Posted by Walt (69.224.70.129) on February 12, 2010 at 07:43:44:
Maybe IA airtanker pilot jobs will still have a place (for a year or two--):
Aviation Week & Space Technology Feb 08 , 2010 , p. 39
Bill Sweetman, Washington
"Keep It Simple"
As mechanized forces bog down in the fight against insurgents in Afghanistan, low-tech solutions to problems become more attractive. One of these is the use of small, simple aircraft to replace jets for the close air support (CAS), armed reconnaissance and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions that dominate air operations.
Boeing has proposed reviving the OV-10 Bronco to meet requirements for a low-tech CAS platform. Credit: BOEING CONCEPT
The U.S. Air Force, Army and Royal Air Force are fielding reconnaissance aircraft based on the Hawker Beechcraft King Air , acting as a surrogate for oversubscribed unmanned aerial vehicles . The U.S. has provided the rebuilt Iraqi air force with Cessna 208 Caravan single-engine transports, equipped with defensive missile-approach warning systems, infrared (IR)/laser-designation systems and pylons for Hellfire missiles, as multipurpose reconnaissance and attack assets. The U.K. deploys the smaller Diamond DA42, a twin-engine light aircraft with jet fuel-burning diesel engines, for ISR.
A proposed step is to deploy a new class of combat aircraft based on modern trainers. One aircraft in this class has been in service for several years: Brazil’s Embraer EMB-312 Super Tucano trainer, which patrols the Amazon basin to monitor narco-traffickers and environmental violators, and to conduct counter-insurgency (COIN) operations. The U.S. Navy has acquired armed Super Tucanos under the Imminent Fury program, to provide airborne forward air control (FAC-A) and CAS for SEAL teams.
The Air Force put out a request for information for a light attack and armed reconnaissance (LAAR) aircraft, to be based on a trainer. The Hawker Beechcraft AT-6B, derived from the T-6A Texan II , is the most likely candidate. The service is looking for up to 100 aircraft to be operational starting in 2013.
We have seen this before. More than 50 years ago, driven by the need to provide CAS for troops in Algeria, the French air force acquired 150 T-28As, which USAF had discarded in favor of jets. Modified with token armor, engines and propellers scavenged from B-17s, and weapon hardpoints, the renamed Fennec served for several years and inspired the U.S. to do the same in Vietnam, deploying armed versions of the T-28 and the T-37 .
What is being proposed today is not the COIN aircraft of our grandfathers. Today’s trainers are more powerful and more advanced—with reliable engines; power, speed and size comparable to a World War II fighter; pressurized and air-conditioned cockpits; and zero-zero ejection seats—and take advantage of modern sensors and weapons.
Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq has pushed forward the state of the art in the ubiquitous “sensor ball.” Until the late 1990s, this was a specialized piece of equipment carried by some helicopters and larger UAVs. The turrets were heavy and expensive to maintain, and smaller versions provided only basic night vision. Since then, FLIR Systems, L-3 Wescam, El-Op and others have updated products on a rapid cycle, making them more compact, stable and reliable while packing in more functions. The result is that today’s light helicopter or attack-modified trainer can carry a sensor ball that includes a high-resolution mid-wave IR camera, high-definition TV that works in relatively low-light conditions, and a laser rangefinder and designator.
Another important change is the availability of high-brightness, lightweight flat-screen displays to allow the crew of a small aircraft to make sense of detailed imagery, combined with the communications and processing technology for CAS and FAC-A missions. With GPS, the ability of the sensor ball to geolocate targets with its laser rangefinder, and data links to connect with on-the-ground target-location systems and portable video terminals—small CAS aircraft can have sensing, situational awareness and weapon-aiming systems equal to any jet.
Another factor in the light-attack equation involves CAS weaponry. Driven by the political need to minimize collateral damage, the trend is toward smaller weapons used carefully.
One key weapon for light attack aircraft is likely to be the laser-guided 70-mm. rocket. While the U.S. Army has had trouble developing this relatively simple weapon, other nations’ industries have not. Even Raytheon successfully tested a laser-guided rocket in partnership with a United Arab Emirates company. Accurate, available with different warheads and able to outrange the most likely weapons, the 70-mm. laser-guided rocket is easy to integrate, not requiring any data connection to the launch aircraft.
