The A-10 was never meant as a long term close air support platform. Its role was being just armoured enough to survive getting hit by Soviet MANPADs as the plane desperately unloaded everything they had on an armoured coloumn advancing through the Fulda Gap before getting promptly shot down by intercepting MiGs.

They were expendable flying tanks. Essentially equivalent to the Soviet Mi-24 gunship.

Can’t wait to see those ancient buckets get turned to scrap.