I couldn't agree more: the army SHOULD take them if left in the boneyard, it's just a whole other left of REMFs that would take an already existing effective program, scrap it, and rebuild it from the ground up for what would be little more than a shuffle of paperwork so the AF could get another shiny "jeeeeeeeet." I also agree that they're not indestructible, but you fly the airframe appropriate to the mission. Akin to not bringing a knife to a gun fight, you don't bring an A10 to an AOR saturated with MANPADS, and SAM's. That said when we get into a sticky situation on the ground, the roar of the GAU-8 the cure for what ails you. I'm not advocating using it blindly, I am however saying it does WELL what many others simply aren't built to do in the "all around" attack modes.
Agree. In the Fulda Gap days, the heavy IADS was exactly where the A-10 was going to go in order to kill tanks and other armor.....armor supported by Air Defense Artillery travelling with them such as ZSUs, SA-13s, etc. So even back then, the A-10 was going to be in the middle of it, hence the low rate of total missions for the individual pilot. Since then, we've operated pretty permissively, and have done it well. I just believe that even though individual A-10 pilots see the value and importance of the CAS mission as more than just dropping a bomb on a set of coordinates that some ground troop called in; Big Blue will still never be convinced. Hence why the Army needs to take over responsibility for covering/supporting
their own troops on the ground, like the USMC does, and be given the tools to do so, that being the A-10. How they then make that happen (or fail to), will be their responsibility, and not the USAFs.
As for age, well you're not wrong, but the B52's are still kicking for one simple fact...IF IT AINT BROKE DON"T FIX IT. It's a cost effective work horse filling a niche, and doing it with gusto. The AF fighter mafia has been around forever and the A10 has always been the bastard step child of the force, but it still works, and it still works well. It seems a viable compromise to free up a whiz bang super cruise blah blah blah to do their primary missions, and keep the airborne artillery watching over us on the ground where it belongs
The one thing the B-52 has going for it though, is that although the newest H-model -52 is a 1961 model, the airframes aren't truly that old. Unlike the tired D and G model B-52s, which came home tired and beat up from Vietnam and Desert Storm (for the Gs), the H-model B-52s that are currently all we have, spent the balance of their lives during those times sitting nuclear alert at CONUS bases, never having served in those conflicts. D's were retired in 1984, and G's in 1994, both very tired from their work; while Hs only started getting active in the late 1990s versus sitting their alert. So the jets aren't truly
that old, even though their actual age is.
A-10s however, have been getting worked to death practically. The Hog Up wing modifications have helped, but the overall airframes are fairly tired just from utilization rate, with the newest A-10 being 1982, and the oldest being 1978 (the '75-'77 models were retired just after Desert Storm). Barring more airframe mods of some kind, which there is no money for anyway, the $$$ will be costly to keep it going [truly, another reason to give them to the Army....make it their problem, fiscally speaking
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