Guys on the ground in Afghanistan wanted helicopter support when I was there. An Apache or Cobra on site was not nearly as effective as having the AC-130 overhead if your goal was keeping people inside their defensive position, but most ground guys don't want the enemy hunkered down. They want a fight, so you bring the helos in and then the Taliban would come out to take shots at them.

Either way, helos do a good job of tank killing too which is what the A-10 was actually for . Its rounds have no reason to be so big and radioactive (30 mm Depleted Uranium rounds) to attack even lightly armored and soft targets, but instead are meant to break up heavy armor. But helos do a really good job of that too, by using guided missiles instead of dumb heavy rounds like the A-10.

I'm not saying that the A-10 is not useful, but just because you can use it for lots of things doesn't mean it's the best tool for the job, or that other more specialized tools like the F-22 supporting the Army helicopters to maintain airspace doesn't make sense. It's a cool plane, but I don't see what's so great about the A-10.

But with regards to the low tech solution, that's accurate. I flew on a tiny little single engine turboprop called the U28. Our missions were so successful that our mission greatly expanded and the U28 soon had many more squadrons. And it was crazy, because the Air Force hasn't wanted a single engine prop plane in her inventory in a long time. We couldn't refuel in flight, we couldn't parachute out of the plane in an emergency, we couldn't do a lot of standard flight things, but we could get our mission done in awesome ways. And that's what matters.