Retiring their A-10's is a foolish move. It hearkens back to the 1960's when they fought the army in regards to not providing them with a helicopter that could support ground troops with both loitering aircraft armed and capable of going into hot LZs. They want to dump the premier ground support aircraft that is able to survive low altitude ground support activities when facing ground attack when doing so. Their new F-35 which is still lagging behind the expectations they had for it both for aerial combat and ground support survivability and is thought by even some of it supporters as a non competitive ground support aircraft due to its higher speed and inability to sustain substantial damage and still survive while providing substantial ground support to troops on the ground. It comes down to attempting to create an aircraft that can do everything. It does something well and other things poorly. They opted for better aerial combat versus combat ability when providing ground support. Add to that the cost of upgrading the A-10's to a higher level or even possibly contracting for new A-10's with the same survivability characteristics but adding in newer technology to even improve them would still be more cost effective than losing F-35's in a ground support role. The problem is they ar so married to the one aircraft ideology that they refuse to look at a plan for new or fully refurbished and updated A-10's that could in the long run save them money. As always with the AF they want a super high tech aircraft but refuse to fully look at the KISS of using A-10's for their one specific purpose of ground support which they are supreme at and the F-35's are marginal in.
Retiring their A-10's is a foolish move. It hearkens back to the 1960's when they fought the army in regards to not providing them with a helicopter that could support ground troops with both loitering aircraft armed and capable of going into hot LZs. They want to dump the premier ground support aircraft that is able to survive low altitude ground support activities when facing ground attack when doing so. Their new F-35 which is still lagging behind the expectations they had for it both for aerial combat and ground support survivability and is thought by even some of it supporters as a non competitive ground support aircraft due to its higher speed and inability to sustain substantial damage and still survive while providing substantial ground support to troops on the ground.
It comes down to attempting to create an aircraft that can do everything. It does something well and other things poorly. They opted for better aerial combat versus combat ability when providing ground support.
Add to that the cost of upgrading the A-10's to a higher level or even possibly contracting for new A-10's with the same survivability characteristics but adding in newer technology to even improve them would still be more cost effective than losing F-35's in a ground support role. The problem is they ar so married to the one aircraft ideology that they refuse to look at a plan for new or fully refurbished and updated A-10's that could in the long run save them money.
As always with the AF they want a super high tech aircraft but refuse to fully look at the KISS of using A-10's for their one specific purpose of ground support which they are supreme at and the F-35's are marginal in.