[Humor] hangar sale...

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

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.

The traditional argument is that the A-10 is more capable of low-level flight for terrain protection from ground fire and is more likely to survive the inevitable hits. In practice, we'd need someone to do a deep dive into the respective designs' records of combat losses versus damaged aircraft returning to friendly tarmac.

- C.