The A-10 is going away. Probably the youngest airframes out there are pushing 40 years old or older and they have been used A LOT over the last twenty years. Only so much upgrading and rebuilding you can do on that sort of aircraft. It isn’t a mere go up and come down bomb hauler.
There is going to be a big capability gap. The fastest helicopters are a 150 to 200 mph slower than the A-10 or one of those light attack aircraft. That means it takes them a long time to get there. All the gee whiz stuff that can be launched from an F-16 or an F-35 doesn’t mean much if it is thirty miles away topping off with a tanker before coming back to the fight. Gee whiz stuff doesn’t help too much with that guy who popped up twenty seconds ago and is now shooting at you from behind cover and will continue to do so until someone can drop some ordnance on him.
The idea of a relatively fast ordnance hauler that could get there quickly and then loiter long enough to deal with the inevitable targets of opportunity is appealing. Is the A-10 better? Sure, but’s it’s going away and they are not going to put money in the budget to restart production or design a replacement. This light attack deal was an attempt to get a lower cost solution with off the shelf technology.
Last edited by JoeBob; 02/13/20.
