The A-10 is vastly overrated by a lot of fanbois. CAS by Gau-8 isn't half as efficient as dumping a bomb from 35k feet. The only thing the A-10 is good at is loitering and being efficient with that gun.
However, if you have the logistics and the numbers of NATO Air Forces, and you can literally line up hundreds of aircraft in a conga line to drop a gbu-12 every 2 minutes at a much reduced risk than a low/slow flying A-10... I can see why/how they want to replace the A-10 with aircraft like the F-35. Because the F-15E, the F/A-18s and F-16 have already done just as much CAS as the "CAS Specialist" A-10 did. And just as well, too.
CAS isn't all about gunrunning people...