Plenty of guys over there agree that the Hog is a modern Stuka. They’re both impressive, have intimidating reputations, make a scary sound, and too vulnerable to operate without air supremacy.
And the Air Force agrees. In Desert Storm, the A10s had to hunt SCUDS in the desert because they were getting murdered by Iraqi anti-air.
I mean, I could see the A-10 being useful in a near-peer conflict unmanned piloted by a remote drone operator in a swarm of covering/scout drones with purposefully worse radar/heat signatures.
The remote drone operator could fly the A-10 employing a nuanced strategy of “Fuck As Much Shit Up As I Can In The Shortest Amount Of Time Until I Get Blown Up” (not gonna write that acronym out, but trust me it is in plenty of DOD whitepapers) military strategy developed by Henry Kissinger during his time at the Rand Corporation. The idea wouldn’t really be to take too many airframes home, but if it is WW3 than I mean who is worrying about retirement!
I’m fairly certain that if A10s were deployed in Ukraine, Zelenskyy would be in Moscow by now.
… I feel like you could take out a an A-10 with just shoulder launched AA missiles? I would much prefer to be a helicopter in a high threat environment than an A-10 since you can more easily hide behind terrain as cover. I mean really, the difference between life an death is going to be the couple degrees of cover given by a ridge you get from hovering as absolutely close as you can to the ground as you get ready to launch a TOW… you don’t want to be an airplane in that kind of environment unless you are really fucking fast.
Nonsense, the Hog will take any missile like a champ and keep flying. Have faith!
