It wouldn’t survive long enough, unfortunately. Look at all the coverage of manpads and drones, so many anti-aircraft and anti-misfile systems. It really drives home the point that close in air support with a manned aircraft has become suicidal, even in an A-10.

I always wondered how an F-35 could replace the A-10 for ground support. Clearly it can’t but I believe the goal is precision attacks while staying at a safer distance.

Look at how Russia is using their Air Force. In general, staying out of range while shooting “precision” weapons.

F-16 has some really amazing capabilities but I hope they don’t try to use them for close support. Ukraine needs F-16s to bring the fight to the Russian Air Force. It’s no longer ok for them to fly 50 miles offshore to shoot missiles from any direction

I assume the hesitation was because Ukraine is obviously also interested in stopping Russian Air Force from shooting missiles 100 miles behind the lines … over or near Russian territory