Caution! Reading Involved!!

http://www.economist.com/node/17647585? ... d=17647585

Always thought crop dusters looked pretty bad ass.

It is that you can use a loudspeaker to talk to potential targets before deciding whether to attack them. As Winston Churchill so memorably put it: “When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.”

TAKE THIS BITCH

I've been thinking along these lines for years.

Although I wouldn't go with the cropduster scenario.

I'm thinkin P-51's and Corsairs with some modern technology.

Most of our current enemies wouldn't stand a chance against either of these planes.

For the money you could probably buy at least 10:1 against a fighter jet.


I do think we still need jets; but for most operations I think the prop planes would do just fine..

SE6601KF wrote:....
I'm thinkin P-51's and Corsairs with some modern technology.....

Douglas Skyraiders were pretty effective in Vietnam as attack planes-- I read that they can carry more ordnance than a B17. They can even operate very nicely off aircraft carriers.
Per wiki: 2700 hp, 200 mph cruise, with four 20mm cannons, + 8,000# of ordnance.

The enemies we are dealing with these days can afford inexpensive shoulder launched anti-aircraft weapons. Any half-assed drug cartel or raghead training camp can afford a handful of these weapons. I'd hate to be flying a 150 mph Air Tractor near someone shooting at me with one of those SUV-mounted gatling guns, much less a fairly smart missile. What do you figure a base model Chinese shoulder fired anti-aircraft toy would cost these days... $500...$2500?

The fighter pilots have a saying they like to use. "Speed is life". Unless you have the armor plate of a Warthog, faster may be better.

This is of course just academic since the Pentagon is enamored with high tech toys. Why use a fly swatter when an ultrasonic seek and destroy apparatus with gps targeting can be used?

shoulder launched anti-aircraft weapons

I will bow to those who know about these weapons but I thought most shoulder held AA weapons depended on the heat signature to track. The blowtorch in the rear of jets probably make a much brighter target than a Skyraider.

Sort of like the Warthog. Headed for the scrap heap and all the tooling had been scrapped when the Gulf War happened. Bingo, exactly the mission the aircraft was designed for! Had to go to bone yards to find parts and fabricate new ones from scratch.

It still is probably the only decent ground support aircraft, outside of rotary wing, remaining in the arsenal.

TD

According to the wiki article, the A10 was designed as the successor to the Skyraider.
I think shoulder-fired weapons such as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher are pretty cheap, but anything with heat-seeking or IR-seeking capabilities probably aren't. Of course "cheap" is a relative term.
From what I've read, US-supplied stinger missiles turned things around in Afghanistan back in the 80's, allowing the mujahideen to shoot down the Soviet Hind helo's.

As someone who spends half of each year flying over in that mountainous waste land, that the current threat is not guided weapons, but shoulder fired, RPGs. They have them under every rock and on seemingly every shoulder and they cause enough havoc that so far there's not much need for anything more sophisticated, athough I'm sure it's coming.

The T-6II might be a viable COI/CAS platform because it's a little faster, but you wouldn't catch me in a Caravan no matter what they had strapped to it. The AT-802 would concern me a little simply because of it's size and lack of speed. Almost all terrain in the country (at least north) channels you into very predictable routes when low level which is where the 802 and Caravans would have to operate. The A-10s never get low if not actually on a run, nor so any other CAS platforms.

That said, there won't be any American pilots flying the 802s if that's any indication of how much confidence they have in it's survivability.

Lastly, I love the Air Force's conclusion that "plumbers" can maintain a PT-6. Not only is that a slap in the face for the thousands of mechanics maintaining PT-6s and other turbines on C-130s, CASAs, C-12s, P-3s, etc but it's completely false. I wouldn't alllow or depend on the Afghani's I've dealt with to keep a bicycle running much less a turbine engine.

My rant is complete...off for coffee.

Mike-

stearmann4 wrote:As someone who spends half of each year flying over in that mountainous waste land, that the current threat is not guided weapons, but shoulder fired, RPGs. They have them under every rock and on seemingly every shoulder and they cause enough havoc that so far there's not much need for anything more sophisticated, athough I'm sure it's coming. ..............

