fallsfromtrees wrote:Does the cost of operation include the cost for pilot training. Because these aircraft are being used for Close Air Support, which means the opfor is going to be shooting at them, and the survivability of the A-10 as opposed to virtually any other aircraft means you get the pilot back.It does you no good to have 5 times the number of aircraft, if they are going to get shot down 10 times as fast.
No they don´t include the cost of the pilot training and that´s pretty much the downside.
However, remember that when you´re looking at operational costs of thousands of dollar per flight HOUR, the cost of training a pilot suddenly doesn´t look so bad(because nowadays(with excellent simulators), a lot of it can be done cheaply).
And it´s extremely unlikely to reach "get shot down 10 times as fast" levels.
Armouring can only do so much.
Essentially, it IS way better having 10 A-10 instead of 10 Scorpion(for example), but it´s going to be very hard to say whether it´s better to have 10 A-10s or 30 Scorpion. Even just twice as many of the less capable plane can be a hard question.