Will One Of These Experimental Aircraft Replace The Legendary A-10 Warthog?

There's never any profit in maintaining the status quo

Using a very cheap plane to fight in locations where there is no threat to the aircraft other than small arms makes total sense, the sheer amount of aircraft that would be available in the battlespace would be enough to deter anyone. While an F-22 is very sexy and the A-10 is awesome to behold it is very rare that anyone other than a participant in a planned offensive would get to see it's use. Using a cheap commercial "crop duster" style plane that could deliver JDAMs with a very long loiter time has significant advantages over conventional jet fighters. The limitation is that they are only effective where there are no surface to air missiles. I'd like to see the capabilities of these aircraft in terms of bomb capacity and loiter times, if they are significantly better than an apache with a significant reduction in costs (meaning you'll get more of them in use) it is an excellent step in keeping our Soldier's safe.

Ok... how are you going to replace a flying tank with what is effectively a remote control plane by comparison? These suggestions are taking us back to BEFORE the A-10 was developed... to Vietnam or Korean era CAS A/C.

I know the Air Force prefers sexy over anything else, but they've kept the B-52 around for this long! By the time they retire that it's going to be over 100 years old! Why not do the same for the Hog? If they're that hell bent replacing it take the airframe as it is and figure out how to modernize it, If they want stealth, figure out how to make it stealth. Where there's a will there's a way!

Or they could just do what has been suggested countless times and hand it over to the Army and let them operate it! (I left out Marines because they have a Carrier landing requirement, don't they?)