That's not really true. The A-10 was designed to destroy tanks in Europe. CAS was always a secondary role.
>If you have air superiority you need a good bomb truck a lot more useful than a stealth fighter.
If that's the argument then the right thing to do is retire the A-10 and reactivate some B-1s.
>What were the other 80% of CAS missions carried out by? What % of aircraft deployed were A10s? That 20% figure needs more to back it up.
>Eighty percent of CAS missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have been conducted not by the A-10, but by an array of other aircraft, including AC-130’s, F-15E’s, F-16’s, MQ-1’, B-52’s, and yes, the B-1.
http://blogs.cfr.org/davidson/2014/05/20/if-the-air-force-ha...
The thrust of the article is correct. The reason people don't want to see the A-10 retired is the Air Force doesn't have a lot of credibility when it comes to CAS.
I used to have a link to a chart with percentages, but I can't find it.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/a-10... https://web.archive.org/web/20110317113904/http://www.lockhe...
The A10 is still good at CAS that's what it was designed to do. 1 A10 caries a much, much larger bomb load than an F35. If you have air superiority you need a good bomb truck a lot more useful than a stealth fighter.
What were the other 80% of CAS missions carried out by? What % of aircraft deployed were A10s? That 20% figure needs more to back it up.