http://aviationweek.com/defense/air-force-weighs-scrapping-10-replacement (free registration required to see the whole article)

The U.S. Air Force is looking closely at the future of close-in warfare, but the service’s top general says that future may not include a direct replacement for the A-10 ...

Cheers,
Scott.

They're drone-ifying lots and lot of things.

E.g.

People are expensive, and putting people on machines in harm's way even more so.

Cheers,
Scott.

The Air Force has for years contemplated building a follow-on, dedicated close-air support (CAS) platform to replace the Warthog when it reaches the end of its service life, but that effort now appears to have stalled. When asked whether the service is taking steps to develop a single-role “A-X,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said “not yet.”

[...]

As the air component commander in Afghanistan, Goldfein saw firsthand how the Air Force now relies on a family of systems, not just the A-10, for the close-air support (CAS) mission. The Warthog was not always his first choice to protect soldiers in battle: in the mountainous terrain of the east, an MQ-9 Reaper was the best choice to quickly navigate the peaks and valleys; in the volatile west, where operations could quickly take a turn for the worse, the multirole F-15E would give maximum agility; for the north, a B-1B bomber—with its endurance and large payload—worked best.

“If we can start having a conversation about that family of systems, and not which one weapon system is the most important, we’re going to actually have a 21st-century close-air-support discussion,” Goldfein said. “There’s very few mission sets that we have where I’m throwing a single bullet at it.”

The Air Force is planning to fly the Warthog until the mid-2020s, although it needs additional funding in order to keep all nine A-10 squadrons in the skies past 2021. But the question of whether the Air Force will build a direct A-10 replacement hangs on adequate funding and stable budgets, Goldfein stressed.

Sequestration and budget uncertainty—including year after year of continuing resolutions—wreak havoc on the military’s ability to plan, he said.

“It’s impossible to predict where I would go with that kind of a strategic trade relative to the amount of topline I have and where it fits,” he said. “Nothing comes for free.”

Before making a decision, Goldfein will consult the CAS community about what the future of the mission looks like, because it may not look like the past. Experts argue that the A-10 performs well in an environment of total air dominance, like Iraq and Afghanistan, but as advanced anti-air weapons and surface-to-air missiles proliferate, it becomes more and more dangerous to fly a bulky, unstealthy Warthog into battle.

There are some good comments there (among a few nonsense ones). It's worth the registration. (I use a gmail address so it filters the story pointers when I don't have time to read.)

HTH.

Cheers,
Scott.

"The handle's been replaced 3 times, and the head twice, but it's still George's hatchet!"

It's not uncommon for them to replace wings, etc., over the life of an important airframe. The B-52 airframe apparently is extremely robust - http://taskandpurpose.com/b-52-stratofortress-modernization-plan/

Developing a new aircraft is much, much more expensive than refurbishing an older one.

The trouble with the A-10 is that it's vulnerable to small rockets and similar things, it's not stealthy, and it's a single-purpose airframe when the military needs flexible systems.

Cheers,
Scott.

If a FA-XX can do the job of an A-10 and also do (well enough) jobs X,Y,Z that an A-10 can't, then it makes sense to use an FA-XX.

Pilots have to fly these things all the time to keep up their skills. That's why we don't have 5000 F-16s/A-10s/B-1b/etc., etc. flying around and instead have a few hundred F-22/F-35s that are multi-role. It's too expensive to have lots and lots of pilots flying these things even if the hardware is substantially cheaper.

And that's why it's (almost) inevitable that piloted fighters are going extinct. The aircraft can handle G-forces that will kill a pilot, the craft can be sleeker without a bubble for a pilot to see out of, can carry more fuel, etc., and it's too expensive to have people flying them all the time.

I suspect, but don't know, that it's more like that some sort of Reaper is more likely to replace the A-10 than some new super, dedicated, piloted CAS plane.

Cheers,
Scott.