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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.
The really sad thing about the F-111 was that it actually could have been a good plane, if they'd bothered to make different versions tailored to the different needs of each of the services, rather than trying to force a "one size fits all" mentality. The Navy, incidentally, went back to the drawing board after they backed out of supporting the F-111, and came up with the F-14 Tomcat. There's no way they'd be capable of doing that in today's environment, sadly.
The F-35 might have been at least halfway decent if we didn't have to design the whole plane around the Marines' VSTOL requirement, which is really the primary thing that kills it (aside from the ridiculous attempt to assign the CAS role to it).