I'm sure this will be buried etc, but just something to pass on. I spend a lot of time in small planes doing aerial surveying work with equipment I make. The pi

I'm sure this will be buried etc, but just something to pass on. I spend a lot of time in small planes doing aerial surveying work with equipment I make. The pilot i've flown with the most spent his whole career flying and training others to fly A-10s. We had so much time (100's of hours) just sitting in a cessna together I got to ask tons of questions and hear lots of stories. One of my favourites was just peacetime stuff when they flew non-stop from their base in Germany back to the US, refueling on the way. Just think about that - you're a pilot used to doing close air support short missions and now you're off on what in only a few decades before would have been an adventure on the scale of the great explorers. He would regularily comment on how good the missile launch system is... essentially it chose the right time to launch based on the pitch/speed/location etc of the plane. He mentioned it enough times it must have been pretty special. When I asked him if it was difficult to fly, he said that other jets he flew were more difficult (flame outs etc), but it also wasn't easy. In 30 years flying them the only missile he ever launched (or maybe only missile of a certain type... not sure), was for training and cost $1m+. Everyone at some point in their training got to fire one at a dummy tank. He said the accuracy was amazing... he hit it bang on - mostly due to the targetting tech he was praising rather than his skill. He did mention that the $1m price tag was misleading because they expire and use missiles which if not used would be scrapped anyway. Or something close to that - this was 4-5 years ago my memory is a little hazy. And the gun. Well... this guy is a republican voter (which was always funny as I'm way left of Sanders), with a heart of gold but had some interesting theories about the best use of the A10 related to Trumps border wall. He said they do so much shooting out in the desert, they could just relocate all their practice along the border with mexico, not spend anything extra than they are now and no one would dare go near it. I'm not sure how much of that was in jest or how serious he was. Thats abhorrent to me but all good we all get to have our views. He has a model of an A10 on his desk which was gifted to him when he stopped flying them, and a big picture of himself climbing into one on the wall back when he was lean and handsome and hadn't put on his old-timer weight. My first flight simulator was A-10 on the Commodore 64, and it literally set the path to me ending up working with him.... my interest in aviation, cameras, computers etc. So both that photo and the model on his desk felt really special to me in a way that I can't really explain. And of course being a nieve computer guy, I had to ask 'the question'. Did he knowingly kill anyone. He didn't answer.