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Lockheed P-38 Lightning & CAS


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Just a quick comment: the old A1's engine was rated at 2,800 hp vs. the turboprop in the A67 being rated at 1,600 hp. (Engines and airframes are matched to one another. These numbers are purely for comparison purposes. The Skyraider was a beast. Totally different class than the A67/Pucara/Tucano, etc.)

Whole airplane parachute: Cirrus aircraft were the first civilian (or any?) certificated aircraft to use them. They work. Not always, but they have saved several folks already.

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Hah! I just now stumbled on info about the US A-67 Dragon COIN aircraft, which first flew in 2006. From what little I can see it is indeed very much a modern day 'Mustang' for ground support! This is a big surprise. This is exactly the opposite of what you'd imagine the Pentagon would go for. Where are the bells & whistles? I'd bet the US Air Force will only see a token number but they'll turn out to be the mainstay of the Iraqi and Afghani airforces... unless this is one of those projects that simply dies quiet death.

(I like their idea of a "whole aircraft parachute" :))

http://globaldownlink.com/A67Page.html

This plane seems to be in the same category than the Stavatti (spell?) Machete: vaporplane.

The USAF more likely will chose between the Brazilian AT-29 Super Tucano and the AT-6 Texan II.

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I'd bet you're right. It's too small and lightweight to be very attractive to our services. USAF, USN, and USMC would be looking for something with more load carrying capacity. 3700 lbs. ain't a whole lot. What they would be looking for is a replacement of something in the range of the A-1 to A-10. It's greatest advantage is that it should be relatively cheap, so smaller air forces can afford to buy a couple of wings of them.

Michael

The USAF thinks different, finally. What sense makes to have the carrying capacity of a Warthog (around 7 ton), when you only uses 1.5 when deploying from alternative airfields most of the time?

Remember that with the Skyraider already around, the OV-10 was introduced (true is that the little plane suffered the usual creeping features disease, and went bigger than planned).

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It makes a lot of sense for an observation and reconnaissance aircraft to be light and cheap. Ergo the current crop of drones. But when you want to put an effective amount of ordnance on a target, you need carrying capacity. The A67 is just barely going to reach that scale, and that's without all the extra equipment that always seems to wind up on an aircraft between drawing board and battleground.

Michael

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The A-67 is non existent. Look at real reports from the USAF on the AT-6 or AT-29.

I'll suggest you a few sources on why it is effective a plane in that range.

Campbell, Douglas.

Close Air Support: A Primer. Annapolis, MD, U.S. Naval Institute,

April 9, 2003.

Campbell, Douglas.

The Warthog and the Close Air Support Debate

. Annapolis, MD,

Naval Institute Press, 2003.

Maj W.H. Beckett and Maj K.P. Rice

. The Need, Concept of Operation and General

Specifications for a Very Light S.T.O.L. Support Aircraft,

1960.

W.H. Beckett, K.P. Rice and M.E.King

. The OV-10 Story: Innovation vs. The "System"

.

Leon E. Elsarelli, Major, USAF.

From Desert Storm to 2025: Close Air Support in the 21st

Century. AU/ACSC, April 1998.

Maj Michael W. Binney.

Joint Close Air Support in the Low Intensity Conflict

. Naval

Postgraduate School, June 2003.

Major Gary P. Shaw, United States Marine Corps

Implications for the Future

CSC, 1995.

Gulf War Close Air Support:

.

.

Bruce R. Pirnie, Alan Vick, Adam Grissom, Karl P. Mueller, David T. Orletsky.

Beyond Close

Air Support: Forging a New Air-Ground Partnership

. RAND Corporation, 2005.

OTOH, UCAS will take a lot longer yet to become an effective mean of real CAS and even combat recon with friendly forces involved. See the recounts on Kandahar fight: operators were unable to differentiate between blue and red in the middle of the struggle, despite direct comms with the involved forces. Without human eyes and the direct comms right over the field, unmanned close support is almost chimeric yet.

The successes came for other kind of operations.

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Loiter time, ordnance capacity, followup, BDA, kill-chain, etc. Oh, if it's USAF, it needs to be a jet. Props? Boats have props...

An aircraft that sips fuel, is simple, rugged, and yes, expendable, is needed. Multi-engine increases survivability, but at a huge maintenance/weight/complexity cost.

Single engine - hell, I woudn't even give 'em an ejection seat. Some armor plate, cannon's to keep out of small arms range, and hardpoints galore. Big knobby tires. Because they look cool.

Who really thinks the USAF will ever let an aircraft operate off a dirt strip? Let alone mud, or even worse, some place unsurveyed?

Institutional inertia.

Simple, rugged, reliable, cheap. Land it in a ditch? Cut it up and sell the scrap.

A lot of thought has gone into fragless 250lb bombs. Festoon them all over it. Stick a few extra in the cockpit and have the pilot heave them out. :)

A67 is too light.