Hawker Beechcraft and Lockheed Martin offer the armed AT-6B for USAF’s LAAR program. Credit: LOCKHEED MARTIN CONCEPT
The UAE’s rocket program may be connected with the country’s interest in the Boeing AH-6 helicopter. Now on offer in its international version, the AH-6 bears little detail relationship to the AH-6 Little Birds flown by the Army’s 160th Special Operations Air Regiment—rather, it combines evolutionary improvements to the commercial Model 530, teamed with a processing and display suite derived from the Apache Block 3 and an off-the-shelf L-3 Wescam sensor ball.
Boeing has floated another approach to the light-attack requirement: Restart production of the OV-10 Bronco, another Vietnam-era solution to COIN, which was last produced in 1976. (Rockwell, which designed the aircraft, pitched it unsuccessfully to South Korea in the early 1980s.) The twin-engine Bronco, roughly twice the size of the Tucano and AT-6B, would be updated with new avionics and sensors, including a nose-mounted radar.
The advent of the Bronco raises questions about whether the rest of the Vietnam-era history of COIN aircraft will repeat itself, and about the robustness of the light-attack concept.
Introduced in Vietnam, the armed T-28 proved vulnerable to ground fire and was limited in payload, which led to the development of the OV-10. Hawker Beechcraft and Lockheed Martin, which teamed to bid the AT-6B for LAAR, say the aircraft will be equipped with lightweight armor in critical areas, as well as protected fuel tanks, IR suppressors on the exhausts, a missile-approach warning system and flare dispensers. On the positive side, the demands of war in the Middle East have driven the development of effective, lightweight armor. However, the hard fact is that trainers are not designed to take hits—they lack the redundant structure and systems, and separated load paths and control runs, which are standard for combat aircraft. And with the weight of protective gear added to a weapons load (and the drag of a sensor pod), the question is whether the aircraft’s air-show agility will survive with weapons over a hot, high battlefield.
Iraqi air force Cessna Combat Caravan flies a Hellfire test sortie. Credit: U.S. AIR FORCE
That may be a particular concern if guns are used. The precision and low collateral damage of the gun make it a favorite weapon in Afghanistan CAS missions. The armed T-28B and the Bronco were designed around the ubiquitous 50-caliber gun, but weapons of that class are widely available and easily fitted to a portable or vehicle pintle mount. Result: Operations proved the truth of the adage that “if the enemy is in range, so are you.”
Hawker Beechcraft has shown a 20-mm. gun pod for the AT-6B. But a potential snag is that the smallest standard 20-mm. gun in U.S. service is the three-barrel General Dynamics M197 Gatling. Logistics and weight could drive a move to a 50-caliber weapon, but that could put strafing runs uncomfortably close to ground fire.
The modern light attack aircraft’s ejection seats also raise a problem for the ground commander that did not exist with the T-28 (which had no ejection seats, apart from a few U.S. aircraft). If the “golden BB” hits a vital part of the aircraft, the commander has no CAS, and he has the problem of recovering the crew.
Those limitations and problems led to the development of the Light Armed Reconnaissance Aircraft (LARA). A classic case of requirements compounding, LARA was designed for everything (including personnel transport, carrier operations and a version with pontoon floats), and the eventual OV-10 was a disappointment. USAF, instead, went to the boneyard and extracted a number of Navy A-1 Skyraiders, which despite their age were real combat aircraft, faster than the OV-10, packing four 20-mm. cannons and able to carry a load of armor.
However, the Air Force was thinking of something more advanced, with two engines, burning JP rather than aviation gasoline and with more built-in protection—a so-called Super-COIN. And if you think it disappeared, you’d be wrong: It was the progenitor of the A-X requirement, which was met by the A-10. The challenge of today’s light attack aircraft is to focus on the “light” while providing flexibility, so that history, which has already started to repeat itself, does not finish the job.