The thing I don’t understand is why the leadership thinks it is necessary to do away with the A10 just because it is excessively vulnerable in contested airspace. Sure, the A10 cannot be used effectively if enemy fighters are present, or if the enemy still has functioning SAM or heavy AA installations, or even decent MANPADS. You know what else is excessively vulnerable in contested airspace? Helicopters, none of them can be relied on to survive AA fire or evade MANPAD or SAM. Tanks too, if you haven’t established air dominance they’re basically the easiest target on the battlefield for enemy air to ground munitions. They aren’t saying we should get rid of those just because each one is no more than a hapless target if air dominance hasn’t been established and SEAD complete, so what gives? Not every weapon is going to be useful 100% of the time. I will note that the MANPAD threat to our A10s is only going to get worse with our supplying of them to Ukraine. Ukraine isn’t the paragon of eastern europe that it is being painted as and it is a good entry point to the black market for our weapons. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find some of the weapons we’ve been providing to Ukraine in enemy hands in our next proxy war or invasion of a low quality adversary.