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.
Trump might be a raving lunatic, but his generals still call the shots with logistics and deployments, and I highly doubt a trained officer would be stupid enough to authorize a convoy steam full bore through the strait.
Even a blind sycophant knows that would sink their entire career.
His general staff would probably wave a few buzzwords praising trump in a shiny PowerPoint briefing with lots of pictures to distract the dumbass, and trump would nod along and agree.
What twisty mountain roads? Are you aware that the Saudi Arabian peninsula is crisscrossed by a modern highway system that carves straight through the mountains? This isn’t 2005 Afghanistan. There’s also rail lines for heavier equipment.
The highway system also begins at Jeddah a major port city, and goes around Makkah, to avoid that very issue. There is no reason a US convoy would enter Makkah’s city limits.
Going past Yemen seems much more manageable then going through the strait at any rate. But what do I know, I’m not a military general.
The naval bases at Qatar and Kuwait should also have the vast majority of the equipment that’s necessary, unless the plan is a full ground invasion of Iran which is a batshit insane idea.
Could they not travel through the Red Sea, disembark in Saudi Arabia, travel across the peninsula, and then embark again in Kuwait, Bahrain, or a Saudi port? I highly doubt the US military would funnel an invasion force through the strait.
“””Unable to be shot down by MANPADs”””
And even that’s pushing it. Yes the airframe is fairly resilient and is designed to withstand small arms fire, 20mm ground fire, or maybe one MANPAD hit. But at the end of the day all that means is that a pilot could make a few extra passes before getting obliterated by a SPAA SAM or intercepting fighter.