[Manuel_D]

And a cluster bomb might take out all the targets at once at an even cheaper price: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBU-87_Combined_Effects_Muni....

Military pilots in peace time average 150 hours of flying per year: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/11/fighter-pilots-aren...

And that's abnormally low hours. With a $20k an hour operational cost, that's $3 million a year. You're going to have to do a lot of strafing to make even a dent in total costs by saving money on munitions.

And again, this is not even including the costs of additional losses from low level flying overy enemies to conduct strafing runs.

Of course the A-10 does more close air support: it can't do anything else! Whereas the f-16 can also do combat air patrols, SEAD, search for ships with its radar, shoot Harpoons, etc.

[ryao]

During a war, they will end up not only flying far more, but also using as much munitions as they possibly can. The A-10 is cheaper here.

We barely afford the military budget in peace time while our war time costs are insane. Being stuck with enormous bills after "winning" is not a real victory.

The F-35 that the military wants to use in place of the A-10 costs twice as much per hour to fly, carries a fraction of the munitions and if it is given a decent load out, it loses its stealth capabilities that were the reason for adopting it in the first place.

[Manuel_D]

The idea that war is going to be so much more affordable if close air support is done with strafing runs than LGBs, is just a bafflingly wack understanding of the military budget's breakdown. Close air support is just one specific role, in one specific branch of the military. Even if 30mm shells were free, it would not appreciably affect the military's budget.