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I don't see the USAF doing that anytime now...

Not necessarily incompetent, just busy with other areas. After all, if it is not a very permissive environment, more problematic areas need to exist after all. And on that kind of theatre, the Recon is by definition reduced compared to a very permissive one. You can't operate drones with...

One possible scenario is like this: US forces are under attack / engaged with an adversary. They ask for air support / CAS. An A-10 that is near is dispatched to deal with the adversary. Unknown to the A-10, a Tunguska / Pantsir-S1 is near, well camouflaged. While the A-10 approaches the target...

The right question is - can the A-10 still do is job, in a non very permissive environment, and/or against a competent adversary with decent-ish anti-air weapons?

Is not that difficult - after all, everybody else can do.

All, or almost all proposals to replace the A-10 work fine in the same environment that the A-10 today works - a very permissive one. COIN, and against incompetent conventional ones equipped with weapons no more modern than early 80's soviet ones. Against 2000 or more advanced weapons manned...

The problem with many PGM's is that an adversary with fair EW capabilities can negate/degrade much of that precision. So far, US/NATO as not yet confronted that on the battlefield but the clock is ticking.

CAS is still damn important, nobody contest that. The problem is, that against anything other than a very permissive environment is very dangerous. While in the last 20-ish year's US/NATO as fought COIN or against incompetent adversaries, nothing guarantee that the future is going to be so easy.

That works both ways, to be fair.

Using (again) the Kosovo case, the Serbian air defenses survived and even shot down several NATO planes (including one very famous) against the firing of several hundreds of anti-radiation missiles by NATO. I have already said and say again - the quality of the training of the other side counts...

With outdated hardware and incompetent.

All kind of hardware in the hands of incompetent users performs badly. Do you assume that the Abrams is a crap tank because of the sub-par performance of the ones of the Iraqi army against enemies with technicals? The last time US forces confronted a competent adversary is against the Serbs in...

You knew that modern SAM systems are very mobile and capable of dealing with cruise missiles, right?

Modern-ish Russian systems like Tunguska and Pantsir have 30mm fast-firing guns, designed to deal with the A-10 after the 23mm in the Shika is considered not good enough. They are also fast reaction systems, both designed to operate against the A-10. I don't get the Tunguska numbers, but the...

Not really - the Russian army as developed a lot of mobile jamming systems, precisely for these situations.

If an adversary as modern defense systems, most probably also has jammers that degrade/deny the A-10 access to much of that data. See the multilayered defense around the Russian base in Syria and the tentatives of the 'insurgents' (conveniently monitored by US Poseidon's) - not so good for the...

The problem with that doctrine - the A-10 also needs to identify where the adversary his - for that need to expose itself to see it - during that time can be targeted. Also, modern Russian systems are designed to deal with these kinds of adversaries - very fast reaction time (less than 5 secs)...

That's my point - while the insurgency use old weapons is fine, is designed to survive then (more or less). But when (not if) the adversary starts to receive more modern weapons, is number is called.

A-10 survives well while the insurgents use HMGs and 20 / 23 mm Flak. When they start to use 30 / 35mm (with modern ammo) flak with decent radars that can see better at the ultra low level - software can filter the ground clutter now much better - the survivability of the A-10 goes down very fast.

If you really want more Dakka, 'just' made a Gattling from the 406mm guns of the Iowa class. Must be enough even for you, right ? But, i'm afraid the plane is going to be 'just a bit' too big...