They both are worthless as "fighter bombers."
Not at all. As a bomber they can do what a F-15, or F-16 can do.
Often the air force won't use those except for high altitude either, but all four aircraft (F-15,F-16,F-22,and F-35) are very capable of flying and attacking at low level. None of them is as damage resistant as an A-10 but than what is?
The Marine F-35 is really worthless. The VTO ability shortens it already short legs.
VTO is useful for use from ships smaller than aircraft carriers, and it would have been useful if Soviet tanks ever attacked the Fulda gap as air bases would be attacked, and being able to operate from dispersed fields would be important. But I think we agree that it isn't nearly as important as it used to be. If we where engaged in a large land war against a major air power, or if we where to scrap the idea of having and deploying large carriers, it would be very important again, but I don't see either of those things happening. "Worthless" might be a bit strong, but the benefit of VTO is for the most part probably not worth the reduced range and increased cost and complexity.
But as for short range the A-10 is also relatively short range (but much longer loiter time than the F-35B), and takes longer to arrive at the target area (unless its already loitering nearby). Don't get me wrong, I think the A-10 is great at what it does, but even for ground attack missions its not like it (or anything else) is perfect in every way, you compromise one ability to get improvement somewhere else. In the case of the A-10 you give up range and speed, and gain gun fire power, and toughness. Its definitely a trade off worth making, but I wouldn't rely on just the A-10 for all tactical ground attack missions (even if we had enough of them for that). |
