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They "hate" it because it is completely useless against an enemy that has anything even vaguely resembling a military. It's a great plane for the "war on terro

• 650REDHAIR 10y ago
  The same war we've been fighting for 15 years with no signs of stopping.
  • JshWright 10y ago
    Every government needs an enemy... We're just fortunate that there aren't any real ones around right now. When that day comes, hopefully our military tech is up to the challenge. The A-10 most certainly isn't, and I'm not convinced we have a real replacement coming any time soon.
• Someone 10y ago
  I don't think anybody is arguing it should the only plane in the arsenal; complaints against its retirement are that a country with the ambitions of the USA should be able to fight any war, and, since it has chosen to enter this one, should deploy the best it has there. Back to the article: if the military were as agile as it was in World War Two, it would have built something better than an A10 within a few years of entering the war in the Middle East. In the search for that better product, it also would have designed, built, and deployed quite a few strong candidates for this 'worst air force' article, killing quite a few of its own pilots in 'field testing' the various designs. I'm not sure the F35, with its "we can design a plane that will work great in any war, if you give us a few decades" is an improvement over that. If it ever has to go to war against something "even vaguely resembling a military", and it turns out to come up slightly short in the first few encounters, what would the next step be? If it would take another decade to fix that, chances are the war would be lost before a fix was deployed.