In aerial combat, then, low tech may be the new high tech. And there is one other advantage that the turboprop has over the jet, at least according to Mr Read—who flew turboprops on combat missions in Cambodia during the 1970s. It is that you can use a loudspeaker to talk to potential targets before deciding whether to attack them. As Winston Churchill so memorably put it: “When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.”
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Warfare on the cheap is all the rage these days and this is an excellent little article from the Economist on the subject of cheap air power. I just talked about Colombia’s use of these types of aircraft in their war against the FARC and I thought I would add further information behind the concept. I should also note that PMC’s like Executive Outcomes had their own air assets for operations, and that too could be classified as ‘air power on the cheap’. If it gets the job done and you are dealing with an enemy that has no air power, then these ideas make sense.
The one thing I keep thinking about though, is that I like cheap air power that has a high probability of survival. Or better yet, is cheap and unmanned. I think as soon as we can put robotics into these cheap propeller type aircraft, then we are effectively creating cheaper drones with built in supply and maintenance systems. Imagine an unmanned Cessna Caravan doing these types of military missions?
Or an unmanned cargo carrier like a 747 with a payload of JDAM type munitions that could be dropped from extreme heights? There are plenty of these old, yet still working aircraft that could be outfitted with robotics. Cheap drones produced from such aircraft could be a market all by itself, and especially as smaller nations join the larger nations in their desire to have this capability– for a fraction of the price.
Not to take away from the value of having a human in the cockpit, which to me is still the smartest computer out there. I think there will always be a need for this man and machine relationship, and especially if future small wars will require extreme discipline and precision, along with common sense and a feel for the battle field. Only a guy in the plane can really get that feel for their little patch of war and how to dominate the enemy and work with other forces. We might get there one day with UAVs, but I still think humans will have a place. –Matt
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The Super Tucano, made by Embraer.
Small, slow and inexpensive propeller-driven planes are starting to displace fighter jets
Sep 20th 2010
JET fighters may be sexy in a Tom Cruise-ish sort of way, but for guerilla warefare—in which the enemy rarely has an air force of his own with which to dogfight—they are often not the tool for the job. Pilotless drones can help fill the gap. Sometimes there is no substitute for having a pilot on the scene, however, so modern air forces are starting to turn to a technology from the yesteryear of flying: the turboprop.
So-called light-attack turboprops are cheap both to build and to fly. A fighter jet can cost $80m. By contrast the 208B Caravan, a light-attack turboprop made by Cessna, costs barely $2m. It also costs as little as $500 a hour to run when it is in the air, compared with $10,000 or more for a fighter jet. And, unlike jets, turboprops can use roads and fields for takeoff and landing.
Nor is it only jets that light-attack turboprops can outperform. Armed drones have drawbacks, too. The Reaper, made by General Atomics, can cost $10m or more, depending on its bells and whistles. On top of that, a single drone can require a team of more than 20 people on the ground to support it, plus satellite communications. A manned turboprop can bomb an insurgent for a third of the cost of using a drone, according to Pat Sullivan, the head of government sales at Cessna. And there are strategic considerations, too. Many countries’ armed forces rely on allies such as America for the expertise and satellite networks needed to run drones. Such allies can let you down in a pinch. Piloted light-attack planes offer complete operational independence—and, being lower-tech than many drones, are less subject to restrictions on exports in the first place.
They are also better, in many ways, than helicopters. To land a chopper safely in the dirt requires sophisticated laser scanners to detect obstacles hidden by dust thrown up by the downdraught of the rotors. On top of this, such dust makes helicopter maintenance even more difficult than it is already. Maintaining turboprops, by contrast, is easy. According to Robyn Read, an air-power strategist at the Air Force Research Institute near Montgomery, Alabama, they can be “flown and maintained by plumbers”. Thrush Aircraft, a firm based in Albany, Georgia, is even more expansive. It claims that the Vigilante, an armed version of its cropdusting plane that costs $1m, can be disassembled in the field with little more than a pocket screwdriver.
Turboprops are also hard to shoot down. Air Tractor, another firm that makes cropdusters, branched out into warplanes last year. One reason was that a fleet of 16 unarmed versions of its aircraft had been used by America’s State Department to dust South American drug plantations with herbicide—an activity that tends to provoke a hostile response from the ground. Despite the planes’ having been hit by more than 200 rounds, though, neither an aircraft nor a pilot has been lost.
In part, this is because of the robust mechanics of turboprops and in part because Air Tractor’s fuel tanks have rubber membranes which close around bullet holes to slow leaks. Add extra fuel tanks, which let the plane stay aloft for ten hours, six 225kg precision-guided bombs and more than 2,000kg of missiles, rockets and ammunition for two 50-calibre machineguns, and you have the AT-802U, a formidable yet reasonably cheap (at $5m) warplane.
Light-attack aircraft also now sport much of the electronics used by fighter jets. The MX-15, an imaging device made by L-3 WESCAM, a Canadian company, allows a pilot to read a vehicle’s license plate from a distance of 10km. It is carried by both the AT-802U and the AT-6, a top-of-the-range light-attack plane made by Hawker Beechcraft.
Not surprisingly, then, many countries with small defence budgets are investing in turboprops. Places that now fly them, or are expected to do so, include Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco and Venezuela. And the United States. For the biggest military establishment in the world, too, recognises the value of this new old technology. The American air force plans to buy more than 100 turboprops and the navy is now evaluating the Super Tucano, made by Embraer, a Brazilian firm.
Story here.
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Rivals not deterred by USAF shift on turboprop fighters
15/09/10
The US Air Force has downgraded plans for standing up a new light attack and armed reconnaissance (LAAR) fleet, but two major competitors still see huge potential in the long term for a turboprop-powered fighter in US colours.
Lockheed Martin teamed with Hawker Beechcraft a year ago to compete with the Embraer EMB-314 Super Tucano for a potential 100-aircraft order. The USAF later reduced the size of the programme to 15 aircraft, as the focus shifted from establishing an Irregular Warfare wing to “building partnership capacity”.
Both competing teams are waiting for the USAF to issue a request for proposals for the LAAR contract.
Embraer so far is offering the Super Tucano by itself, but is talking with potential US-based partners, says Jairo Sotério, marketing and business development senior manager for defence programmes. The company has leased space in Jacksonville, Florida, but has not decided where to build the Super Tucano if selected for the contract.
The Lockheed/Hawker Beechcraft team, meanwhile, has developed two prototype AT-6B aircraft featuring the mission system derived from Lockheed’s A-10C upgrade and using a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-68D engine.
As both companies wait for the LAAR competition to start, they are also among the bidders for a USAF deal to supply up to 20 light air support aircraft to the Afghan air force.
Story here.