Wouldn't it make sense for the military to develop prop driven aircraft for close air support that could carry modern m-u-n-i-t-i-o-n-s? Think of the benefits of prop driven aircraft. they can orbit above one place for a couple hours. this would allow you to have close airsupport at hand for any operation you are conducting. terrorist usually don't have high tech sams. prop driven aircraft proved themselves in vietnam as good close air support providers in a modern conflict. just imagine what would have happened had the usa had prop driven close air support in somalia in 1993. i think that that would have been a differnet story.

by the way to beat trigger words you just put a dash between each letter in the trigger words.

I'm a big believer in prop close support planes. The Skyraider was highly effective. However, prop planes don't impress anyone these days. It's all about speed and high tech.

why doesn't anyone consider the benefits of prop driven aircraft. it really annoys me that the military doesn't consider this. i think that an advance skyraider that can carry smart m-u-n-i-t-i-o-n-s is cheaper and better at close air support than an f-16.

you're right, prop driven aircraft r cheap, don't waste fuel, and can be produced in HUGE numbers, The US or Nato, should be upgrading prop planes or modern fighters like the f 16, they are wasting time producing 250,000,000 dollar aircraft such as the F22

we already have the f-15 and f-16 so we have a lot of good fighters. we could dedicate all of them to air combat and put prop driven aircraft for airsupport. i think that the f-22 would be nice in small numbers for a stealthy first strike fighter in case of a war with china or russia.

You people are forgetting about the A-10 Thunderbolt II, aka the "Warthog". This jet was designed for nothing but pulling CAS and puts all other jets to shame doing this. And the neat thing about that jet is you dont hear that 30 mm gatling gun until after the shells are on the ground (Hence why the Iraqis called it "The Silent gun). And if a squadron of these got fielded in Somalia in 93, things would of been different.
Seriously, look it up on wikipedia.org.

yeah ya know wikipedia is so reliable. just about any close air support besides the little birds woudl have been nice in somalia. as ggod as the a-10 is it still has jet engines and jet engines aren't as fuel efficent as prop driven aircraft. a propdriven aircraft can orbit for hours before needing to refuel. much longer than jets.

Well, I'm speculating here, but since turbines (Warthog) are fairly fuel efficient now, and the growing popularity of commercial jet liners, perhaps the base for mass producing prop planes and aquiring replacement parts just no longer exists. Plus, they're likely to be slower than the A10, which makes them more vulnerable, and means they'll require more protection. Anyone have hard numbers on the power output of relatively small turbines and piston engines?

And easy on the F-22. Yeah, it's expensive, but if we get complacent and stop spending money on new fighters, we could end up flying F2A's and F4F's against A6M Zero's again(for comparison). Now, Russia has a pretty sweet deal going on, which unfortunately isn't a good thing for us. They sell their hardware, and funnel portions of the proceeds into R&D. They design, and possibly build prototypes of interesting, but unproven aircraft and tanks. Like this T-95, and SU-47. So, if things go back, they have something to rush into production. Unfortunately, considering how fasts wars seem to end now a days, I doubt it'd be fast enough. So in short, like it or not, we have stay on top of the military tech game, or someone else will make a real competition out of it, and we'll end up right back in another Cold War.

you forget that no one has any weapons any more designed to bring down prop driven aricraft. and terrorists don't exactly have a lot of sams laying around. while i agree we should continue developing aircraft we should order a lto more f-22's then because cost of a fighter or bomber is the cost of all of the design and stuff done on the aircraft with a nice profit so the more planes you order the less they cost.

We already have a prop CAS aircraft- the AC-130 spectre. There are plans to introduce a gunship variant of the osprey.

A-10s are amazing. The future is going to dictate stol multi-role ac like the JSF.

It all comes down to cost and availability. If the sortie isn't there, you are gonna fly the mission. If the endurance isn't there (because of fatigue or costs) you're not going to see the ambush set up which puts your people in jeopardy.

Munitions run a distant second place, largely because the helicopters and drones are equally handicapped by 100,000 dollar Hellfire and 15,000 dollar LCPK as their primary options while the fixed wing community is looking at 20,000 dollar GBU-44 and 60,000 dollar GBU-39 as the best freefall options (nothing beats a gun for cheap, even though it poses an insane risk to the platform).

Fighter jets run anywhere from 5,500 dollars an hour (F-16/A-10) to 12-14,000 dollars and up for twins (F-15/18).

They also pay an ENORMOUS penalty in combat persistence for the right to pull 9Gs, travel supersonically and carry an outrageously oversized radar and bubble canopy. So grotesque is this penalty that our smallest fighter (the F-16) tools about with 7,200lbs internal fuel and another 3,500 or so externally and /still/ needs at least one complete refueling on any mission over 550nm radius (usually it's split half'n'half between two). Thats four years of driving your car people.

If you remove the items which drive up the costs and drive down the reliabilities, the weight comes down, the aerodynamic efficiencies go up and there are both more jets and more jets available to task for longer.

Such that a Business class engine pushing along a 20,000lb weight airframe with 10,000lbs of fuel can now fly out to 1,100nm and stay on station for 2hrs at under 2,500 dollars per flight hour.

All while retaining good basic cruise efficiencies (Mach .85 ingress) so that you can also use it on first day of war missions.

The problem? It's unmanned. Which to the military is effectively like breaking a union by shutting down a plant and moving the labor overseas.

Pilots will tell you that they would 'gladly do it for free if you let them'. But ignoring families and the cost of living, what they don't tell you is that 'for free' is upwards of a 100 grande an hour in their own jet and the support missions for it.

THAT is where CAS is really degraded. To afford even a basic inventory of fastjets, you obliterate any hope of mission diversity in your other platforms.


CJ