I love Air Force fanboys who think the boys in blue can do no wrong and the Army is a bunch of clueless ninnies who don't know what they actually need or want.
Since your 'you are wrong' basically consists of Air Force propaganda, and ignores the actual Congressional testimony during the budget processes, the history of the Air Forces attempt to kill the A-10 (they've been trying since the AH-56 was cancelled, the ink wasn't dry on the cancellation before they started trying to replace the A-10 with the F-16) and the reality on the ground that I have yet to speak with an Army person who trusts the Air Force any further than they could throw a B-36 when it comes to promises about CAS.
Firstly, I don't work for the Air Force, I work for the DOD as a whole. And I have seen, in detail, the budget process/technical develop papers of the era and they don't support what you are saying. In fact, I work with budget and program data every day. The whole late-60s and early-70s era is a very complex one for a variety of economic, technical and political reasons. There was a major change in aircraft technology happening, some aspects of which worked, some did not and some might have worked but it would cost to much to cure the basic problems. AH-56 fell into the latter category. The political environment for new defense programs was made toxic from about 1968 onwards and there was a desperate fight to get any defense program funded. If said program had a hint of being Vietnam-related it was dead on arrival. If it would cost a lot of money, it was dead on arrival. If it developed any technical problems, it was dead on arrival. Look back at that era and its a miracle any defense program survived, let alone one that had multiple strikes against it.
The first Air Farce attempt to kill A-10? Before it even started, they tried to kill the A-X requirement in the cradle on the grounds that the magic F-111 could do the job better.
No, they didn't. It might surprise you to learn that the Air Force disliked the whole concept behind the F-111 themselves and viewed with favor efforts to develop alternatives to it. Once McNamara had left DoD, everybody knew future developments of the F-111 weren't going to happen.
By the way, it wasn't the F-111 that was pushed to fill the A-1 replacement requirement, it was the A-7. That was pushed heavily by McNamara who wanted to cancel any new-design A-X program primarily because it could be presented as a joint program with the Navy. Remember the lists of negatives for programs? Well, "joint program" was one of the few positive things that were around back then. The Air Force didn't really want to go the A-7 route because they knew McNamara would use it to kill A-X and they wanted an aircraft built to their requirements. McNamara got his way though, the Air Force ended up buying A-7s to replace the B-57, A-1 and F-100. It was a really nice little bird too. Very smooth and on cost/on-schedule development.
Then kept it as something to wave at Congress in order to justify F-X 'not a pound for air-to-ground' but HONEST we'll develop a real attack bird for the Army!
Wrong (again). It was the A-7 that was waved as the Air Forces CAS aircraft and to be fair it was very good at it. The Air Force actually saved the A-X program by recasting it as a tank destroyer for the Fulda Gap. Just as the Army saved their advanced attack helicopter (by the way the main factor that made the Army swing the cancellation axe was the fact it was single-engined.
One of the main lessons that the Army saw as coming out of Vietnam was that helicopters had to be twin-engined. They'd lost too many UH-1s by having single hits taking out their only engine. Lockheed actually did design a twin-engined AH-56 but the changes were so great that it was an entirely new aircraft.
Along comes AH-56. Contrary to your claims, the reliability issues were well within norms for prototypes, especially prototype rotorcraft. Testing was progressing quite well and the Cheyenne fully met the requirements set down for it.
No, it didn't. It had serious flight control issues and it was behind the curve with regard to Army requirements. Fixing the problems with it would take a long time and cost a lot of money. That killed the program in Congress. The Army didn't want it any more because it had a single engine, couldn't fly the mission profiles they wanted and looked like a Vietnam era bird. They wanted the AH-64 which would cost less and fit the developing Army operational concepts. Note how all the AH-64 publicity shots showed it with a battery of anti-tank missiles?
The Air Force actually tried to take over the project on the grounds that it was an 'aircraft' that only they should have, and openly said that they only wanted to do so in order to cancel it.
That is true, not very edifying I agree but it merely reflected a consensus that AH-56 was not the way people wanted to go. By the time they came out with that, everybody was looking for ways to cancel AH-56 without exposing the DOD to massive cancellation fees.
Congress baulked, the program continued, and the Air Force was forced to actually go with A-X, which until then had been a purely paper project with no hardware and no contracts.
Congress didn't balk at anything; they wanted that program dead. The Air Force wanted the Northrop A-9 which reflected their ideas on how a close-support aircraft should look. The Russians agreed, because the stole the design and copied it as the Su-25. Originally the Republic design (which became the A-10) was a stalking horse that was intended to keep Northrop honest (not an easy task by the way). Only, the Republic design turned out to be a lot cheaper, would provide jobs in an area that badly needed them and had several neat design featured. The rear-mounted engines was one, the non-handed structures in the fuselage and tail were another. Fairchild-Republic were politically slick in a way Northrop wasn't. They went around Congress and pointed out how many jobs the A-10 would bring to each constituency. It's standard practice now but they were the first people to do it.
And before you try to defend the sainted Air Farce, look into the C-27J program. Army needed a replacement for the Sherpa, Air Force refused to even consider it, Army buys aircraft and operates them in the role, Air Farce gets shirty and demands that they be transferred to the Air Farce, and then promptly gets rid of them under the claim that 'we have an excess of transports!', leaving the Army high and dry in the role.
I don;t regard the Air Force as being sainted any more than I do the Army or the Navy (the Marines are possibly a different matter). I happen to know the C-27 program very well. The C-27J was selected as a multi-service transport aircraft intended to serve in the Air National Guard, the US Army, the US Coastguard and SOCOM. In 2009 the Army aircraft were indeed transferred to the ANG, a deal that was regarded as a bit ripe at the time but it offered potential savings and the Obama administration wanted to make defense cuts wherever it could. What killed the C-27 though was Congress. They kept adding C-130Js to the budget, five or six a year, and the money had to come from somewhere. C-27 was an obvious target and that's where the funding for the extra C-130s came from. The C-27s went to the boneyard from whence they emerged as Coastguard and SOCOM aircraft. There are suggestions that the whole thing was a set-up that allowed the Coastguard (in particular) and SOCOM to get aircraft they couldn't otherwise afford. Personally I doubt that although SOCOM (in particular) does a lot of really devious things now and then. But that's their job description after all.
And oddly, there have been plenty of instances of A-10's operating in contested airspace, taking significant damage... and making it home.
Twenty five years ago, against air defense systems that are two generations out of date and they were operating in a benign environment. They still got shot to shit. Thank you for proving my point.
I can already hear the cries that now it's somehow different because new systems are magically capable of gibbing A-10's now, but the Air Forces fancy fast movers will be PERFECTLY FINE! Because! Trust us!
There's nothing magic about it. Data processing, target motion analysis, data transfer and high-precision guidance systems are all standard tools these days. Nobody will be all right in that environment, the only real cure is to stay out of it. Which is what modern CAS aircraft do. The reason to go in low was to gain accuracy. Now, precision guidance, whether integral with the aircraft or provided by FAC parties, give the accuracy without the same level of risk.
By the way, you started your post by throwing the insult 'fanboi" around. The only person behaving like a fanboi here is you. I suggest you take a deep breath, calm down and think about things rationally.
