The "Warthog" first flew from Davis Monthan AB in 1975 and was designed to confront the threat of massed Soviet armour pouring into Western Europe. To do this job, it was designed to be extremely hard to kill, able to carry a wide variety of air-to ground weapons and had to be able to fly with minimal support and maintenance. The pilot sits in a titanium armoured "bathtub" and the fuselage can take hits from armour-piercing and high-explosive shells up to 23mm calibre.

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