A-10 to be retired.

MikeD said:
As fas as a new CAS aircraft, want my vote as a CAS guy through and through? Bring back the Piper PA-48 Enforcer.
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I've actually been writing a book about the Piper Enforcer for the last 10 years or so, and it has its own serious shortcomings, not the least of which is the lookdown angle over the nose.

The two test pilots who flew the PA-48 at Edwards and Eglin in '84 said they were never able to actually see the target on any of their bomb passes, regardless of delivery angle. By my memory, the lookdown angle is about 5 or 6 degrees, while all the current fighters have a 15+ degree look over the nose. The Enforcer pilots ended up using significantly offset aimpoints to even get weapons to deliver in the correct neighborhood as the target.

The concept is IMHO more robust than the AT-6 or the Super Tucano, but I just can't see a way past the really long nose for effective weapons delivery.
 
Hacker15e said:
The concept is IMHO more robust than the AT-6 or the Super Tucano, but I just can't see a way past the really long nose for effective weapons delivery.
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I can't remember if you commented on the Air Tractor 802 entry in that COIN aircraft proposal a few years back.

Most likely, it is another case of a really cool looking airplane that wouldn't actually work in the real world of combat.
 
///AMG said:
Is that like the older brother of the GBU-24B/B? Seems like it with my rudimentary wiki search
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The GBY-27 was made specifically for the 117, because the Paveway III tail kit on the GBU-24 didn't fit in the F-117 bomb bay. The -27 is a -24 with shaved-down tailfins. The EGBU-27 was the same weapon, but with GPS as well as laser guidance. If the target could be seen, it was dropped like a regular GBU-27; if the target couldnt be seen due to WX or such, the "E" mode was used and it was dropped as a GPS bomb. If when dropped in this mode, the target is then seen or appears visually, any lasing of the target served to tighten the accuracy of the bomb.
 
Hacker15e said:
The problem with the Mud Fighter was that the rest of the systems were not at all thought out. Mainly, it had zero ability to carry other heavy ordnance, it had zero military avionics (basic things like a bombing or gunnery computer, but also more advanced things like a 1553 bus to those nonexistant heavy hardpoints), no threat detection systems, no self-protection systems, etc.

There was also significant question about in-field battle damage repair capability of the carbon-over-foam construction. Let's remember that one of the Hog's main selling points is its ability to soak up small arms and light AAA, keep flying, and be easily repairable afterward.

So...it isn't a case of "aesthetics before versatility". It is more a case of Rutan with a great idea that wasn't anywhere remotely close to being fleshed out enough to be a viable combat aircraft.
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Excellent point about the limitations of carbon composites to small arms fire, I stand corrected. I read a little more about the Mud Fighter and heard there were some armoring ideas floating around, but it would have been nothing compared to the infamous "bath tub" in the A-10. As far as the avionics, I would have assumed they were left out on the prototype to be added in later? It seems like the rule in defense aircraft prototyping is don't pay for anything extra and use/re-use the cheapest parts available to get the job done (especially if the contractor is paying out of pocket with no guaranteed return). One example that comes to mind, to save money the Lockheed engineers on the HAVE BLUE project (prototype for the F-117) took the engines from the T-2 Buckeye, the fly-by wire system from the F-16 and the landing gear from the F-5. However if they never intended to include modern targeting avionics in the production aircraft, I would agree on that being an egregious oversight.

Also, I know that the Predator and Reaper are composite airframes - does the Reaper's CAS profile just keep it higher up and out small arms danger since they employ hellfire missiles and don't do such low strafing runs? Do you think that, given the military's move towards UAVs, that a cheaper and more expendable ARES-like CAS UAV could make a comeback?
 
inigo88 said:
but it would have been nothing compared to the infamous "bath tub" in the A-10.
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The bathtub is somewhat overrated. Cool design, but with limitations. The tub itself surrounds the cockpit sides and bottom. The forward windscreen is bullet resistant glass up to about 23mm, though 12.7mm is more realistic. The problem comes in the low-level flying that was once the only place we operated. Whereas the front windscreen is bullet resistant, the actual canopy itself is simple plexiglass. So a hit to the sides of bottom of the cockpit would be resisted by the bathtub. However in a low-level turn with a large bank, such as a ridge crossing, if a round came through the canopy, the titanium bathtub now became a titanium catchers-mitt, with my pink fleshy body in the middle of it.

So while the bathtub was a good design, it did have its limitations, just like anything does.
 
inigo88 said:
One example that comes to mind, to save money the Lockheed engineers on the HAVE BLUE project (prototype for the F-117)
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The thing about HAVE BLUE is that it was specifically designed and built to be a concept demonstrator for the faceted design generated by Lockheed's computer program and some of the RAM they intended to use. It was never itself intended to be a combat aircraft, so it didn't need to even think about how it was going to target, store, or release weapons.

