Bill Hicks:
The mission is sometimes called SARCAP or SAR CAP and you are invited to look it up in order to educate yourself. (Smilie noted).
To all: I love the A-10. Just to think outside of your fixed wing boxes ... you also get a thing a lot like CAS from attack helicopters. There's more than one way to peel an onion. All in all, I would rather see the A-10 stick around. Why? It works.
From Martin's linked article: cynical, but with a ring of truth.
The truth is that the A-10's greatest flaw is that it is comparatively slow and ugly, and that it was so cheap to build, upgrade and sustain over the years. No major defense contractor made made windfall profits on it time and time again and we do not need to buy more of them, we simply need to maintain and upgrade the force we have already paid for. In other words, the Warthog is not a jobs program or a cutting edge technology for generals to hang their career on and they won't make any really good friends in the defense industrial complex wanting to pay them a big six figure salary once they hang up your uniform for defending it. It is not a sexy machine, it has no flames coming out of its tail and it is not meant to heroically shoot down other aircraft under high g-forces. What it is is an inexpensive, already owned and brutally effective tool at keeping our guys on the ground alive while making sure the other guy's troops end up dead.