Yes, that’s exactly what I said.

As another poster has already commented upon, I’m not sure what you are trying to say other than you seem to define a conversation as when your opinions come out on top.

But maybe I am misjudging you. Perhaps you have the requisite experience in these aircraft to back up your opinions. Is that the case?

This 5th gen aircraft, the F-22 that is, is hardly “jack of all trades but master of none”. Unless if you would care to expand on this argument.

There once was a time when there really were multi-role fighters…and that saying was quite applicable to them.

The P-51 Mustang was designed and flown some 70 years ago, in a totally different period and conditions. I don’t think there is even the slightest possibillity for comparison.

Not really. Everything is relative. Then or now, there will likely be tradeoffs when attempting to do more with less.

It doesn’t have to do with me and what I believe. There is only one operational 5th gen aircraft at the moment and for several years to come, and frankly, it takes lots of fantasy to call it “jack of all trades, master of none”.

Maybe it’s a language issue. In your post, you implied that air combat today was multi-role…and as such you were disparaging single role aircraft such as the A-10.

So…what multi-role 5th gen aircraft did you have in mind? All aircraft in this category? Or maybe just one?

Truth however is that dedicated air combat fighters could and did evolve to excellent bombers (F-15E, Su-34 etc) but never the other way round, which is why the A-10 is totally irrelevant today.

You gotta be careful with absolutes. The P-51 Mustang began life as the Mustang I/A-36, not exactly what one would call a long range fighter.

You clearly have already reached your decision, so let’s leave this to the grunts in the field and our other readers. They can decide for themselves if the A-10 is relevant or not.

Generally speaking, in the era of multi-role, a highly specialised aircraft such as the A-10 is little more than a relic.

Yup…today’s 5th gen fighters are definitely in the mold of “jack of all trades, master of none”.

I understand that the F-101 had the same problem, which was caused by the wings blocking the airflow over the tail at high AOA.

Not quite.

The airflow over the wing is up, back, and down. Usually, this airflow passes below the tail. However, as AOA is increased, the tail moves down into the airflow. At some point, this airflow then hits the top of the T-tail, thereby pushing it down, causing the nose to pitch up.

This pitch up could be relatively mild or quite violent depending on the pitch rate being used.

The F-104 had a mechanical warning device called a “kicker”…as the max AOA was reached, the kicker would push the stick forward to lower the AOA. There was a switch on the stick that the pilot could use to deactivate the kicker in case it malfunctioned. This switch could be used in hard maneuvering to deactivate the kicker to allow the pilot to at higher AOA…this technique usually didn’t have a happy ending because there was no way to know when the pitch up would happen…when it did, it could be pretty violent and the outcome was somewhat unpredictable.

The main disadvantage of the F-104 were the AoA limitations for lower speeds from the T-tail design.

To rephrase that…the limitation was the pitch up problem that arose from high AOA conditions that the airplane experienced when trying to generate a hard turn at slow speeds.

The USAF isn’t “getting rid of all its A-10s”.

The ones being retired will go to the boneyard, to await recall when the call comes.

And, chances are good that it inevitably will.

The Plane seems to be narrow. so it may not offer that much interior equipment space.

That photo is misleading. The fuselage cross-section is wider than the photo seems to indicate.