Cub Driver wrote in message news).

Kirk, you must read Campbell's book The Warthog and the Close Air
Support Support, from Naval Institute Press. He was an A-10 pilot (and
A-7s for the Navy before that!) and he certainly lays out the case
that only the power of the U.S. Congress forced the A-10 down the
throat of the Air Force brass, and that the brass spent the next 20
years trying to get rid of it.

I'll have to get his book and read it. However, that position is not
reflected in the actual operational use of the A-10, which has been in
the limelight of every conflict we have faught since we got it - not a
good way to make a plane look bad! There was also a lot of opposition
to the F-4, and to the F-16, and even to the F-111 when they were all
introduced, but they all turned out to be excellent weapons. I think
only the F-15 had no opponents from the start! And we go back to the
problem of single role aircraft - when you are cutting back, they are
the first to go, regardless of how good they are. Once the military
started getting funds again, the A-10 started getting a bunch of
excellent upgrades (LASTE,Aim-9 rails, etc.), and now they have
finally added a decent targeting pod - not something you do to a
"despised" weapon system. If only they would put some new motors on
it...

Even the supersonic b.s. seems to be pretty well established--thus the
F-16 as the "successor" to the A-10. (The F-16's main virtue as a CAS
aircraft seems to be that it can fly supersonic if it's not carrying
any CAS stores

Supersonic performance is so misunderstood by non-military aviators.
Until the current generation of supercruise fighters become
operational, supersonic performance was mainly an air defense asset,
where intercept time was crucial. It also implied a high
thrust-to-weight, which is nice to have in any fighter, but at the
cost of persistence. With the F-16 (and F-4 before, and Mirage, etc)
you have the best of both worlds: clean, you can go fast; load it up,
you can carry lots of stuff that goes boom and still turn and burn.
As a side note, it always amazed me how the brit press badmouthed the
F-15E saying it would be a terrible low altitude fighter bomber
because of it's high wing loading, then praise their industry for
turning an excellent low altitude fighter bomber (Tornado) into an air
defense fighter (Tornado F3).

Back to the F-16 and CAS, it's asset is that there are a lot of them,
they have excellent A/G sensors and targeting systems, they carry a
useful combat load, and they can get to the area fast and survive
pretty good. Not bad for a plane that was originally designed to be a
day only "guns and heaters" dogfigher!

Finally, about the paint - When the primary threat was the WP, all AF
tactical aircraft with an air-to-ground role had a dark green paint
scheme - the European 1, I think it was called - nice dark wraparound
that finally got rid of the idiotic white bellies (and the givaway
belly flash) that worked great in Europe but sucked big time at
Nellis! Then when the F-16 came into the inventory, the fashion
changed to grays, and even the F-4 got a nice gray cammo. A-10s just
took longer, I guess.

The whole subject of aircraft camouflage is fascinating; Keith Ferris
wrote some interesting stuff about it - some of our F-4Cs at Luke had
his schemes on them when I went through RTU and boy were they neat
looking.

All OT, anyway, and still no answer to my original question!

Regards,

Kirk