[pursuivant]

I'd choose an A-10 over a Raptor any day of the week... :wink:

I'm not sure I would. It's all mission dependent. The A-10 is getting a bit long in the tooth, even though it's a very good design. Modern smart munitions make it easier to achieve stand-off kills against the sort of targets the A-10 was designed to engage with guns and "dumb" weapons. For a strike against a well-defended target, I'd want something fast with good ECCM and anti-missile defense with a decent number of hardpoints. I'd say that the F-15E Strike Eagle does a better job for that. If I had to get low and slow to do the job, I'd want a Hellfire-armed UAV, like the Predator. For a pure air superiority fight against a well-trained opponent flying a 4th or 4.5 generation fighter, I'd want the F-22.

The real problem with the F-22 is that it's a victim of the Cold War. These days development time on any new military aircraft is measured in decades - no busting out a prototype in a couple of months like they did back in the 1930s and early 1940s. When the F-22 was first designed, back in the early 1980s, the Soviet Union existed and the US and NATO were worried that the Soviets would field large numbers of 5th generation air superiority fighters. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, that threat never materialized. The nearest competitors to the F-22, the Sukhoi PAK and the Shenyang J-XX, haven't yet been flown, making the F-22 a plane in search of a mission.

Strategically, given the development time needed, it makes more sense to spend the money on the next generation of fighter - the F-35 - instead of buying more F-22s. And, that's exactly what the Pentagon brass want. The only people who want more F-22s are defense contractors and the congresscritters they've bought.