With some exceptions, they have been doing that since the Wright Brothers. For every Pete Quesada or Harry Broadhurst, there is an inexhaustible supply of officers who simply will not be bothered with close air support and who would mothball every aircraft designed for such.
IMHO there seems to be a constant mindset in a lot of senior officers to want to eliminate older aircrafts that are past a certain age in preference to all newer & sexier models that fires off these multi million dollars weapons per shot. The AC-10 flying Cannon and the spooky, immediately come to mind. Also I recall that one of the selling points for the hugely expensive F35 was that it can do that job but it only carries 200 rounds of ammo!
I call it “A-10 Syndrome”. can’t figure it out, then again I’m not a traitor nor do I value my opinions over other people’s lives!
Agreed. There is a place for air to air combat, since if provides air supremacy so that the rest of the Air Force can then accomplish relevant missions. However, the whole point of the Air Force is to accomplish military objectives, not to provide fast, expensive toys for hotdog pilots.
Rommel had officers classified efficiently: lazy/efficient - smart/stupid.
He said the most dangerous officer of them all was the efficient/stupid variant. Lazy/stupid were the 60 percent of the normal distribution. efficient/smart generally were shown the door by the efficient/stupid.
This explains the USAF trying to ditch the A-10 for so many years.