War Is Boring have been running a series of articles over the past year or so about the effectiveness of the A-10 for CAS, and about how the F-35 is a "jack of all trades master of none" compromise that is also terrible at CAS.
They paint a compelling picture that the Air Force is stumping to ditch CAS as "unsexy" so they spin as hard as they can against the A-10.
War is boring's reporting on the F-35 has biased and is considered among defense reporting to be very un-reputable. "Jack of all trades master of none" is followed by "is better than master of one". It's replacing the F-16 which also was a multirole and did it damn well. The A-10 is just no longer an effective weapon. A turbo propt is better when you're fighting while having complete control of airspace and a F-35 is better when you're fighting in the presence of very advanced air defense systems. The A-10 is old and doesn't fit into modern warfare.
So the question becomes, are we prepping to fight the next war or prepping to fight the last one? Do we think we're going to be launching sorties over Russia or China or do we think we're gonna be fighting another Iraq war against ISIS?
War Is Boring is a terrible site for military news and analysis. I've read several articles that included elements that were factually wrong and obviously so to anyone with even passing knowledge on the subject.
A good example is their piece comparing aircraft carriers to battleships in the 1941, where they claimed the navy missed the danger of air attack on capital ships because it had never been done before. Ten minutes on Google would have been enough to keep someone from making that assertion.
They paint a compelling picture that the Air Force is stumping to ditch CAS as "unsexy" so they spin as hard as they can against the A-10.
Example: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/now-the-u-s-air-force-wants...