Originally Posted by
Sliceback
Battle of Kasham had zero A-10's. Air dominance allowed B-1's, B-52's, C-130 gunships, etc, to provide CAS.
The last 30 years of conflict the U.S. has operated in a air superiority to air dominance arena. A near peer conflict will be nothing like that.
Ukraine war has showed the exploding value of drone warfare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham
one needs to keep SOME lower end stuff around if only for intercepting drones. Taking out a $15k - $20k drone lumbering along at 110 knots with pretty much any missile in the inventory is a seriously money losing proposition. Can an F-35 shoot them down? Sure. I think they finally have the gun on it working.
https://www.twz.com/air/f-35as-belea...ally-effective
Of course, you only have about three seconds worth of ammo so it probably won't take many drones out of a swarm unless you have a lot of wingmen.
A whole squadron of Super Tucanos with a couple of dedicated radar controllers to vector them in woukd be a whole lot cheaper and likely just as effective.