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ground attack aircraft

Competition for the New Light Attack Aircraft is Heating Up

The United States Air Force is searching for a new light attack aircraft that will serve as the next generation of ground support aircraft for the nations’ troops. The Textron Scorpion, Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 Wolverine, Sierra Nevada A-29, and Air Tractor AT-802U are all being tested at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico to see which one would be most suitable for the mission.

The program, known as the Light Attack Experiment, is basically a fly-off between the four planes to determine which best fits the Air Force’s requirements. The Air Force wants an observation and attack (OA-X) plane that can fly over battlefields with minimal air defense threats (think of the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan or Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq) and not only provide firepower on demand to ground forces, but also scout ahead and gather intelligence on enemy forces. The aircraft would not be suitable for fighting countries like Russia and China that deploy advanced, fully modern air defense systems.

Basically, USAF wants a manned aircraft that can act as both a weapon and sensor platform, and is inexpensive to boot. Previously, the Air Force has used everything from A-10 Thunderbolt II attack jets to B-1B bombers in the close air support role. These aircraft are often an overmatch for chasing guerrillas, and they’re also extremely expensive to fly: a B-1B costs $61,000 an hour to fly, while the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter, which the Air Force has designated the A-10’s successor, costs $42,000 an hour.

The aircraft would be much cheaper to operate and maintain and could provide the valuable ground support and intelligence gathering in a wartime situation where our troops wouldn’t be facing an enemy with sophisticated anti-aircraft defenses.

To read the entire article from Popular Mechanics click here:

Photo courtesy US Air Force

The US Needs a Light, Turboprop, Ground Support Aircraft

In a not-so-amazing turn of events, the Air Force has come to the realization that they need a lighter, more cost efficient, ground support aircraft. The Air Force hasn’t had those types of aircraft in the inventory since Vietnam and has been loath to even keep the invaluable A-10, preferring the sleek, sexier F-15, and the F-16.

But for the pilots who fly the missions in combat, especially in the Middle East, it is a no brainer and the Air Force is listening to them and will hold an attack experiment using light turboprop aircraft at Hollman, AFB.

Light attack aircraft were just that – smaller attack aircraft like the A-37 Dragonfly or Navy OV-10, with significant weapons loads but not designed to stand up in the front of the apocalyptic Soviet/NATO battlefield. For the Air Force, the long path to considering a new attack aircraft started in 2008. Faced with increasing airpower demand in Iraq and Afghanistan, the existing fighters were being wrung out. For the kind of air support we were providing for U.S. ground forces, the existing F-16, F-15E and Navy / Marine F-18 were a ridiculous overmatch.

But we also wanted aircraft that could be forward deployed to austere airfields, fueled from 55-gallon drums, and supplied from the back of a pickup truck – none of which a jet can easily do. And we needed it to be relatively cheap to buy and to operate. In short, we envisioned an aircraft that looked like earlier designs, with the weapons and sensors of a modern jet.

These aircraft existed. I had seen the A-29 Super Tucano in Colombia in 2007. Raytheon had a conversion of their T-6 trainer (the AT-6) that included a weapons capability. What we were looking for was off the shelf stuff, not needing a long development period. For combat operations in the Middle East, this seemed like a good match.

The aircraft that existed were two-seaters with light armor, good day/night electro-optical sensors, guns, and precision munitions. Unrefueled, they had twice the loiter time of the fast jets. They sipped fuel – the fuel they burned in an hour of flight approximated the fuel an F-15E used taxiing from parking to the runway. We were looking at traditional attack aircraft – combat aircraft that could be used for a wide array of missions from Close Air Support to interdiction to combat search & rescue. In 2009, these aircraft could have flown from a dozen US-operated airfields in Afghanistan that could not have supported fast jets.

The experiment will confirm what the combat pilots already know. In a combat operations area that the sky is controlled by the US, the light, turboprop attack aircraft offers better flexibility, cost effectiveness, better precision and can be more effective in the war on terror.

To read the entire article from Forbes.com, click here:

Photo courtesy US Air Force