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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.
It's not a fly high-go fast toy. They've been trying to kill the A-10 for 30 years because they don't like it.
Kind of like the competition for the F35 design. I took one look at the prototypes and knew Boeing wouldn't win. Their plane was ugly, not sexy.
If I was taking on a steep, rugged, slippery trail in the middle of nowhere, I'd want something like a Jeep. Four wheel drive, high ground clearance, rugged tires, etc. If I was on a race track and was looking for high speed performance, handling and braking, I'd take a Corvette.
(feel free to change the marques of the off road vehicle and sports car to suit your tastes and/or nationality.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If we could only double the price of the F-35 I'm sure it would be..... better.
That's a Marine *cough* requirement.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Can someone offer an explanation as to why this plane has not been adopted? I don't know anything about it.
It'd be a real shame if it's really as simple as, "This is a great plane that's relatively cheap, and both military pilots and their commanders see these planes as serving a real purpose. Congress won't go for it though, because they want a super-expensive cool-looking boondoggle." But is it? Because this is one of those things where I'm suspicious that there's at least some kind of counter-argument.
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.
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.
A turboprop sure could be a fabulous close ground support aircraft. So could the A-10, and we already have those.
Trying to develop the F-35 into a jack-of-all-trades is proving to top expensive, too difficult, too much. We really should reconsider some of the multiple roles projected for the F-35, and keep the A-10.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The super tucano is a thoroughly modern plane that happens to use a propeller.
Who wrote this shit?
It's not a "WWII-era" plane just because it has a propeller. Is the Humvee WWII-era because it has wheels??
Both the superTucano and the A-10 are irrelevant against a modern IADS, and will be bled by modern handheld SAMs. Yes, you can eat the first one in an A-10, but you're still out of the fight for a week.
Whlie the armchair quarterbacks have been bitching, they've been replaced with reaper (think supertucaon without an ejection seat). When one of those gets shot down or crashes, well, we pull another out of a coffin, put the wings on, and 2 hours later we have another one for a hell of a lot less than the cost of training a replacement pilot.
A bit more than 40 years ago, the military tried to develop a one-size-fits-all aircraft to be used by all of the services to replace the F-4 Phantom. It was the F-111. It ended up being too big to launch from aircraft carriers and not suitable for dog-fighting, but people thought it was cool because of the swing-wings. An expensive plane that ended up with little real use. There is also a fascination with technology in the military, with the notion that new tech gives you a significant edge. When you have to develop new tech throughout the platform, it gets expensive and inevitably you find flaws and problems you just can't overcome. Not that this doesn't happen in the private sector either. Remember the Apple Newton?
As for the A-29, pilots loved the A-10, which was essentially a flying tank. It had an armoured cockpit and was the first aircraft engineered to be shot at and keep fighting. What's not to love?
but a prop aircraft being smaller and lighter does not require long runways...
Obviously you've never been taking incoming and wishing you had an A-10 on hand. All an F-16 does, or an F-35 will do, is quite things down for a few minutes before it goes away. With an A-10 you can actually catch some sleep.
The PA-48 Enforcer is a gorgeous plane. Basically an armored, tubo-propped P51 Mustang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
They saw service in Viet Nam including shooting down Mig-17s.
I'm interested in the F-35, and I have been reading about it. There is so much noise that it's hard to sift through all of it. It doesn't help that I'm not any sort of military expert.
I have read that the F-35 is disaster piled upon disaster, and I have read that the F-35 is "retiring risks" and converting naysayers into believers. I have read that the F-35 is incredibly expensive to operate, and I have read that it was designed for easy maintenance and that it will save big money in the long run on operating costs. I have read that the design of the F-35 was compromised by the need for a lift fan on the B variant, and I have read that the plane would have been just as wide without the B variant because of the design of the enclosed weapons bay. In short, I keep reading things and then reading the exact opposite from some other source.
Here's what I think I have figured out.
First, the F-35 had better work because at this point we are stuck with it. The old planes are old and getting more expensive to maintain, and in the long run the F-35 is the only reasonable option (but only if it works... if it doesn't do the mission, it is not a "reasonable option"). The Obama administration shut down the F-22 production lines on the theory that we only need a handful of air superiority fighters, and the money would be better spent on the F-35 (and the Growler, according to Wikipedia). It takes forever to make a new plane, and we really don't have a plan B (or "plane B") ready to go. Also, the USA as a strategy would rather spend more money on planes than lose the lives of pilots; it might be cheaper to buy upgraded older planes, but if the "fifth generation fighter" thing works out, and future battlefields increasingly have anti-air missiles, the F-35 might have lower losses in combat than older plane designs.
