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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.
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
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.
It's not a "WWII-era" plane just because it has a propeller. Is the Humvee WWII-era because it has wheels??
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?
Lockheed Martin and Boeing don't want low cost weapons programs that utilize off the shelf components. The markup is too low.
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.
Imagine all the people...
The PA-48 Enforcer is a gorgeous plane. Basically an armored, tubo-propped P51 Mustang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
> Can someone offer an explanation as to why this plane has not been adopted?
Pork barrel politics and future private sector work. Why would they adopt something good and give up throwing projects to companies to guarantee them cushy jobs after they retire from the military
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
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.
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
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.