> I have no special knowledge about the issue, but if I had to guess, it's embarrassing to the Air Force that the A-10 does a better job at close air support (CAS) than the F-35.

AF jocks plain don't want to do CAS at all, they want to launch missiles from 200 miles away and 20000ft up. But they want the army to have fixed wings and do its own CAS even less.

They hate the A10 because the A10 was created solely to do CAS. It flies low and slow, its only job is to support grunt, and it does that extremely well. None of that gives AF jocks a stiffy.