“they are IR MANPAD magnets and have lousy climb to altitude performance.”
Yes, but, to my knowledge, we’ve only lost 5 in battle to date (four in Desert Storm and one in Iraqi Freedom). That’s pretty amazing when you consider that they built more than 750 of them.
The air force lost a total of six A-10s during Desert Storm and 1 in OIF.
That’s pretty amazing when you consider that they built more than 750 of them.
That's too broad a generalization to make. One has to consider several factors; how many were deployed in theater, what type of ATOs were generated, of those that were damaged how many were returned to service, how many were stricken, etc. You can't rely solely on the ratio of losses to the aggregate built.