The A-10, with its long loiter time and slower speed allow it to stay in the target area, find targets, mark them and then call in the “fast jets” to “hit my smoke.” However, what usually happens is the A-10 finds targets and kills them, and only stops killing them when the “fast jet” shows up for “one pass, haul ass.” Not very efficient. For example, during the Gulf War and as a ground FAC with the 101st, I was working a 4-ship of A-10’s. They were beating the beejesus outta the target. The A-10’s dropped bunches of Mark-82’s and had a full load of 30mm to share. Then two F-16’s showed up, and the conversation went like this: “Antidote five-zero, this is Viper 22, two Mark 84’s, 5-minutes play time.” Great, I thought, two bombs and no time to hang around. I called the A-10’s and had them hold high and dry as I passed GPS coordinates to the F-16’s. The F-16’s swooped by, dropped their load in one pass, and left. Not much to shape the ground war. So I called the original A-10’s back into the target area and they continued to beat the piss outta the Iraqi’s. Point being, the Powers That Be wanted to kill the A-10 pre-Gulf War. Why? Because as a single mission aircraft (CAS) isn’t very versatile like a multi-mission F-16. However, the Gulf War demonstrated the A-10 was very effective and therefore we couldn’t very well retire them. So, we decided to retire the OV-10A “Bronco” and replace it with the OA-10. The Powers that Be know we need more A-10 type aircraft but they can’t find the bucks to buy more/upgrade. So they place their bets on multi-mission aircraft, hoping they can do the job in some small way. And besides, the CAS mission is now blurred between helo’s and fixed wing. It is a complicated subject.

Now, it used to be axiomatic that “speed is life,” but that only applies if you are an interceptor or doing sustained air-to-air engagements or fighting AAA/SAM’s. The maneuverability of the A-10, combined with its triple-redundant systems, gives it staying power---even when hit, and given the fact we usually have air supremacy, the A-10 is the perfect weapon.

That’s all on the subject for now.