Feral Jundi

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Aviation: Contract Aircraft, Non-military Aircraft Losses In Iraq And Afghanistan Wars

What I wanted to do here is put together a list of all of the contract aviation losses in both wars. Thanks to wikipedia, it was easy to organize this and put it all together. If anyone has information they would like to add, or if you see some missing aircraft losses in this post, let me know in the comments.

Also, if you follow the links, they will take you to the overall aviation losses in these wars. In Iraq, the Kiowa Helicopter and the Apache really took a hit. Lots of crashes and combat losses there. But they were also heavily used.

In Afghanistan, I would have thought there would be more losses on both the military and civilian side. The CH 47 was the top aircraft that crashed or was shot down. The Blackhawk was right behind this aircraft. Although this war is not over, and these numbers could reach Iraq levels in a few years.

The big one in Afghanistan is the necessary power to get up to those elevations, and the CH 47 is a work horse for that. Hence why this was the top aircraft that crashed, because it gets the most use.

The total losses for military and civilian aircraft in the Iraq war was 133 rotary wing (with 43 lost to hostile fire) and 24 fixed wing losses (with 2 to hostile fire, and 2 to friendly fire).

In Afghanistan, it is 103 rotary wing (with 17 lost to hostile fire) and 23 fixed wing (with 1 lost to hostile fire on ground).

With those statistics, you get a good idea as to what the real danger is of flight in the war zones. The enemy is certainly a threat, but the environment/pilot error/equipment failure is what causes the majority of these crashes.

Also, it would be great to see our military or some think tank go through all of these accidents and combat losses, and find out if there is a better aircraft that could have been used for these types of missions. Sometimes the best aircraft is not necessarily the most expensive or fancier aircraft, but the one that can perform the job in the worst kind of conditions specific to that region or war zone. A hellfire missile fired from a Cessna Caravan, is no different than a hellfire missile fired from an Apache helicopter.

I guess my point is, are we using the correct aircraft with the best survivability and capability for the job that is required? We lost a lot of Kiowas, Apaches, CH 47’s, and Blackhawks in this war, and you wonder if there are aircraft that could have been better suited for these missions?

The other thing to think about is legacy aircraft for these countries when we leave. Both Iraq and Afghanistan are purchasing and using Cessna Caravans, and that is a great multipurpose aircraft that they could use. It is also cheap to keep running and pretty dependable. But once we give these countries the really expensive aircraft to operate and maintain, then how do we expect them to be able to afford using these things? And even with our own operations and the state of the US economy, we should be considering all options for aircraft, based on the requirements of the mission. It is not against the law to be more cost effective in war, and I have to think that there are cheaper options for some of the stuff we are doing in these conflicts. –Matt

 

Contract aircraft, non-military aircraft losses in the Iraq War
2009
July 17, 2009 – An MD-530F contracted to Xe (formerly Blackwater) crashes at Butler Range outside Baghdad. Two pilots died. The cause was not known.
2008
November 13, 2008 – An Antonov An-12 crashes after takeoff from Al Asad Air Base, killing all 7 crew members. Six members of the crew and one passenger died, three of them were Russians. The crew also consisted of a Belarusian, two Ukrainians and an Indian citizen.
2007
March 7, 2007 – A privately-contracted Mil Mi-8 helicopter from the Republic of Georgia crashes due to technical failures, injuring its three Ukrainian crewmembers, and several Iraqi passengers.
January 31, 2007 – A Blackwater USA Bell 412 helicopter is shot down under fire near Karma during a flight between Al Hillah and Baghdad. A US military helicopter rescues the passengers and crew.
January 23, 2007 – A Blackwater USA MD 530F helicopter is shot down by hostile fire in Baghdad. All of the 5 man crew are killed in the incident, likely executed after surviving the crash. The remaining survivor was also killed under unclear circumstances, when another Blackwater helicopter descended to the crash site.
January 9, 2007 – A Moldovan Antonov An-26 crashes near Balad in the 2007 Balad aircraft crash, killing 34 of the 35 on board.
2005
May 30, 2005 – A Comp Air 7SL aircraft with the Iraqi Air Force crashes in eastern Iraq, killing four Americans and an Iraqi on board.
April 21, 2005 – A Bulgarian Mil Mi-8 is shot down north of Baghdad, killing the 11 civilians on board, including six American contractors, three Bulgarian pilots, one of them is executed shortly after the crash, and two Fijian guards.
Link to Wikipedia here.
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Contract aircraft, non-military aircraft losses in Afghanistan War
2011
July 6, 2011: IL-76 cargo plane, registered 4K-AZ55, was destroyed in an accident near Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. The plane is said to have flown into the side of a mountain at about 12,500 feet (3,800 meters).The transport plane carried a total of 18 tons of cargo for the NATO-led forces at Bagram Air Base.

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Sunday, September 26, 2010

Aviation: Air Power On The Cheap

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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Super Tucano

The Super Tucano, made by Embraer.

Air power on the cheap

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.

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