Originally Posted by
Evalu8ter
ATG,
Swings and roundabouts. Bone and A10 both CAS platforms of choice in daylight - AC130 for pre-planned stuff at night. On the missions I planned and flew those were always the top 3 asks; we'd only take FJ if we had a small Vul because timing the mission around them scampering to the tanker was always an issue. Note that all 3 types above have endurance to burn offering persistence. Sometimes getting there at the speed of heat was all important to achieve a BoT at a critical time to support a TIC, but more often it was hanging around as the ground situation developed that was more important - especially for the pre-planned stuff I did. The problem is F-35 will not have endurance and the Bone is likely to be replaced by the mini-B2 and I can't see that being used for CAS in quite the same way. Maybe the answer is to write a proper requirements set that trades a bit of payload and endurance for a bit more speed?
I think the answer might not be "A-10, brrrt", but that isn't the cool or popular (politically correct) answer....