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Old 03-27-2024, 04:52 PM
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Raellus Raellus is offline
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Default But seriously...



It's not nearly as sexy its contemporary fighter-bomber cousins, but I've always thought the A-10 was cool in an ugly-tough badass sort of way. I think the war in Ukraine has proven, however, that aircraft of that type would have a very low survivability rate in a modern, high-threat environment. In other words, if there'd been a WW3 during the 1980s, the Warthog would have become an endangered species fairly quickly.

On the other hand, the A-10 was praised to the rafters by soldiers and Marines during the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those were low-threat [aerial] environments, and the A-10 excelled in them.

I wonder how the Vietnam War would have played differently had the A-10 entered service 10 years earlier. I'm not suggesting that it would have changed the outcome entirely (I don't believe that any weapon system short of tactical nukes would have), but with A-10s performing CAS missions instead of the F-105, F-4, A-4 "fast movers"*, would the North Vietnamese have been brought to the negotiating table sooner?

*Yes, I do know about the A-1 Skyraider.

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Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG:

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