This is pretty sad news for me really.  The A-10 has long been one of the absolute coolest assault planes I've ever laid my eyes on.  I have fond memories of playing the old A-10 Warthog PC games and I liked flying them in flight sims and arcade games (like Ace Combat).

 

What always blew my mind was the idea that this plane pretty much was just a ridiculously massive gun that someone decided to build a plane around. 

 

I present the GAU-8 for your consideration.

 

Capable of absolutely obliterating any damn ground target, rattling out 30mm depleted uranium shells at a rate of 4200/min that seriously hit the ground before you even heard them fired from the plane itself, this gun was mindblowing. 

 

It's a shame really.  The plane was built tough, could take incredible amounts of damage and still fly, and it's firepower was second to none for ground assaults. 

 

Feel free to post any cool videos below in memorial. 

 

It is an awesome aircraft. Shame they are retiring it.

Not to be a nay sayer but they have announced its retirement several times in the past, but they have nothing to replace it with, they have no other slow moving close combat air support. Unless they have come up with something recently I think the marines would be telling them to shove it.

Not to be a nay sayer but they have announced its retirement several times in the past, but they have nothing to replace it with, they have no other slow moving close combat air support. Unless they have come up with something recently I think the marines would be telling them to shove it.

 

From everything I've read they want to replace the fleet with (presumably) less expensive unmanned drones.

 

My only problem with this is that the drones will have nowhere NEAR the stopping power, nor the imposing presence, of the A-10.  God I love the sound of that fucking gun.

I used to love watching the A-10 at the range....it fuked shit up.