These are all fair questions, but an acquaintance of mine spurs me to ask: is there anything the A-10 *has* done that the A-7 couldn't have done?
The bombload, AFAIK, was equivalent, the speed isn't much different. The big difference is that gun, and the A-10's 30mm isn't that big a difference vs. 20mm over Afghanistan & Iraq. Both designs benefited from Vietnam experience. Neither might have been all that survivable in a very-hostile ADA environment, such as 1987 Germany or 2024 Ukraine?
To answer my own question: Oh, yeah, I was overlooking the '91 war, in which there were lots of Iraqi tanks to be shot up.
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My Twilight claim to fame: I ran "Allegheny Uprising" at Allegheny College, spring of 1988.
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