I do love the Brad. We shoot gunnery again here in a month or so. In fact, next week my guys will actually get a chance to fire some live TOW rounds. As the service life on some old ones end, we somehow managed to get our hands on some. I will upload a pic if I get a chance.
On the whole light fighter thing.... the US is in a pickle when it comes to anticipating "next" fights and what systems will be required. So we pursue things like 5th generation fighters. The trouble is, the wars of the last 30 years have been low intensity (with some exceptions) and 5th generation fighters or attack airplanes are not sound economic options. I would like to see us arm the Texan IIs and use them as low intensity CAS a-la Skyraider. F16 flight hours are expensive. A10 is also pretty expensive.
If you ever landed at Kandahar you would see two F16s sitting at idle on the end of the runway just waiting to be launched, to drop one of two JDAM.... expensive. The Marines have gone so far as to arm C130 (see harvest hawk) in an attempt to have manned long duration CAS. The US really needs a low cost, long legged, manned, low intensity CAS platform.
