Air Force begins A-10 replacement study

a reply to: Barnalby

There's no reason that wouldn't work. DARPA and the Navy are looking at tail sitter UCAS's so why no the Army with something able to carry more gear. Take off under automated controls, fly to where the fight is and hand over control to a specialist embedded with squad so they can direct fire on the targets danger close to themselves or even drop supplies to fighters that are pinned down.

In an ideal world that might have legs, unfortunately I think it will be too expensive. Much more expensive than a more traditional conversion of an existing airframe into a CAS specialized plane.

a reply to: Sammamishman

I was thinking especially in terms of operating in and around urban and semi-urban environments, such an aircraft could follow the troops as they capture more and more of an area, just as helicopters currently do. Only, this thing would have the speed and legs of something like an A-10.

And yeah, it would never be cheap enough to be a solid A-29 competitor, but I could see one coming in at around the same price as a Scorpion-equivalent aircraft, but with vastly improved basing flexibility and the ability to operate from the kinds of small cleared spaces that are right now reserved for helicopters.

a reply to: Barnalby

GAU 18 or laser equivalent please...

a reply to: Barnalby

Even with a tail sitter there's only so much weight you can lift vertically. It would be about as useful as a STOL carrier aircraft.

a reply to: Barnalby

A tail-sitter has to be pure VTOL, so you're killing your efficiency regarding payload, range, etc. And how often do you actually NEED VTOL? Even Harriers practice rolling takeoffs more frequently than a vertical one (for precisely those reasons). Advanced staging of any size is a particular pain the rear. No real need to forsake a landing strip (though rough field handling is probably a good compromise in a COIN type aircraft).

Maybe you could bring back the Convair Mo.49 for nostalgia reasons!

a reply to: RadioRobert

I'll always be a life-long sucker for Convair. They always had the strongest Gerry Anderson vibe of any of the 1940s-1960s vehicle engineering firms.

Them and LeTourneau.

There must've been something in the water down in Texas back then...

I was thinking more along the lines of an XFY-1 Pogo built around an Osprey engine and loaded with a bunch of SDB's and a couple of wingtip 25mm cannons. That would be grand.

Is DARPA hiring? Anyone??

a reply to: Barnalby


DARPA is already working on tail-sitters like TERN. I don't think single-engine is the way to go with anything of reasonable size.

And you'd be better off with guided Hydras than SDB's! haha

For survivability twin engines are required.A-10,s have survived SAM hits and returned home due to having a spare engine

im just watching a Program called battle 360 which is on about 1944 and USS enterprise in WW2.

I've missed the aircraft (avenger??) but it had internal bombs and incendiary weapons, not a bad load out it seemed, plus a 2nd seat.

Single engine aircraft carrier launched twin seater with numerous bombs and rockets...

Imagine a 2 seater, twin prop to haul weight or with range, could strip weapons and RIO for a refueler for the Navy or a platform to replace the A-10, with a weapons guy acting like a Spectre for guns or A-10 spending all their time on bombing CAS whilst pilot does the pilot thing. The AF could have pilot and Army have RIO type.

Talk about over thinking. We need something now, not 20 years from now. That's how we ended up with the F-35.
If we want to go off the wall, we could mount a ski ramp to an Abrams chassis to make it portable and go back to JATO bottles on an OV-10.