The way to hit an unsophisticated target like that is come at them out of the sun. They won't see or hear you coming.

The problems is that the F-35's ground attack capacity is better suited to destory large hardened targets such as latest MBTs fielded by Russia and China, rather than the small, numerous and arguably unsophisticated technicals or the proverbial dude running with an RPG. It will cost several times more and does not work as well.

Frankly the 1963 B-52Hs are extremely effective at that mission. They can drop enough munitions to level a medium sized city WITHOUT nukes.

For sure. The "flying bomb truck" has looped back around to being extremely powerful for current engagements against insurgents. The F35 is indeed one of those... it just costs 100x more than it should.

While you're doing that, everyone else (who aren't, incidentally, in line with you and the sun) should be firing full auto at a point in front of your aircraft so you fly through a cloud of bullets.

It's pretty hard to do a deflection shot against a target moving 500 mph that you have maybe a second or two to line up on.

They'd be going slower than that for a ground attack. Also, "In the Korean War, our Air Force lost 259 jet aircraft and 285 other aircraft to combined small arms and air defense fire, which is nearly five times as many aircraft that were lost in air-to-air combat. In South Vietnam, we lost 410 fixed-wing aircraft and 2,100 helicopters. In the Mideast War, 36 coalition aircraft were shot down by ground fire." [1].

[1] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/f...

Sure, but the NK and NV armies did have good anti-aircraft setups, likely much more effective than relatively untrained fighters with a weapon designed to shoot at other people with.

Richthofen in WW1 was brought down by a single shot from a rifle, but that is widely considered to be a freak shot.

Nevertheless, you're right that it is never safe to get in range of small arms fire, hence the genesis of the A-10.

Sure, but how many trucks can you field for the cost of one F-35? It only has to work one time out of a hundred, or even one in a thousand.

The main trouble with the F-35 is it is so expensive it can't be risked in actual combat.

F-35 has 180-220 rounds, that's it.