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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.
If we could only double the price of the F-35 I'm sure it would be..... better.
Can we PLEASE cancel the F-35 and develop airplanes we can actually use? 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.
It's not a "WWII-era" plane just because it has a propeller. Is the Humvee WWII-era because it has wheels??
Lockheed Martin and Boeing don't want low cost weapons programs that utilize off the shelf components. The markup is too low.
Because the Air Force brass hates the Close Air Support (CAS) mission. It's partly a cultural thing - they want to fight wars where airpower is preeminent, where they take the starring role. They don't want to spend their time playing support to the Army/etc (despite the fact that it's been proven, time and again, that this is largely how you win wars - hitting infrastructure etc helps, but does not by itself win the war). They've been trying to kill off the A-10 for years, too, and only failing because the Army loves it, though they've managed to push it off to the Air National Guard.
It probably also helps to understand that, even beyond this air warfare centric mentality, the Air Force is largely dominated at the senior levels by fighter pilots now. Ever since SAC's role and prominence was reduced following the end of the Cold War, fighter pilots have been preeminent, with strategic bombing coming in second, and close air support all but nonexistent. After all, look at the aircraft they're pushing - expensive hi-tech single-seater air combat platforms. They see something like the A-10, or the A-29 Super Tucano, as threats that take away money and resources that could be better used for more F-35s, despite the fact that it's overpriced and underperforming, and that you could probably get 10 A-29s or equivalent for 1 F-35, or better.