ARES was built because Rutan was told that his airplane would be evaluated if he built it (same thing that the designer/builder of the Enforcer was told, too). The design almost exclusively revolves around the offset gun, which was offset opposite side of the intake to fight the whole "gun gasses cause compressor stall" phenomenon. If the Mud Fighter were intended as a concept demonstrator for that idea, then I buy it -- but from what I recall from what was being said at the time, Rutan didn't intend that. ARES itself was the aircraft derived from an earlier concept demonstrator he'd done with a Long EZ.

The bottom line is, though, that the Mud Fighter was at least two steps removed -- actual prototype including the actual intended capabilities, and production version -- from ever being an operational combat aircraft. Those two steps, themselves, are massive hurdles for any military aircraft, even those built by the big companies who've made operational combat aircraft for decades, to get over.
 
inigo88 said:
Also, I know that the Predator and Reaper are composite airframes - does the Reaper's CAS profile just keep it higher up and out small arms danger since they employ hellfire missiles and don't do such low strafing runs? Do you think that, given the military's move towards UAVs, that a cheaper and more expendable ARES-like CAS UAV could make a comeback?
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Reaper is still extremely far away from having performance even tangentially related to a tactical aircraft. It is more like a Cessna 185 than an F-16. It just barely has the power to contain its own sensor packages and the quite light ordnance it carries. It is still subject to some serious limitations on maneuvering, and for all intents-and-purposes is a "straight-and-level" and "30 degrees of bank or less" kind of aircraft.

Those slow speeds are a limitation on employing bombs, as gravity bombs (like the GBU-12 or GBU-38 500-pound bomb) need some kinetic energy at impact to create weapons effects. For some comparison, we drop similar bombs in the F-15E faster than 400 knots in order to achieve particular impact velocities which will yield particular impact effects. The Reaper drops its ordnance at something less than 150 knots. It doesn't take a scientist to realize that the impact velocities and resulting weapons effects with ordnance dropped from a Reaper are....significantly less, to say the least.

Recall earlier we were talking about the delay between what the pilot sees (because of the delay in that data being transmitted from the aircraft to the control facility), and the additional delay for his control inputs to make it through cyberspace to the aircraft. The length of that two-way delay is such that the ability to maneuver real time tactically is just not feasible. The Reaper is not armed with a gun, but even if it were, the maneuvering limitations on the airframe, combined with the delay in maneuver inputs from the pilot, make strafing just not practical. Add to it the fact that strafing is used specifically because it is a discriminatory weapon: gun effects can be focused on a small area on the ground, and thus is useful for situations in which friendly and enemy forces are physically close together (too close together for the weapons effects of a gravity bomb). The current control methodology for RPAs is just not precise enough, nor is the aircraft performance precise enough, to allow precise aiming and shooting of a gun in the vicinity of friendly forces.

As I've said before on JC, it is inevitable that there will be UCAVs in the future: remote operation is a methodology of flying an aircraft, and just because the aircraft that are being remotely operated NOW don't have the performance required to operate in a hostile/denied environment, it doesn't mean that future iron won't. We will definitely have those aircraft in the mid-future (15 years, maybe?), and I'm sure the control technology and bandwidth will increase to allow more rapid and precise control of those aircraft. Will one of those aircraft be a CAS aircraft? In my opinion, CAS will be one of the last missions to lose actual piloted aircraft. There's all ready been some backlash against RPA use in CAS which resulted in the U-28 and MC-12 being designed and built specifically to have similar capabilities to the RPAs but with human eyeballs on board able to look out the window.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
I'd buy it. I hope it documents the Cavalier Mustangs, as well.
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It actually covers the entire history of the Trans-Florida Aviation Mustangs, through the civil and military Cavaliers, and on through both iterations of the Enforcers (PE-1 and PE2, and the two PA-48s).

Been working on it since 2002, and have had two publishers I've been contracted with go bankrupt through the process! I've been fortunate to have access to most of the company information through the sons of the owner/developer/president of Cavalier.
 
Hacker15e said:
Reaper is still extremely far away from having performance even tangentially related to a tactical aircraft. It is more like a Cessna 185 than an F-16. It just barely has the power to contain its own sensor packages and the quite light ordnance it carries. It is still subject to some serious limitations on maneuvering, and for all intents-and-purposes is a "straight-and-level" and "30 degrees of bank or less" kind of aircraft.
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Agreed. While the Reaper is certainly capable of "intervening" in a CAS situation, it is not the ideal aircraft to do so. That being said, I do think that a "CAS-specialized" UAV could be feasible. It would just need to be properly vetted through the development process to get the right mix of ordnance and interoperability.


Hacker15e said:
Recall earlier we were talking about the delay between what the pilot sees (because of the delay in that data being transmitted from the aircraft to the control facility), and the additional delay for his control inputs to make it through cyberspace to the aircraft. The length of that two-way delay is such that the ability to maneuver real time tactically is just not feasible. The Reaper is not armed with a gun, but even if it were, the maneuvering limitations on the airframe, combined with the delay in maneuver inputs from the pilot, make strafing just not practical. Add to it the fact that strafing is used specifically because it is a discriminatory weapon: gun effects can be focused on a small area on the ground, and thus is useful for situations in which friendly and enemy forces are physically close together (too close together for the weapons effects of a gravity bomb). The current control methodology for RPAs is just not precise enough, nor is the aircraft performance precise enough, to allow precise aiming and shooting of a gun in the vicinity of friendly forces.

