The Navy – of all the services – appears ready to commit nearly significant resources to a propeller-driven light attack aircraft in support of deep overland NSW missions in Afghanistan:
Lockheed Martin and Hawker-Beechcraft are considering pitching its AT-6B light-attack counterinsurgency plane for the upcoming Navy-led Combat Dragon II program, according to sources familiar with the effort.
The Navy recently shifted over $17 million into the Combat Dragon II program, designed to prove that a small, turboprop-driven aircraft can be used for “high end/special aviation” missions in Afghanistan.
The program was driven by the need coming out of from Central Command to have aircraft do close air support missions that larger fighters and bombers could not do, specifically in support of Naval Special Warfare units.
The Navy tried to fill that requirement through the Imminent Fury program, using the Brazilian-built Embraer Super Tucano. But that program fizzled out shortly before the planes headed out to Afghanistan for operational tests.
What I found really interesting was the cited quote from USAF Chief-of-Staff Norman Schwarz that the junior service has no intention of fielding a COIN-tailored light attack aircraft of its own, despite the stated requirement from the JROC and JRB.
Which they call them “requirements” for a reason, and talk about not getting it…
How does a program ‘fizzle out’? What does that mean?
In my mind, when something fizzles out, it is a slow process that implies neglect without a conscious decision to stop.
I don’t understand how that can happen with the amount of money that had to be involved. Someone had to decide something that brought it to an end. And I would hope they had good reason.
That’s pretty much how it works. Papers sit on desks, automatically inserted deadlines pass and phone calls are not returned. Then “suddenly” there is no more program.
Foot-dragging is an incredibly powerful tool of the bureaucracy.
The good ole USAF–makes me proud of my old service–if I were an Ostrich–that, or a bean-counting bureaucrat..
(Actually, I could see a method to their madness if they were husbanding their budget dollars for more F-22s and/or the like in a “I’d like both, but if you force me into a ‘either-or’ mode” classic example of a response to budgetary squeeze, but at this remove I’m at a loss to understand–unless they are under even more budgetary pressure than I’ve been following about their core “roles&missions.” STILL, USAF failure in this area would seem to give the Army another good excuse to get the camel’s nose further under the TACAIR tent, so don’t understand AF failure to at least mumble soothing words about “intent”–even if two-faced and not that *I* would be proud– in the direction of the Army to forestall Army action. Any USAF types up to speed on this–I’ve been too involved with my own war–”Operation Barbancourt..”)
Dunno, VX, considering one could trade a single Raptor for a wing of Texans.
VX, is this my cue to sing the Skyshark song?
Didn’t need…never got…nor could I ever get Zoomie CAS/TACAIR forty-three flippen years ago…why change things now? Best
Bring back the PA-48 Enforcer! A Turbine powered Mustang! Part of the PAVE COIN program to ‘COIN’ a phrase.
Doesn’t MANPADS make these prop jobs obsolete? I remember in Vietnam, when the North invaded in 1975, that the A-1 Skyraiders were effectively grounded by MANPADS. Sitting ducks, they were. How is a propjob trainer any different? Better put a hotbrick on that puppy. And lots of flares. And prayers.
No more so that MANPADS make Apache helicopters obsolete. Or fast movers, for that matter, given the knots a MANPAD can pile on in short order. In countermeasures we trust.
The Imminent Fury concept died because there was never an obvious home. The guys who actually want the capability (SOF) don’t have the ability to be aircraft controlling custodians and own the things. The Big Navy Aviation had no desire to stand up some sort of expeditionary squadron with all of the attendant baggage, taking the manning hit out of hide from the things they already love, for a new airframe bought outside the normal path of things. So they slow-rolled it.
I’d say the USAF may have a point. SOC has their very own acquisition authority and budget lines and if this is a SOC based and submitted Requirement let SOC pay for it. If they like it they can arrange for guys like TF-160 to fly it, groom it, paint it and maintain it. And, if they want to be especially devious they will staff it and run it in so extremely efficient a manner that when it comes time to slice the DOD Acquisition pie, they can point to their much more efficient and extremely less expensive and wasteful slice of aviation heaven and steal the USAF’s lunch and money. The navy may be thinking along those lines too… Thinking ahead to the navy version of TF-160 with naval aviators.
