The military is doing it again. Just like we still have the B-52 flying around, so will the A-10. The A-10 is a wonderful aircraft to fly but never did serve its' true purpose in battle. Yes, it has been involved in major conflicts in the Middle East but it proved to be a sitting target for ground-to-air missles.
The military relalized this long before the crisis errupted in the sands of Arbrian desert but they used them anyway. We lost both aircraft and flight crews to there stupidy. Why do you think the Soviets withdrew there SU-25 from Afganistan?
Instead of wasting lives and dollars on this aircraft we should be developing ground attack UCAVs. This is the wave of the furture not only from the cost per airframe but also lives saved.

Originally posted by flycatch
The A-10 is a wonderful aircraft to fly but never did serve its' true purpose in battle.

I'm sorry?

Could you please point out how it was not used for "its' true purposein battle?" I must have missed that part.

I seem to remember a high number of Tornado loses on runway interdiction being shoot down by AAA and SAM batteries to the point those missions were halted.

But I can't say that I've heard there were high loss rates with the A-10 when used in its tank busting role where it performed a steller role against Iraqi armored formations.

Many did take hits but still got their pilots home as they were designed to do.

In a low intensity enviroment like counter- insurgency (coin) I can not think of a better platform than the A-10, It'd be very much like the A-1E skyraider of the Vietnam era in that role.

I know the article refers to CAS which is much higher intensity than COIN, but COIN is whats happening in Iraq and Afganistan now.

A-10 was orignanlly an anti-armor/tank aircraft. Today it fill roles chasing down bad guys in valleys cities etc.. its almost a Special Operations aircraft.

All USAF aircraft are in constant state of being upgraded and improved at all times. You would be amazed.

For instance the F-15 of today is like a Viper off of battle star galactica when compared to the orignal F-15. The flight chracteristics are still similar but the avionics and weapon deployment capabilites are insanely better.

That is why comparing the F-15 airframe to a China J-10 is silly. New engines new avionics etc.. make the f-15 of today a state of the art high tech aircraft capable of shooting probably any aircraft out of the sky at severly long range. It only lacks the stealthyness of newer aircraft such as the F-22 has.

Take an old 1967 Camaro and rebuild everything except the body itself with state of the art 2004 Cadilac type parts and you can start to get an idea why calling F-15 and A-10's old is just silly.

also we have not lost many A-10 and ucavs are good for their stealth because they are much harder to detect that the A-10 also they use the B-52 because it can drop huge amounts of bombs and its old so who cares if they get destroyed and what would you rather have B-2 dropping bombs in Afghanistan id take the B-52.

Gentlemen, all I wanted to point out is everything we do in procurement of military hardware is based upon dollars. If we can save dollars by not replacing the whole machine we do it. This is why we have so many variations of the same model.
Take a look at the KC-135 tanker. How many time has it been reengined and reskined to increase it's longevity. I no becuause I scheduled them to depot maintenance to have this accomplished. This was only done to save the airforce money. Now you have the KC-10 to supplement the KC-135 fleet. The B-52 went through the same process.
As for the A-10 don't believe what you read and hear. Excellent airplane is long as no one is shooting back, wether from the air or ground. You may beaware of this but at one time they were being used at the National Training Center for ground support training roles. Because of what I just stated about them being sitting targets they have since been withdrawn and replaced with F-16 ground attack aircraft for this role. Someone with more knowledge agrees with me.

well you cant have a stealth air to ground fighter what do you people want the airplane flies low so it is venerable to sams and the airplane carries a lot of ordinance so its not stealthy you are just to picky the A-10 is a good aircraft.