Second, the F-35 may not be horribly expensive. Right now I don't care about sunk costs... cancelling the F-35 won't get the sunk costs back. All that really matters is the "fly-away cost", the cost to build and equip a new plane, and the F-35 doesn't seem completely unreasonable there (it's now under $100 million for the A variant and trending down). One of the remaining risks is whether production can scale up enough to make F-35s as fast as everyone wants them made, but if that scale-up happens costs will fall further. Again, the big question mark is operating expenses and reliability. If the F-35 needs so much maintenance that it can't fly very often, then it was a bad idea. (And by the way, next time the Pentagon wants to make a new weapons system, then I will be very interested in the sunk costs of this one.)
Third, I'm a cautious believer in the ability of the F-35 to do the missions as long as it's not in the hangar being repaired. It can't win a dogfight with an F-16, but that was never its mission (send an F-22 for that). It basically needs to be able to carry sensors, computers, radios, and missiles, fly long distances, and be a little bit stealthy. I think it can do those things; and once you have the plane, you can upgrade it by improving subsystems. I know, half a century ago, the end of dogfighting was prematurely announced, but with modern missiles and with the stealth features, I think the F-35 will be able to defend itself.
Fourth, I'm not completely certain that the F-35 will be useless for close-air support. The fans of the F-35 claim that the A-10 can't be used effectively against people with any anti-air missiles including shoulder-fired ones; that much of the time in recent years, the A-10 was required to operate from high altitude to avoid being shot down by missiles. The F-35 is not going to fly low and slow over a battlefield and shoot things with a gun, but it could fly past and fire off precision guided munitions, which should work. One thing is for sure: the alleged upcoming test between A-10 and F-35 for close-air support will include simulated anti-air missiles, because if it didn't the A-10 would totally win.
Fifth, I
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The plane is coming in under cost.
1997 projected cost per plane: $113 million (in 2015 dollars)
2015 projected cost per plane: $178 million
sure you can bring it under cost if you keep moving the goalposts
I don't think those things invalidate my question.
Folding wings are for storage.
tailhook is for L, not TO.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Not sure if it supported vertical take off but it does support vertical landing.
I am old enough to recall commie BS first hand (first ear?). I live in the west for quite some years now and frankly the only difference between Western media BS and the real commie BS from the old days is that in the West you can mostly chose BS that fits your world view with exception of these few moments where all go ballistic on something and present united BS, the way commies did. Quite frankly I listen to the news with disgust these days - too much Putin and asylum seekers (or whatever let the journalists to get off) pr0n. Too bad all these real free pr0n sites are so boring.
That's a remark you generally hear from people who fly other people's airplanes.
What a remarkably apropos user name.
I prefer the term lithobraking you insensitive clod
I hope you don't get all your info from hit pieces written by folks whose primary agenda is to drive clicks. Go talk to some Marines. They don't like the Harrier, it's slow, it's vulnerable, it has no legs, can't carry any kind of reasonable payload, and has a terrible safety record. Actually ask a Marine pilot, especially one who has flown both, which they would take into battle today given a choice. I bet you would get a similar answer to the one I got which was "F-35 any day of the week." You managed to pick the one airplane being replace by F-35 which is indisputably worse. Even without stealth and sensors the F-35 is vastly superior to the Harrier. You add stealth and sensors into the mix and the Harrier looks like the relic from the 1960s that it is. You want to have an actual debate on the merits? Talk about the F-18 C/D that is being used by the Marines. I'm not saying the F-18 wins, but I'm saying at least there would be a debate.
I have a number of devices that contain electric motors. There's a vacuum cleaner, a blender, a mixer... It would probably be possible to create a "multi-purpose household appliance" that would do every possible task with just one electric motor.
But the fact is that a device that does several different tasks does NONE of them well. My carpet shampooer isn't a vacuum cleaner, and there is no "multi-mission floor care device" that is both a carpet shampooer and a vacuum cleaner, even when they are superficially similar.
A USAF air-superiority fighter isn't going to do a great job as a ground attack aircraft. A ground attack aircraft isn't going to be a great interceptor. Hell, there aren't even any good fighter-interceptors. And the F-35 apparently sucks at ALL of these jobs.
The notion of "One Aircraft To Rule Them All" is an utter fantasy.