As I recall, an number of officers in the Air Force fought to not have the A-10 in the first place, and they keep trying to retire it.
The grunts need some of their own with their fingers on the triggers.
Lets be very blunt here. Manned fighters are dying. There are maybe twenty years left of this. Within five years, the Chinese will likely have a highly maneuverable UAV that can fly circles around manned fighters. These pilots are going to sit there in a denial stage for the next three decades...pretending that technology can’t take them out of the cockpit. We will eventually come to a point of grasping that manned fighters are becoming a dinosaur. I’m not endorsing a rush to UAVs, but the mental strategy and the competence to grasp this trend...isn’t showing.
“As I recall, an number of officers in the Air Force fought to not have the A-10 in the first place, and they keep trying to retire it.”
IMO UAVs are a very good tool but not the whole toolbox. i also don’t think we can afford many $2 billion bombers or $200 million dollar fighters.
There would also be a concern that once you reduce the number of real pilots below a certain point you will never recover.