A pilot with eyes on the target, in comms with the ground unit, orbiting for a LONG time, with plenty of ordnance is what is called for. Sounds like the A1. Up-engine it, newer avionics - nothing too fancy, just more reliable solid state - and a few structural tweaks as need. If nothing else, it'll cause enough AF 3/4 stars to have heart attacks that the promotion rates for everyone else will skyrocket. :)

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Just as a point of history, since people compared the A67 to a P51, the P51 itself was used extensively for CAS in Korea. It wasn't great at it. But it was better at it than the early F-80s and similar, which had about 20 minutes of loiter time, since early jets were the most fuel guzzling aircraft in history. Navy prop planes were much better at it still, though (more rugged, radial rather than inline prop engines, etc). Captured Chinese were asked what allied weapon in Korea they feared most and the top answer was "the blue airplanes".

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I suspect, myself, that judging by history that the A-67 will turn out to be a chimera, that if it hasn't been killed off already that the usual Pentagon 'feature creep' will doom it. That is, unless its being designed specifically for the purpose of rebuilding the Iraqi military. Something that will kill insugents 2 and 3 at a time, and something the Israeli air force can shoot down without difficulty.

About load carry capacity, the Pentagon has been going for smaller and smaller bombs these days. Even using GPS iron bombs with water ballast instead of explosives. Back in 2002 the Pentagon was using fully loaded B52s loitering for hours high over the battlefield. These days, I suspect its not often that an F-15 takes off with a full bomb load and returns empty.

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Even using GPS iron bombs with water ballast instead of explosives.

Really?

Back in 2002 the Pentagon was using fully loaded B52s loitering for hours high over the battlefield. These days, I suspect its not often that an F-15 takes off with a full bomb load and returns empty.

Which is well and good for Afghanistan, but what if we are faced with a war with an industrialized power? Say, N. Korea for instance?

Michael

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Well, that's the conundrum: do you build and plan for worst case only, or can you afford to build and plan for other cases as well?

Imagine using an F-22 or F-35 to try kill 2 or 3 guys with AK-47's and an RPG about 300m in front of a rifle platoon.

Imagine using an A67 to drop a bridge near Pyongyang.

Different missions, different tools.

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This is the same debate that rages inside the Pentagon. :D I recall during the Reagan years the Secretary of the Navy got it into his head to dub the submarine the 'queen of the battlefield' (for entirely obscure reasons). And considering the wars we've found over the succeeding three decades he couldn't have been more wrong.

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A pilot with eyes on the target, in comms with the ground unit, orbiting for a LONG time, with plenty of ordnance is what is called for. Sounds like the A1.

Indeed.

It was the best CAS airplane ever. It had its cons and some things can be done with a lighter airplane and PGMs today, but coming to have a bomb truck and cannon support, its specifications were the best.

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1. In the beginning there was chaos and the chaos was the Infantry, for the Infantry was alone.

2. And fear was with the Infantry and they cried unto the Lord saying, "Lord, save us for we are afraid."

3. And the Lord heard their grunts and set some of the Infantry on beasts of burden and these he called Cavalry, and the Cavalry became Armour.

4. And when the Lord had seen what he had done he laughed saying, "Well, you can't win them all."

5. The Infantry and the Armour again cried out to the Lord saying, "Lord, save us for we are afraid." And the Lord heard their cried and decided to end their weeping.

6. And the Lord said unto them, "Lo and behold, I send you a race of men noble in heart and spirit." And the Lord created the Gunners.

7. And the Lord said unto the Infantry and Armour, "When it is dark, the Gunners shall light your way."

8. And when you need smoke, there shall be smoke, and when you need HE, WP, H & I and counter-battery fire, all this ye shall have."

9. And the Lord gave the Gunners big guns and field guns, and the Infantry and Armour were jealous for they had naught.

10. And the Infantry cried out saying, "Lord, thou hast created the Infantry as Queen of Battles, but now thou hast made the Gunners King of Battles and well knowest thou what the King does to the Queen."

11. And the Lord replied, "Right on!"

12. And the Lord gave unto the Artillery rockets and missiles and, best of all, nukes. And when the Infantry and Armour saw this they fell to their knees in wonder saying, "Surely God is on the side of the greatest - THE GUNNERS."

13. And the Lord sayeth, "You got that right."

Now abideth Infantry, Armour, and Artillery; but the greatest of these is..."Artillery".

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Indeed.

It was the best CAS airplane ever. It had its cons and some things can be done with a lighter airplane and PGMs today, but coming to have a bomb truck and cannon support, its specifications were the best.

Oh, I don't know about that. The plane that replaced it is more capable, albeit more expensive.

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Oh, I don't know about that. The plane that replaced it is more capable, albeit more expensive.

Marginally better in some aspects, overkill in others. Surely a lot more expensive not only as a plane, but also in operational cost.

Survival rates against common threats are not quite dissimilar, AFAIK, as far as operations in different environments are comparable.

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It was the best CAS airplane ever.

Interestingly, it began life as a torpedo bomber. It would have been ferocious in that role as it could carry two of those. But before it could join the fleet, the war was over and it didn't look like the Navy would need any more torpedo bombers. Then it occurred to someone that it could be made to carry an awful lot of bombs. The rest, as they say, is history.

Michael

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