As I've said before on JC, it is inevitable that there will be UCAVs in the future: remote operation is a methodology of flying an aircraft, and just because the aircraft that are being remotely operated NOW don't have the performance required to operate in a hostile/denied environment, it doesn't mean that future iron won't. We will definitely have those aircraft in the mid-future (15 years, maybe?), and I'm sure the control technology and bandwidth will increase to allow more rapid and precise control of those aircraft. Will one of those aircraft be a CAS aircraft? In my opinion, CAS will be one of the last missions to lose actual piloted aircraft. There's all ready been some backlash against RPA use in CAS which resulted in the U-28 and MC-12 being designed and built specifically to have similar capabilities to the RPAs but with human eyeballs on board able to look out the window.
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I believe the technology to do what you describe above already exists. It is just not set up under the right methodology to provide near-instantaneous control of the aircraft or weapon. I believe the key to successfully integrating UAV's into truly "kinetic" operations is to trash the "satellite only" and "LOS only" concepts and develop a hybrid system that allows for distant or autonomous operation for normal ISR, but can quickly and easily be transferred to a LOS user in the fight (a trained JTAC, for example) that eliminates lag and allows the employment of weapons like guns.

As you pointed out, I highly doubt the CAS mission will go to UAV's early on. However, in a permissive environment, such a UAV would be able provide not only life-saving SA to the ground troops, but the ability to intervene in a way that no manned aircraft currently can. Just imagine: the JTAC takes control of the UAV, slews the sensor to the guys shooting at him, and fires. No "big-to-small" target talk-on, none of the back-and-forth over the radio to obtain/confirm clearance. I realize it would be more complicated than that, but I think the ability of the ground personnel to effectively protect themselves through systems they can take control of is the future of CAS.
 
MikeD said:
On the Army debate, oddly enough, it was then-CSAF Gen Merrill McPeak who wanted to give the A-10s and the CAS mission to the Army, in trade for taking the Army's ATACMs Theatre Ballistic Missiles and those going to the AF, like the BGM-109 GLCM that the AF was then operating in Europe.
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To expand, General McPeak in 1991 put forth these proposals to have the doctrinal roles and missions changed, including giving the CAS mission to the Army as well as the fleet of A-10s, but he was voted down by the other service Chief's of Staff, including the Army, due to the rest of the proposals in his doctrinal change recommendations. Namely, that the Army and Navy get out of the space roles and long range air defense roles, as well as the USMC give it's F/A-18s to the Navy and retire their remaining F-4S Phantoms; and retain only pure attack aircraft for their CAS mission, such as the AV-8B Harrier and (still then) the A-4M Skyhawk.
 
On the politics front, what irks me is Congress itself, some of whom are "appalled" at the A-10 being retired.. Many of these idiot members pushed sequestration, yet now are mad because of the cuts the AF chooses to make, because they were forced to? Sorry those choices don't fit your political agenda or local/state jobs program you have going Mr/Mrs Senator/Congressman; but this is what YOU called for in voting for sequestration; now live with it.
 
MikeD said:
On the politics front, what irks me is Congress itself, some of whom are "appalled" at the A-10 being retired.. Many of these idiot members pushed sequestration, yet now are mad because of the cuts the AF chooses to make, because they were forced to? Sorry those choices don't fit your political agenda or local/state jobs program you have going Mr/Mrs Senator/Congressman; but this is what YOU called for in voting for sequestration; now live with it.
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One thing I don't really hear too much of is completely overhauling the DoD acquisitions process. Gen Welsh did bring up a good point about the non-linear curve of aircraft cost. $4500 for a WW2 fighter to $5mil in the Vietnam era to over $100mil now. I didn't hear him specifically talk of the acquisitions, but maybe I missed it. The actual costs are very convoluted in the acquisition process. The unit cost may not be the unit cost. Politicians push for sequestration, but on the back side are the causes of it because they believe the F-XX or KC-XX will bring thousands of jobs and prosperity through some back-ended Keynesian plan.
 
SeanD said:
Sorta off topic. Has the Navy started adding these new displays in the F-18 yet?

http://defensetech.org/2012/09/17/b...t-digital-displays-for-possible-2015-upgrade/
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No. I have "flown" the demo sim they put together, and while neat, it is nowhere even close to being an operational system/configuration. Some of the higher lot F/A-18F's have a somewhat smaller but much larger than normal display in the back seat due to the extra space back there.....and to give them something to look at :) Wrt the original question, I doubt we will see this particular upgrade getting funded anytime soon, especially given the fiscal environment we live in.
 
I saw this in my FB feed today, and find it somehow appropriate... or reason that I'm going to hell.

1380165_399329783526245_770271032_n.jpg
 
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