Esprit.

This is coolbert:

More correctly, this headline should be A-10 NOT obsolete!

Unless American Thinker knows something I don't know, this is a second contingent of A-10 Warthog close-air-support warplanes being deployed overseas. That previous known deployment of A-10 was to Afghan but this is not the same unit moving to the battle zone?

"'Obsolete' Warthogs head to Iraq"

That amount of firepower as is available form one A-10 immense. In particular that 30 mm round as fired by the rapid-fire cannon AN EXPLOSIVE ROUND AND AS NOTED BY STEINER VERY COST EFFICIENT.

My understanding also of the pilots of the various A-10 squadrons are part-times. Air National Guard aviators that are commercial pilots during the weekday and "weekend" warriors during the weekends. But AIRMEN with a elevated esprit, a developed set of skills and always kept in constant practice, training, and a high state of readiness.

Many years ago I was buzzed by a pair of A-10 while driving south from Chicago on I-65. That must have been planes from the Indiana Air National Guard. Believe me, that is a humbling experience. I might even have been a notional target in their sights at that particular moment.

"At the height of the Iraqi insurgency the Army purchased a vehicle it positively hated: The Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected Vehicle, or MRAP. The MRAP was heavy and tall, with minimal off road capability, but it saved a lot of American lives. The MRAP has no practical purpose outside of counterinsurgency, yet it was worth every penny."

MRAP also the first military project in sixty years from the drawing board from the blueprints to the field. NOT since WW2 had such a thing occurred.

coolbert.