First, you shouldn’t even trust a real A-10 pilot on this topic, because “flying a plane” is not a skillset particularly relevant to “determining which fleet of planes best serves the needs for the role of CAS over the next forty years of combat”.
Second, I mentioned this to simply establish myself as someone who very much loves this plane. Flying military sims doesn’t make me an expert on the topic, but it does give some indication that this is a topic I’ve cared about and researched on my own in the past several years. If you have a disagreement with any of the actual points I raised, I’m all ears.
Third, you might be surprised to see how far these “games” have progressed in the past thirty years.
The DCS games get pretty damn detailed, and the A-10C looks good. [0] It is one of their older planes from what I can tell, though. As for what "pretty damn detailed" means, check out this half-hour tutorial [1] on how to start the plane.
Ah great some first-hand military combat experience here for once!
> in sims as part of a realism-based squadron
Ah, ok then... a computer game...