[nostrademons]

Just a guess: the A-10 is designed as a support aircraft for ground troops, which means that if it does its job perfectly, the Army gets to claim a decisive victory. The F-15 is an air-superiority fighter, which means that if it does its job perfectly, the Air Force claims a decisive victory. Inter-service rivalry is a Thing...from the POV of an ordinary citizen, it doesn't matter as long as we whup the bad guys, but from the POV of a career military bureaucrat it matters a lot whether the victory is credited to his branch of the service.

[hangonhn]

Yep exactly. The A-10 isn't glamorous. The air force hates interdiction missions even though they're among the most useful. The A-10 is also relatively cheap and can loiter over the battlefield for a long time

[hga]

Wait, I thought they liked interdiction missions (e.g. keeping the enemy from resupplying the front), and that's congruent with their service goals.

Close air support is another matter altogether. Ugly, dirty, and a high potential for friendly fire causalities, which makes them look very bad in today's unrealistic no errors allowed environment. E.g. nowadays in our too common non-existential wars if an officer flying a plane hits friendlies, I'd suspect his career will be over.

Of course, the A-10 can do both, but the greater ability to do close air support, unlike say the F-111 back when we were flying it, means it will be called up to do so.

Another issue is that things like GPS guidance means close air support can be done without getting as up close and personal, and if the guys on the ground supply their own coordinates instead of the target's, as I seem to recall having happened at least once, it's on them.