[SEJeff]

First off, fantastic reply, thanks for taking the time to write it. The typical US strategy is utter dominance of the sea, air, and night. I really do see drones + tomahawks taking out much of the AAA in addition to long range bombers like the B2. Even if stealth isn't effective, a hoard of Tomahawks is going to give any advanced adversary a hard time. The newer Block IV Tomahawks ones are smarter and quite a bit more lethal. The suckers can loiter for up to 30 minutes on station in a holding pattern and be set to all hit targets at the same time. Hitting 4-5 targets is cool, but hitting 20+ at the same time is quite devastating. In the opening of the war in Afghanistan if I recall they launched a cruise missile every 12 seconds on average for 48 hours. Also, they'll use drones (again like the RQ-170, or its classified and armed bigger brother) to find AAA, where it is worth sacrificing a few to sniff out the well hidden AAA. Hiding in the tree lines won't do much to hide from modern UAVs (as I can attest as a former UAV pilot). With the Shadow I could see footprints through wet grass at night with the thermals (as it detected a +/- 0.1 degree C temperature variation).

So in summary, I think you're entirely right. The A10 was meant to be survivable in contested airspace of yesteryear, but gen 5 and the coming gen 6 fighers along with modern AAA would obliterate it. Even not entirely modern but very advanced AAA like maybe the S400, which Iran has, would knock out an A10 no problem. But the US wouldn't willingly put boots on the ground without utter dominance of the air first. You only need CAS when you have boots on the ground, so I see it ultimately as a moot point. China isn't stupid enough to go toe to toe to war with the US, as we'd both suffer heavy heavy casualties. They're doing a better job of simply asserting their strength economically and through cyber means, which they're better at than us.