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Main Paineframe posted:As I understand it, that's not because the A-10 was a "literal deathtrap", it's because the Red Army was seriously scary. A lot of the first-line forces in a "Soviet invasion of Europe" situation were expendable in the sense that no one expected anything to be left of them after a few days. SAMs and SHORAD that make that 80s Soviet hardware look like a collection of bottle rockets in comparison are available at scrublord irrelevant country prices now. Syria, Myanmar, Morocco, Algeria, and Yemen all operate anti-aircraft equipment that didn't exist until well after the systems the Soviets designed in response to the A-10 entered service. Venezuela, Vietnam, Egypt, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Algeria and even Greece all have multiple S-300s to their name (with some of those countries operating 4+ battalions of them). Dmitri-9 posted:You can fit GPS guided bombs on a lot of things so there is no need to pay for this white elephant other than graft. That's why this is an issue. Swanky LJDAM kits are barely $12k a pop these days. Cheapo light attack aircraft to use them are $free (like, $30-60 million flyaway in Defense Acquisition Program dollars). They don't have the survivability it takes to leave the ground, much less what it would take for them to get close enough to their targets to have their bombs (and their $several_million pilots) shot down by a $14 million SA-22. My cousin Bubba's neighborhood watch probably have a handful of Iglas and a ZSU-23 between them.
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# ? Aug 4, 2016 03:12 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:46 |