The Shrine

So I was just talking to my coworkers about the A-10 and I figure working on the defense industry they ought to know this stuff more than the average joe. So I'm a guy that believes A-10 should be retired and those guys all oppose it, and when asked about the survivability of a plane built 30 years ago that flies very slowly in modern field they're all talking about how A-10 has this armor that can withstand anything. I swear those guys are thinking of a Gundam or Metal Gear or something. If you have material that can withstand a modern SAM head on then you wouldn't need to put that on a plane. Just put it on a tank and roll over anything because it's not like an anti-air missile is fundamentally different from any kind of precision ammunition (probably less payload but if something is strong enough to keep a plane alive against a missile that's like Gundamium level of durability). Yes, A-10 can take hits from anti-aircraft GUNS or very old MANPADS that miss half of the time even if you took no defensive measures, but pretty much anything modern is going to make a short work of a plane if it gets a lock on it. Of course if you're fighting guys who can't fight back then a drone gets the job done just fine for much cheaper and less risk. For the most part planes are not supposed to trade hits with ground based weaponry because you're just going to lose about 99% of the time, which is why stealth is a big thing. I'd say people get their idea of war from say, StarCraft, but only capital ships can reliably trade hits with ground based stuff and I'm pretty sure nobody is going to mistaken an A-10 for a Protoss Carrier or Terran Battlecruiser.

I guess A-10 is celebrated since it's got a huge gun that blows up things, except it's not exactly the most accurate weapon so it might just totally blow up your own guys, not to mention the kind of war USA has been fighting generally requires them to check 25 times to make sure they really blew up the right guy or they risk some kind of international incident, so just spraying a giant gatling cannon isn't the best way to fight these wars. The evolution of modern air warfare tends to be more of a special ammo deal since anything that can use the latest missiles can blow up things just fine and it's obviously a lot safer to shoot missiles from something that's faster than something that's slower.

It's probably nostalgia. I remember being a fighter jet fanboy when I was a kid after Top Gun came out. I remember having a metal A-10 "Warthog" model that I thought was super-cool.

I saw an article saying Americans have an obsession with guns. Even though we're in the era of missiles where you just click on something and it blows up, Americans still love their big guns which are pretty much never used from the air anymore because missiles do it a lot more reliably and safely. The article interviewed some A-10 pilot and it was like the guy had 20 tank kills with missiles and 10 tank kills with the gun in Operation Desert Storm and the missiles just totally blow everything up in one hit while the gun obviously still takes a few shot to blow up a tank, but the guy still totally swear that it was the gun that was the best part of the A-10. I mean, I guess it's kind of cool to shoot at stuff with a big gun when you're not in danger of dying but if USA actually fought countries that can fight back you would definitely prefer to shoot stuff with missiles from further away than a gun. Of course if you want to use missiles then the plane itself almost doesn't matter very much aside from capacity since missiles have great range.

Though I'm not sure how people can miss the fact that modern missiles can easily destroy a plane. I mean the Chinese are working on a carrier killing missile and apparently people think there are planes that can take a direct hit from a modern missile and just shrug it off like a Metal Gear. If this kind of material existed you would just use it to make, well, Metal Gears.

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