The Comanche's career cut short

Sure, Stonewall, it's Wiki! I wouldn't really bet on it if it's Wiki. I think you should do some more research, Stonewall, because you never know what the author of an article is on Wiki.

 

I dont think that F-16 can replace classic low-altitude ground attack plane,especialy coz 2 engine give him more chance to stay alive on impact+impressive armor.

 

Yeah..wiki

That and my father, a former high ranking officer air force fighter pilot here at the Pentagon

old news..

BTW the A10 was made here in the area also and flys outside my window, daily..

http://www.defenselink.mil/transformati ... 1706a.html


I could go on, but why really..

The Maryland Air National Guard 175th Wing ..

My office is near Andrews AFB MD

The 175th guys go to 'Tuckers' on Rt 4 for lunch .


Yeah, I know, it is only wiki and my research is basically living persons 'in the know' @locals..here In the DC area

 

Somehow, I'd prefer F-16s flying ground support over a plane built around the 'silent gun' (GAU-8)

Or better yet, F-16 pilots in A-10 cockpits...might reduce FF incidents

 

F-16 was studied (as A-16 IIRC) as a follow-on to A-10 (as was an updated A-7) for the CAS mission but turned down on several grounds.
One being that it it had a significantly higher minimum speed than A-10 which reduced target acquisition, identification and aiming time to nearly worthless values.
Survivability was another issue that put it out of the running.

 

stonewall ..are you saying that the army Turned down a chance to get control of their own ground support fixed wing ac or that they were prevented by the key west agreement ...is the thing cast in stone or to much trouble to modifie ? i would think haveing direct control of their own a10s would be something the army would jump at ...

 

AFAIK the army ALWAYS wanted its own fixed-wing complement, but it was vetoed by the air force (on the grounds that they would be combat aircraft and therefore part of the air force).
The army did get some (as posts above show, but they were "slipped in under the wire" - target marking rockets first, and then an offensive load "just in case").
Inter-service wrangling is a constant

 

Robot Air Attack Squadron Bound for Iraq
By CHARLES J. HANLEY,AP
Posted: 2007-07-15 21:10:44
Filed Under: Iraq
BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (July 15) - The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It's outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there's no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.

The arrival of these outsized U.S. "hunter-killer" drones, in aviation history's first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.

That moment, one the Air Force will likely low-key, is expected "soon," says the regional U.S. air commander. How soon? "We're still working that," Lt. Gen. Gary North said in an interview.

The Reaper's first combat deployment is expected in Afghanistan, and senior Air Force officers estimate it will land in Iraq sometime between this fall and next spring. They look forward to it.

"With more Reapers, I could send manned airplanes home," North said.

The Associated Press has learned that the Air Force is building a 400,000-square-foot expansion of the concrete ramp area now used for Predator drones here at Balad, the biggest U.S. air base in Iraq, 50 miles north of Baghdad. That new staging area could be turned over to Reapers.

It's another sign that the Air Force is planning for an extended stay in Iraq, supporting Iraqi government forces in any continuing conflict, even if U.S. ground troops are drawn down in the coming years.

The estimated two dozen or more unmanned MQ-1 Predators now doing surveillance over Iraq, as the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, have become mainstays of the U.S. war effort, offering round-the-clock airborne "eyes" watching over road convoys, tracking nighttime insurgent movements via infrared sensors, and occasionally unleashing one of their two Hellfire missiles on a target.

From about 36,000 flying hours in 2005, the Predators are expected to log 66,000 hours this year over Iraq and Afghanistan.

The MQ-9 Reaper, when compared with the 1995-vintage Predator, represents a major evolution of the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.

At five tons gross weight, the Reaper is four times heavier than the Predator. Its size - 36 feet long, with a 66-foot wingspan - is comparable to the profile of the Air Force's workhorse A-10 attack plane. It can fly twice as fast and twice as high as the Predator. Most significantly, it carries many more weapons.

While the Predator is armed with two Hellfire missiles, the Reaper can carry 14 of the air-to-ground weapons - or four Hellfires and two 500-pound bombs.

