Warzone/The Drive: USAF's New Excuses For Delaying Light Attack Aircraft Program Sound Like A Death Sentence
The service now wants to expand its light attack effort to include platforms it has now, shifting the focus away from the one it desperately needs.
The Air Force's top officer says the service had to put its most recent light attack aircraft program on hold to gather yet more data on how it might use such these planes and how they might operate together with attack helicopters, armed drones, and other platforms. He also implied that there had been a lack of interest from potential foreign partners. Beyond simply ignoring the service's own glaringly obvious need for this capability, these arguments for putting the program on ice are dubious at best and appear to be a pretext for outright canceling the effort, if it isn't effectively dead already.
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WNU Editor: This reluctance on procuring light attack aircraft is feeding into the perception that the Air Force is only interested in big ticket items at the expense of smaller programs like a light attack plane.
3 comments:
I guess it comes down to the effectiveness of WW2 fighter planes as that is what we are discussing here. These planes would be cannon fodder for antiaircraft as unlike helicopters they would operate at higher altitudes. Thats not even considering the effectiveness of potential weaponry.
There is no denying the capabilities of the Warthog and these planes could serve the same role, but there is also no denying helicopters which have been very successful in Syria. End of the day mass production of a cheap war plane that is subpar to everything on the market should be left to UAV's and Drone. No one should expect man to fly such a death trap.
"should be left to UAV's and Drone. No one should expect man to fly such a death trap."
That is probably a fair statement.
If Helicopters were that good in Syria, why were they using such an effective and devastating weapons to drop 'dumb' chlorine bombs?
WW2 planes can fly nap of the earth, treetop. They are over you and gone before that Manpad, which as expensive (or more so) as the prop can be fired.
Because we are in Syria and Afghanistan, we are really stretching the up-time of our more complex fighter-bombers. Let's face it, if we are going to continue to be involved in counter terror roles with no fear of Anti-Air missiles, why are we using aircraft that require thousands of dollars fer flight hour to fly?
If we remove ourselves from low intensity "wars" I have no problem not acquiring light attack aircraft. However, if we stay, in order to continue to have an effective force at all we will need a High-Mid-Low end force mixture just to cut the cost associated with fighting these conflicts.
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