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I bet the Super Tucano would be a HOOT to fly though. The cruise speed is listed a 281 knots. The A-10's is 300 knots. Not that far off. Still slow by fighter standards.
What you guys are calling a "fighter" is really a ground-attack plane. I don't see anything with a prop being competitive against a jet fighter, unless the prop pilot is seriously SH, and the jet pilot is a stark noob who has his hands full just not crashing without any help from the enemy. Even then...
What you guys are calling a "fighter" is really a ground-attack plane. I don't see anything with a prop being competitive against a jet fighter, unless the prop pilot is seriously SH, and the jet pilot is a stark noob who has his hands full just not crashing without any help from the enemy. Even then...
Fighter is a bit of a misnomer, obviously. Of course, calling it a fighter might make the Air Force more likely to fund it...
That being said, all weapons are dangerous when wielded by determined people. As mentioned upthread, von Rosen took out Mig-17s and Iliushin jet bombers with 100-HP elementary trainers that could just barely drag six SNEB rockets under each wing. Sure, he did so rather unsportingly by bouncing on them while they were on the ground, but war is a practical business...
Slow prop planes have their place in the type of war those planes are fighting. They are not fighting jet air craft. They can come in low and slow under any radar, and taking care of small bases, etc., they can do a great job.
Example a true example: Two brothers I used to work with, had been in the Vietnam war, and their group were tying to get to a certain objective. They were stymied for about 10 days, due to there being a deep cave where they had a rail road track that at night they would roll out a huge cannon and blow everything to pieces. This was on one side of a canyon. They simply could not take it out. The airforce had sent in waves of high altitude bombers, but could not get it. One day in desperation they talked to the naval force laying off the course. They explained the problem, and were told that at noon they would have their skip bomber in place, and it would no longer be a problem. They heard an old prop driven TBM (Topedo Bomber Martin) from WWII, that was flying down the canyon for safety and was flying slow and low. When he came to the cave, he started to fly up the mountain, and released the bomb onto the platform in front of the cave where the cannon would come out. They watched it hit, and bounce into the cave. About 10 seconds after entering the cave it went off (delayed fuse system so could bounce into the cave) with a huge explosion along with setting off their ammo supply inside the cave. The whole cave fell in on itself, and there was no one alive in the cave. Problem solved, and their patrol moved on and reached their objective.
They called the carrier and were told that was their skip bomber. He was an older pilot that only flew the TBM, not even trained for jets. They had planes two aboard, and he was the only pilot assigned to them. When ever they had a situation like this one, they sent him in and he could skip a bomb with a delayed fuse into about anything. They talked to the old pilot and asked what they could do to thank him. He said a bottle of good scotch would be nice. My friends said he got a case from them. He called and thanked them (on the radio). They found out more about him. He had done the same thing starting with WWII. He could have retired years before but was single, no family and the Navy let him remain in the service, as he was one of a few men, that could perform his type of service in battles. When he went to a battle scene, he was protected by jets flying overhead, as he would move in to do his skip bombing routine. He went under the nick name of Skip, due to his specialty.
There are many times, that a prop plane is more useful than a jet. They are much cheaper to operate, and they can be brought in low and slow, and can thus evade a lot of radar. The ones that are in this article, are ideal for their purpose they will be used for. In addition they can be flown off of fields, that cannot handle a jet.
Ground attack fighters need lots of protections from ground fire like the A-10 so they can stick around. I wonder how much armor is on these they should bring back the A-1 Skyraider those were flying tanks give those to them.
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I bet the Super Tucano would be a HOOT to fly though. The cruise speed is listed a 281 knots. The A-10's is 300 knots. Not that far off. Still slow by fighter standards.
General Atomics has been awarded a $17.5 million contract to integrate the laser small diameter bomb onto its MQ-9 Reaper drone, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a Monday, November 27 press release.
The integration of the 250-pound precision-guided glide bomb, recently launched from F-22s to strike Taliban drug factories in Afghanistan, would give the Reaper a 75-km stand-off weapons capability and reduce the U.S. Air Force need for more expensive and dangerous manned missions.
“General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., Poway, California, has been awarded a $17,461,954 contract for integration of the Guided Bomb Unit-39B/B, also known as laser small diameter bomb onto the MQ-9 Reaper via universal armament interface on a dual carriage system,” the release said.
Work is expected to be completed by November 27, 2021.
Reaper should be able to carry 12 of those, each with 40 mile standoff range and ability to target anything from moving vehicles to bunkers. Granted until SDB-2 is available with trimode seeker they are somewhat weather limited, and a Reaper isn't going to dive under the clouds to strafe or put rockets on heads like Super Tucano can. However it's got ridiculous loiter time and sees the battlefield a lot better than one pilot in a turoprop.
Reaper should be able to carry 12 of those, each with 40 mile standoff range and ability to target anything from moving vehicles to bunkers. Granted until SDB-2 is available with trimode seeker they are somewhat weather limited, and a Reaper isn't going to dive under the clouds to strafe or put rockets on heads like Super Tucano can. However it's got ridiculous loiter time and sees the battlefield a lot better than one pilot in a turoprop.
Agree on all counts, but as a former FAC-A (in one of those prop planes, the OV-10) I must say that the eyes in the cockpit can scan a lot more than the soda straw field of view in an RPA. Not in the IR band, of course, but the difference is big picture versus narrow FOV. An RPA pilot I met at Nellis once who had been an F-16 pilot at Cannon before the 27th FW closed its doors said the difference was noticing someone walking in the room with peripheral vision versus counting nose hairs on that same person using a magnifying lens.
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