The WWII-Era Inspired Plane Giving the F-35 a Run For Its Money

schwit1 writes: The US military almost adopted the A-29 Super Tucano, a $4 million turboprop airplane reminiscent of WWII-era designs that troops wanted, commanders said was "urgently needed," but Congress refused to buy. "It's a great plane," says recently retired Air Force Lt. Col. Shamsher Mann, an F-16 pilot who has flown A-29s. "Pilots love it. It handles beautifully, sips gas, and can go anywhere. If you want to get into the fight and mix it up with the guys on the ground, the Super T is a great platform." The Super Tucano provided the "low-end" air-to-ground attack capability the United States simply never had in Afghanistan-a capability the Pentagon's F-35 could never hope to replicate.

Comments

Obligatory Simpsons reference

[SirStiff]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:I may have missed it but

[Nethemas the Great]

That's a Marine *cough* requirement.

Its not the F35 killing this, its the T6

[random coward]

The reason this is being killed is its from Embraer; and Embraer has no issue with selling to everyone, including potential adversaries. Congress wants them to use the T6 Texan II based system which is local(USA and Switserland instead of purely Brazil).

Besides all that all the A-29 Super Tucano's that the Air Force was going to buy were to be given to the Afgani air force.

Re:Its not the F35 killing this, its the T6

[Fire_Wraith]

The Air Force doesn't want either plane. They don't want to fly the Close Air Support mission, and to the extent that they do, they want to use F-35s to do it.

Re:Its not the F35 killing this, its the T6

[random coward]

The real problem is that Air Force Procurements are so broken they can't afford to replace any system for less than a trillion dollars. Right now the Air Force needs to replace:
A10->?
C5->? (C17 replaced C141)
Minuteman3->?
OH-1 Huey ->?
EF111->?(oh lets outsource that to the navy and borrow their EF-18's)
Then there are the ones they are replaceing and having debacles:
F15->F22(which was canceled because cost to much, and is causing pilots to get sick)
F16,F18,AV8b-> F-35
KC-135-> competition for the KC-46 went into multiple lawsuits and an $800million charge for Boeing, Now theyre working a new KC-X procurement because of problems with the KC-46
The procurement issues with the Tucano and AT-6 are small beans in the grand scheme of things.
Honestly they'd like to give the close support role to the Army, but they don't want to give up the budget that entails, and they don't want to allow the army to fly fixed wing. On the other hand they're about to lose one leg of the nuclear triad because they won't have a replacement for their ICBM's when they end of life in a couple years; and they know its coming and aren't able to deal with it. I guess I should put a link to the self licking ice cream cone here but meh; you can google it.

VSTOL

[Anonymous Coward]

but a prop aircraft being smaller and lighter does not require long runways...

Re:A Jeep will beat a Corvette sometimes, too.

[SvnLyrBrto]

The problem with that analogy is that, in the case of the F-35; the military does, in fact, want to go off-roading on that steep, rugged, slippery trail in the middle of nowhere. But they think that they can take the Corvette, raise its suspension a bit and give it off-road tires, and it'll be better than the Jeep.

Re:sunk costs are NO excuse

[SvnLyrBrto]

So, basically, we've convinced ourselves somehow that we're the Protoss. But we've forgotten that the last time we won a war... as in seriously and definitively winning the war and not leaving a DMZ or cesspool of sectarian conflict behind... we won it by being the Zerg.

Much better than a car analogy. :)

IT IS NOT!

[LWATCDR]

A-29 Super Tucano is not a WWII Era plane! that headline is a flat out lie.
Also the A-29 would beat a F-35 for COIN. It is useless for any other mission.
Good GRIEF! The editors on Slashdot are now at the FOX News/MSNBC/Nation Enquire level!

WWII was in the 1990s???

[Xolotl]

The Super Tucano is no more a "WWII-era" plane than the F-35 is, it first flew in the late 1990s, and is derived from the 1980s Tucano. The F-35 began development at about the same time as the Super Tucano ...

About all that's "reminiscent" of WWII designs is that is has a prop ... but then the first pure jets flew in WWII too.

Re:sunk costs are NO excuse

[xleeko]

The F-35 reminds me of a sci-fi book where alien horde A has primitive ships, but a lot of them. They also are not too bright and throw more ships at every battle. Their enemies, alien horde B, keep coming up with new inventions and more amazing ships. Their ships get so expensive even losing a few bankrupts them and they surrender.

Not a book, a short story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Of course the Air Force didn't adopt it

[TheViffer]

Seriously ... WTF!?!

An A-10 has a hourly maintenance costs of roughly $12,000 per hour flown. The F-35 is already sitting at a guess-ta-ment of $32,000 per hour flown.

Chart

To quote.
the A-10 Thunderbolt II is the cheapest aircraft to operate in terms of both flight hours and individual procurement costs. The A-10's low costs are due to the plane's rugged but functional structural designs.

Lets not talk about the $148 million a piece price tag for the base F-35 model. A-10's start at around $30 million each. You let me know when one F-35 can out compete four A-10's for air to ground combat.

Re:Of course the Air Force didn't adopt it

[evilviper]

talk about the $148 million a piece price tag for the base F-35 model. A-10's start at around $30 million each. You let me know when one F-35 can out compete four A-10's for air to ground combat.

Predator Unit cost: US$16.9 million

It's not the F-35 that ended the A-10's service career... As of 2012, almost one in three USAF aircraft were UAVs.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, UAVs were reportedly more frequent specifically requested by ground units than any other aircraft.

"Whereas a manned fighter will seldom be able to stay on station for longer than an hour or so, a persistent armed UAV (PA-UAV) could potentially stay on station for up to 20 hours"

- http://www.military.com/NewCon...