"It's not a recon squadron," Col. Joe Guasella, operations chief for the Central Command's air component, said of the Reapers. "It's an attack squadron, with a lot more kinetic ability."

"Kinetic" - Pentagon argot for destructive power - is what the Air Force had in mind when it christened its newest robot plane with a name associated with death.

"The name Reaper captures the lethal nature of this new weapon system," Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said in announcing the name last September.

General Atomics of San Diego has built at least nine of the MQ-9s thus far, at a cost of $69 million per set of four aircraft, with ground equipment.

The Air Force's 432nd Wing, a UAV unit formally established on May 1, is to eventually fly 60 Reapers and 160 Predators. The numbers to be assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan will be classified.

The Reaper is expected to be flown as the Predator is - by a two-member team of pilot and sensor operator who work at computer control stations and video screens that display what the UAV "sees." Teams at Balad, housed in a hangar beside the runways, perform the takeoffs and landings, and similar teams at Nevada's Creech Air Force Base, linked to the aircraft via satellite, take over for the long hours of overflying the Iraqi landscape.

American ground troops, equipped with laptops that can download real-time video from UAVs overhead, "want more and more of it," said Maj. Chris Snodgrass, the Predator squadron commander here.

The Reaper's speed will help. "Our problem is speed," Snodgrass said of the 140-mph Predator. "If there are troops in contact, we may not get there fast enough. The Reaper will be faster and fly farther."

The new robot plane is expected to be able to stay aloft for 14 hours fully armed, watching an area and waiting for targets to emerge.

"It's going to bring us flexibility, range, speed and persistence," said regional commander North, "such that I will be able to work lots of areas for a long, long time."

The British also are impressed with the Reaper, and are buying three for deployment in Afghanistan later this year. The Royal Air Force version will stick to the "recon" mission, however - no weapons on board.


woody...

I don't remember.. I think it was they were afraid it would cut into their budget somehow.

 

..apparntly the army was forced to trade control of its airlift caribous for permission to control its own rotor wing fleet ...a real burr under my dads ass when in cu chi , v.n . in 67 he was trying to get af herc pilots to deliver his howitzer propellent . it seems the feild grade af pilots were happy to deliver the inert and safe artillery shells ( projectiles , which are heavy and thus collect af transport brownie points for weight delivered ) but loathe to deliver the propellent (bags of gunpowder) which are light and very volatile ..alas the army needs both things to actually fire the guns ...if the pilots were army warrant officers instead of AF LT cols they would have delivered whatever was ordered wether they liked it or not...

 

The Predator is smaller than an A10?

IMO Predator is a cooler name than Reaper but an obnoxious habit of mine is to prefer machines with cooler names. It should be ignored.

 

..its ok blaster,,as you get older you will learn that names or even appearance of combat machines dont really count for much ...actual wartime performance is all that really matters in real life ..the vultee devastater , the boulton defiant and the bell aircobra all had pretty nifty names ..it did them little good when they ran up against enemy pilots who didnt even read english and didnt know they should be fearful...h.j marsielle shot down so many warhawks and hurricanes in north africa he would have no doubt renamed them laying hens and tempest in teapots ...saburo sakai loved meeting aircobras best of all because he could eat a sushi roll or take a short nap while engaged as they were of no danger whatsoever to him or his a6m2 ...which was called a zero , btw...

 

Looks can be deceiving....

 

Firstly, the Predator's a mean looking thing.

Secondly, somehow it seems strange the Amry not wanting an (realitively) effective anti-tank weapon.

Although since they [were forced to] turned down the AH-56 'Cheyenne' mainly due to Airforce jealousy.

 

Woody regarding Kobrushka you should know that it was quite succesfull plane. Just to show that you need to know how to fly before you figt in it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Ivanovich_Pokryshkin

Same goes for the flying barell i.e. Brewster Buffalo (just check Finnish aces)

 

The Army turned down something because a gang of Airforce jocks were jealous? That was a bad move.