Key West Agreement – USAF drives fixed wing; Army drives helos.
Zoomies for the most part don’t like CAS: they wanna fly high & fast. What was that joke? Fighter pilots have movies made about them. Attack guys win wars.
I think that agreement is kind of moot and to be honest, the USAF was kind of the key factor in mooting it. They proved to be old reliable (you can’t trust them for nothing). The only thing they can cling to in their polluted acquisition schemes is the way they manage to build anything more complex than a paperclip in 45-50 states and get the congressional losers onboard for the jobs that are in it.
Which explains in large part why we won’t see foreign built aircraft of any size/capability in our air force.
At least the Army, Navy and Marines can honestly point out that nobody on the planet builds anything near as capable as what they fly from land and sea.
To a degree, yes. It’s one problem with the current obsession with counterinsurgency. You wind up spending a lot of money on hardware useless against an opponent equipped with more than AKs and RPGs.
Given that the Army has spent more time on COIN-type operations during their history than they have on conventional operations, I don’t know that I’d call it an “obsession.”
…Not to mention: when was the last time we fought such an opponent? Korea? I hope you aren’t counting Desert Storm…
The last time doesn’t matter. It’s the next time that’s important.
By that logic, we should be preparing for horse-born cavalry charges as well.
Any attempt to forecast future possibilities requires knowledge of history. In the last century alone, the US Army has engaged in about six years of conventional combat (WW1 – 1.5y, WW2 – 3.5y, Korea – 1y*), and several times that performing COIN-type operations. I don’t count the Gulf War, since that consisted of several months of bombing followed by 10 days of mopping up. I would even suggest a rule that any war in which enemy soldiers surrender to TV news camera crews is not -properly speaking- a war.
If you move the starting back just a tad, you can easily include operations in the Philippines as well.
To repeat, our last conventional force operations were 60 years ago, and in the same time frame we’ve spent over 20 years in Vietnam & Iraq alone.
*about 1 year of combat followed by 2 years of static trench operations.
http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2011/09/20/1124341?sac=Home
We do still have some good peeps in the Junior Service.
Not enough at the top though.
A bit harsh, my boy. It seems to me it the shares the omnipresent shortage of horse’s heads. Something seems to have gone wrong with our bloody officer training and selection these days.
Of the two categories, less of the cream seems to be rising than formerly was true. In all services.
But I could be wrong.
Grandpa, agree that there appears to be more “froth” than cream at the top in all services. As a former Zoomie I do tend to be parochial and expect more out of the AF.
I do not believe we will have the luxury of time and space in relearning old lessons in the next major conflict.
Buy more NEW A-10s.
Oh, and BTW, would the new Navy COIN aircraft be equipped with a tailhook and be capable of a cat launch?
couldn’t agree more about buying more A-10s
Let the Army buy ‘em too. The AF doesn’t want what they have.
If we’re going to reprocure A-10s, put a tailhook, launch bar, and folding wings on them.
It’s probably the only USAF aircraft that could plausibly be carrier-based.
You don’t really want to but ‘em on carriers, Mike, because they don’t have the legs OR the top end to get to the tgt quickly (which has ALWAYS been the AFs gripe [supposedly] ) Carriers would have to be sucking mud too close off-shore for comfort in order to provide responsive CAS. Which is why I’ve ALWAYS thought that ALL the A-10s should be given to the Marines land-based component for cas and the AF and Navy buy the Frogfoot airframe from the Russians and put our engines and electronics in them. The Frogfoot has a serviceable 30mm gun and a titanium “tub” just like the A-10 and has both the legs and the speed to get to the tgt over long distances quickly enough to respond to TIC, as well as be used as short-intermediate range strike on pre-plans. Point being the Frogfoot EXISTS in the here & NOW and can do everything both the Navy (in it’s navalized version) and the AF want for CAS/intermediate strike Tacair, for a TON less $ than anything else on the horizon which, by, the by, doesn’t even exist yet (hello F-35) You could actually buy/build them in enough numbers to afford to take losses in any big operation (unlike you-know-what.)