From what you said, I assume that the shoulder-fired RPG's you refer to are eyeball-aimed, unguided weapons? That was my understanding. I believe that the "stinger" missile I mentioned was/is shoulder-fired, but with some sort of guided (IR or heat-seeking) capability?

stearmann4 wrote:Lastly, I love the Air Force's conclusion that "plumbers" can maintain a PT-6. Not only is that a slap in the face for the thousands of mechanics maintaining PT-6s and other turbines on C-130s, CASAs, C-12s, P-3s, etc but it's completely false. I wouldn't alllow or depend on the Afghani's I've dealt with to keep a bicycle running much less a turbine engine.

My rant is complete...off for coffee.

Mike-

Mike, - perhaps the USAF quote about plumbers maintaining PT-6-powered turboprops was overstated, but on the other hand, (and I'm not an expert on this) I recall reading somewhere the number of man-hours of maintenance crew time required per hour of flight time for high performance jet fighters is pretty high ... like, more than a 1:1 ratio (I seem to recall a number that is much higher than 1:1), whereas PT-6 powered turboprops are relatively low maintenance by comparison, with a maintenance time to flight time ratio of something on the order of 1:25 or less.

Anyway, it makes sense that the operating as well as capital costs of turbo-prop aircraft are much lower than for high speed jet fighters.

And regarding the comment above about there being no substitute for speed in combat, that certainly applies to dogfighting, but not for close ground support missions where slow speed and maneuverability, as well as the ability to take groundfire and stay in the air are needed much more than speed. Granted, a heat-seeking stinger can easily take out a slow turboprop, but stingers are not cheap or ubiquitous like RPGs ... and RPGs are only effective on very slow moving aircraft, i.e., hovering helicopters. I wager there are very few mujahadeen armed with RPGs who could hit a Cessna 208 flying by at 80-100 knots, at under 100-200 ft AGL in hilly or heavily-timbered terrain where you only have an aiming window (to take a shot) of a second or two ... so the most likely groundfire any of these airplanes may see would be from shoulder arms like the venerable AK-47. It would take a lot of hits from an AK47 to knock a C208 out of the air if it's properly equipped with self sealing tanks and kevlar armor in strategic locations.

btw - there's a whole host of American warbirds who made their living from taking hits rather than avoiding them ... not only the A-10, but also the B-17, the P47, the P40, and others ... the Japanese staked their warbird design on high speed, light weight, tight turning, and avoiding hits, but they failed to provide armor or self-sealing tanks that American designers put in our warbirds of WW-II ... and as a result, we massacred their Zeros and Bettys by the thousands, turning them into flaming meteors with only a few hits.

I really have no opinion about the 225 mph, 1300 shp -67 powered, 802 being used in a combat environment. Even though it does have a 11/2"chro moly cage to sit in, is armour plated, has up to a 10hr fuel load, and close to 10,000 lb useful... Ever listened to a low approaching turbine ag plane? Most of the time if you didn't see it in a turn you won't hear it until it's right on top of you...

I can just see a64pilots eyes rolling now.... Oh chill, I'm still flying a Thrush, and have yet to be 'snowed'....

But with all the concern being voiced about speed, I can't help but wonder what folks think about the countless helicopters being used in very similar roles? I do know for a fact you can maintain multiple 802s for what it cost to maintain 1 OH-58, let alone any of the 'real' helicopters in the fleet today... And there is no doubt in my mind which one I'd rather fly to a forced landing...

A combat Caravan?... yeah, probably not this kid... 600shp and pretty much nil crash survivability...good luck in one of those...

A Caravan has a hard enough time staying in the air all by it's lonesome, much less while being shot at. No thank you...

Gump

GumpAir wrote:A Caravan has a hard enough time staying in the air all by it's lonesome, much less while being shot at. No thank you...

Gump

And good luck trying to fly that thing in any trace of icing!!