Aircraft/Spacecraft/Aviation Thread

I'm divided on its role. By the way, the Air Force has delayed indefinitely the retirement of the A-10. 

Every test the F-35 has been used in has been a resounding success. And with the advent of other Strike Fighters like the F-15E and F-18E/F, the A-10 is obsolescent; it fulfills a specialist role (ground attack) in which it obviously excels, but the case of mission redundancy comes in; why do you need a ground attack platform for tank busting when a multirole-mission capable fighter can do the same thing with current technology (with added benefits including greater speed, range, weight capacity, and the ability to transition to an air superiority role as the mission is needed)? It's the same issue the Raptor is facing, though the Raptor has the benefit of being designed specifically for Air Dominance, which isn't a mission that will likely go away. It goes into states of periodic dormancy, though come the fight or potential for a fight, and Raptors are in the air to take out all opponents in BVR strike long before the opponent would even know someone else is in the air.

The A-10 is useful because it can be maintained on station in orbit around a combat center much more efficiently than an Apache or Viper, has a greater payload capacity than either, and can quickly divert from one target to the next. But as I said, with the tech you can put on a Strike Eagle or Super Hornet or the new Lightning, the A-10 just doesn't have the same necessity anymore. It's not a matter of how effective at the job it is, it's that the job itself just isn't necessary anymore.

But I will say that having a Warthog CAS mission overhead in the Korengal Valley was always a terrific sight. I can vouch for its effectiveness personally.