I know, I know, we’ve got to much sunk into the 35 program and too many other countries on the hook to drop the 35 now–its’ taken on a life of it’s own. But the SAVAGE IRONY of it all is that the 35 was supposed to be the cheaper alternative to the too expensive F-22.. Faar better if they had built a ton of 22s, canx the 35, bought the Frogfoot and hauled the F-111s out of the bone-yard and updated them and brought back to fulfill the long-range penetration strike role that has been left UNFULFILLED since they went away due to supposedly unbearable high maintenance costs (true, they were high, but not everything effective is “efficient.”) The money saved on 35s would have paid for a TON of maint. for the 111s.–and, along with the Frogfoots for the AF/USN and the A-10s to the USMC, we would have ended up with a FAR more flexible, cheaper AND more EFFECTIVE overall force. The only thing lacking would be a long-range, first-strike penetration strike-fighter/ECM bird for the Navy and that’s where the UAVs come in..
See, there you go again Virgil, being logical, reasonable and all.
And with the voice of experience.
Regards,
Everything except giving the Warthogs to teh Army, who want them, and can use them.
While they’re at it, the AF can cough up the C-27s they stole from the Army as well.
I worked with a former Royal Navy Buccaneer pilot. I asked him what they felt about that tough old low flying bird and he said that his squadron, to a man, would go back to war in a Buccaneer, just with updated avionics.
To refresh my geography I just did a Google Earth look at the locale in question. Appears to be a long way off from oceans and stuff. Why is the Navy looking at this role? What, is the AF too taken up with the zoom boom mega buck dollar stuff to think about a budget hole for close in support? Is the mission beneath them? Army, hello, are you there? Got your budget full of the helicopters? Hmmm. Are the Black Ponies coming back?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B9irR_1t6Q&feature=related
What color will the ready room be, powder blue?
Which, may I take a moment to pimp my own blog? I’ve written about the LAARA program a few times:
http://xbradtc.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/laara-beechcraft-vs-embraer/
Unless this thing will have a tailhook, why is the Navy even considering buying it?
Same reason there’s SEAL battalions instead of teams – budget dollars.
Might be something to butch said up above. The Army can’t do it, the Air Force doesn’t want to do it, and the Navy’s been desperately trying to make itself relevant and hang on to budget dollars in the face of two wars largely without ocean access, apart from Umm Qasr.
A Naval TF-160 is an interesting idea, but one wonders how much retraining you’d have to do to make a Hornet driver a prop-COIN type. Marine chopper pilots, maybe?
Jeff,
I don’t believe that one can go backwards like that outside a major war. If they go for the prop driven COIN a/c they can start from scratch at naval aviation and train the entry pipeline in flying the missions that would come in 5-10 years as the program reaches full production. s not an overnight kind of transition.
Same reason the Navy flies P-3s, C-130s, E-6s and now the P-8…tailhoooks not required all the time
I think they are setting up to do more than A-stan looking around at where we are fighting, training and hunting worldwide…
It was shot down because it wasn’t made in Kansas.
A P-51 with carbon fiber wings and a super-critical propeller- loaded with weapons racks.
Always wondered if that could be done….
Bad idea. Inline engine. No mojo.
If you use an IC engine, go radial. Like the SPAD. Heh.
Turboprop? We’re back to the Piper Enforcer, Super Tucano, and AT-6B. The latter two are already in production.
Ever hear of the super secret “toilet bomb” mission flown by the A-1 Skyraider?
http://midwaysailor.com/midwayva25bomb/
The aviation community at its best!
Doesn’t the USAF already have a couple prop-driven COIN/CAS aircraft in the inventory? (MQ-1 and MQ-9)
The Super Tucano is a great platform for shotting at things that don´t shoot back, like drug dealer´s planes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XtNjEfru3k But I think a scalled-down version of the AC130 would do a better job.
Like the C-27J? Sorry, on hold due to reallocation of funds.
I saw mention of bringing back the OV-10 for the COIN role. Now THERE was an airplane — you could even deliver 5 (I believe) parachutists out of the old lady. I’m just glad to know that there are some still around.