Q: Did the war have any effect on the Air Force's view of the A-10?
A: No. People misread that. People were saying that airplanes are too sophisticated and that they wouldn't work in the desert, that you didn't need all this high technology, that simple and reliable was better, and all that.
Well, first of all, complex does not mean unreliable. We're finding that out. For example, you have a watch that uses transistors rather than a spring. It's infinitely more reliable than the windup watch that you had years ago. That's what we're finding in the airplanes.
Those people . . . were always championing the A-10. As the A-10 reaches the end of its life cycle-- and it's approaching that now--it's time to replace it, just like we replace every airplane, including, right now, some early versions of the F-16.
Since the line was discontinued, [the A-10's champions] want to build another A-10 of some kind. The point we were making was that we have F-16s that do the same job.
Then you come to people who have their own reasons-good reasons to them, but they don't necessarily compute to me-who want to hang onto the A-10 because of the gun. Well, the gun's an excellent weapon, but you'll find that most of the tank kills by the A-10 were done with Mavericks and bombs. So the idea that the gun is the absolute wonder of the world is not true.
 
Q: This conflict has shown that?
A: It shows that the gun has a lot of utility, which we always knew, but it isn't the principal tank-killer on the A-10. The [Imaging Infrared] Maverick is the big hero there. That was used by the A-10s and the F-16s very, very effectively in places like Khafji.
The other problem is that the A-10 is vulnerable to hits because its speed is limited. It's a function of thrust, it's not a function of anything else. We had a lot of A-10s take a lot of ground fire hits. Quite frankly, we pulled the A-10s back from going up around the Republican Guard and kept them on Iraq's [less formidable] front-line units. That's line [sic] if you have a force that allows you to do that. In this case, we had F-16s to go after the Republican Guard.
Q: At what point did you do that?
 
A: I think I had fourteen airplanes sitting on the ramp having battle damage repaired, and I lost two A- 10s in one day [February 15], and I said, "I've had enough of this." ....

But at the end of the day, this aircraft has done one thing no other aircraft has ever been able to do – turn an entire generation of aviation bloggers, journalists, and commenters into overnight military aviation experts.
 
It’s simply fascinating to watch every hipster who’s ever played Ace Combat sit back and pontificate about the downfalls of an aircraft that hasn’t even reached IOC. It’s like a renaissance of air combat.
 
As the first fighter in the digital age, the F-35 has allowed people to watch and read about the results of flight tests in near real time, drawing their own conclusions as to the success or failure of the program. Security clearance? Who needs it? Wikipedia has everything that anyone who’s ever played Battlefield 4 on Playstation needs to know in order to realize that the F-35 is a sitting duck if you happen to get it after a respawn.
 
 
[...]
 
It’s hard not to laugh when another “definitive” article comes out declaring not only is the F-35 a lame duck WVR, but it’s also dead in the water BVR. Holy crap.
 
There are two groups of people that know the true capabilities of the F-35: those that have the clearance necessary to read about it, and the people who built it (who have the same clearance)…. And probably the Chinese, but that’s another story. Anyone else that makes claims to know what the capabilities of this aircraft are and how they compare to threat aircraft (also classified, by the way), are just wrong and have traveled so far out of their lane it’s not even funny. They just don’t know what they don’t know.
 
I’m sorry, but you don’t have a right or need to know. The military keeps these things classified for a very good reason – to save American lives. Sensors, capabilities, tactics, and the like are not going to be released to journalists unless someone does so illegally. And even then, it’s like a dog watching TV. They’re not going to understand what they’re even looking at (as we’ve seen in these “expert interpretations” of a leaked FOUO test report).
 
Why is this important? Because any unclassified source that claims to know how an F-35 will do in a BVR engagement is flat-out wrong. Anything beyond that is pure speculation based on marketing brochures that are worth less in the real world than the paper they’re printed on. Sorry.
 
As I mentioned earlier, this is the first aircraft to be developed, tested, and flown in the “instant gratification” age. No other aircraft has had its dirty laundry aired in real time quite like this one. And a lot of people have worn out their “Jump to Conclusions Mat” as a result – without any valid information to back it up.

D’ici-là, le retrait du service actif des 87 chasseurs-bombardiers Tornado GR4 restants, par ailleurs intensivement sollicités par la Royal Air Force qui ne peut pas utiliser ses Eurofighter Typhoon pour des missions d’appui au sol, sera effectif.

De même que celui de 53 Typhoon de la tranche 1, après à peine 20 ans d’utilisation. Resteront donc en service au sein de la RAF les modèles des tranches 2 et 3A, dont il est prévu une remise à niveau pour leur permettre d’assurer des frappes au sol

Un de ses anciens chefs d’état-major, l’Air Chief Marshall Sir Michael Graydon, a même été jusqu’à dire qu’elle a été réduite jusqu’à l’os après les coupes budgétaires qui ont affecté les forces armées britanniques au cours de ces 5 dernières années.
...
Finalement, même avec 225 avions de combat comme le prévoit l’actuelle Loi de programmation militaire, l’aviation française (armée de l’Air et aéronautique navale) s’en sortira plutôt bien. « Plus on se regarde, plus on se désole, plus on se compare, plus on se rassure », dit-on.

La meilleure illustration est le fait que les appareils envoyés par la RAF en Irak sont de bons vieux Tornado, des appareils dont la version initiale a volé pour la première fois il y a 40 ans (14 août 1974), et dont les premières livraisons à la RAF datent de 1979. Le rapport du NAO, la Cour des Comptes britanniques, sur l’Eurofighter en 2011 soulignait que les véritables capacités multi-rôles de l’Eurofighter attendraient 2018… soit la possible fin de production de l’avion au rythme de production actuel.