Also no one in their right mind would risk such an expensive airframe on defending mere ground troops. The A-10 does its job incredibly well, and is cheap to build, repair and keeps its pilots alive. Not a big plus from a defense contractor perspective.

Ee ER no f urf

> I have no special knowledge about the issue, but if I had to guess, it's embarrassing to the Air Force that the A-10 does a better job at close air support (CAS) than the F-35.

AF jocks plain don't want to do CAS at all, they want to launch missiles from 200 miles away and 20000ft up. But they want the army to have fixed wings and do its own CAS even less.

They hate the A10 because the A10 was created solely to do CAS. It flies low and slow, its only job is to support grunt, and it does that extremely well. None of that gives AF jocks a stiffy.

AC 130U is an Air Force CAS with a 105mm howitzer and Gatling Guns.

The F35A is also supposed to be able to do CAS missions, especially with drones that can deliver fuel to the uncontested battlefield.

> AC 130U is an Air Force CAS with a 105mm howitzer and Gatling Guns.

AC130J is losing the gatlings and the armor.

> The F35A is also supposed to be able to do CAS missions

Operative word: supposed.

And nobody will send that expensive an airframe at the ranges and a10 operates at.

> And nobody will send that expensive an airframe at the ranges and a10 operates at.

Then why is there a Gatling gun on the F35A?

There's a Gatling gun on the F35A. There's a plane on the Gatling gun on the A10. :)

The idea of a multi-purpose fighter plane makes a lot of sense for small air forces (it doesn't make it a good idea), but why do the US Air Force care about multirole anything. It's the largest air force in the world, and the best funded, surely they'd want to buy the best tool for every task.

I checked a recent deployment and every combat aircraft on that US carrier is an F-18.

Using one multi-purpose aircraft has some fantastic advantages if you can pull it off.

A carrier can use all its combat aircraft to fight enemy aircraft (effectively double the number of anti-air aircraft on board), then after the enemy Air Force is the destroyed, switch around to using all the F-18's to attack ground targets.

With specialized aircraft types, some combat losses focused in a particular role can cripple the entire air wing, whereas with multi-role aircraft, you can keep right on operating.

It's great from a maintenance, logistics, and training as well.

USAF doesn't operate carriers

Exactly, and a carrier is just the air force of a small country. It absolutely makes sense that the aircrafts onboard can handle multiple roles. In the case of the carrier is just due to space constraints and not funding.

> why do the US Air Force care about multirole anything

The Air Force doesn't, but the Navy does.

The thing that everybody leaves out about the F35 is that you can take a relatively small ship, put a half-dozen F35's on it with some drones, and you have a tiny carrier with a remarkable amount of firepower.

So, now you don't have to sail your gigantic ass Nimitz carrier into the forward theater where a lucky cruise missile hit can cripple your entire fleet capability.

Fighter jet development costs are punishing even for the USA. Going to one multi-role airframe with three configurations was probably intended to keep the costs under control.