Don H.
SFC Ret. USA

Don H.
SFC, Retired
US Army
Prior AF also

http://www.ov-10bronco.net/Technical/boeing_ov-10(x)_super_bronco_info_card_2009_01.pdf

The four US Marines killed in that ambush near Ganjgal, Afghanistan had NO air support. Apparently they were told it would be five minutes out, but no. No jets, no helos, and obviously, no COIN CAS. No artillery either, except some WP for cover.

Sounds like they did damn good not to lose more people.

Semper Fi.

Very little daylight between us, really. Not real sure the air defense threat is as grim as you make it out, but no doubt, higher Vmax is nice when needed, so’s a thicker hide.

The little kid in me would love to see what they’d do to a rebuilt Mustang, or Jug, or Spad… I’d like to see more A-10s and OV-10s roll off a line, too. I know they *could* do it, someone’s always patching together a warbird out of three wrecks or something, and there were those Me-262 reproductions not long ago. That bureaucratic-Pentagon-Congressional mountain is damn tall, though. They’ll raid O&M for their pork projects, but something that makes sense for the war right now? Just read that article up above again, notice all the qualifiers, and we’re waiting for the QDR on top of that. These are not people in a hurry.

Yes, they’re out of production but the scehmatics are all still available and they can be tooled up & spooled up to be mass-produced in less time that it would take to machine bulkheads for a flight of F-22’s and stuff the fuselage together.

Someone else suggested S-3’s. My choice would be S-2’s (see turboprop volnerability) We also have beaucoup A-7’s at Davis Monthan along with other aircraft.
The problem with these tiny fragile COIN birds is that which should have been learned in WWII with the LST’s LST: Large, SLOW Targets. Slow aircraft are more likely to be brought down by direct fire weapons, a veritable hail of small-arms fire, RPG’s and crew-served weapons; as mentioned by another poster, “magic BB’s”. The more time you have to direct “BB’s” on a slow-moving target, the more likely one will be “magic” it only takes one 7.63x39 round to convert a slow turboprop to a slower glider. That is a real advantage of the old radials. They could come home with numerous cylinders shot completely away and still be flying. You can’t do that an aircraft that can be taken down by a pigeon strike. Once a turbine ingests metal, on a single-engine turboprop, the party is over and the rescuer becomes a rescu-ee.

I take your point, and you’re more or less right. Small disagreement: Original P/ F-51s had the weakness of a vulnerable radiator, those were never great for ground attack. Lots of good WWII pilots were lost/ captured that way.

One take on why the turboprop Mustangs (Enforcer) got canned is found (last four paragraphs) here: http://www.volanteaircraft.com/ov-10–9.htm

I recommend reading the rest of that article and the other on that site about the “light-light support aircraft.” Great stuff!

But the main reason they don’t do what you suggest… those machines are out of production, way out. We need whatever we can get, and these trainers and crop dusters are what’s there.

“…I thought that the UAV,s were doing that work now.”

–Nope. UAVs do recon and assassinations, not CAS.

“These beefed up trainers can be knocked down by stingers or Triple A without any trouble.”

–They’ve got flares and threat warning, similar to attack helos, & those aren’t getting shot down left right and center. Super Tucs can go better than 300kts, same for AT-6, AT-802 is around 200kts. Where they’re being sent, there isn’t much threat from MANPADs or AAA.

We need something slower and more precise than fast jets with more hang time. Have you got a better solution?

With the option to buy, of course.

It wouldn’t be unprecedented.

Boeing has proposed putting the OV-10 Bronco into production again. And air truck has a very suitable platform. But, as always, buying more of those over rated F35’s that we managed to sell a bunch of countries takes priority over logic…and the guys on the ground pay because of political stupidity.

The idea seems to be to have a low+slow aircraft — I am NOT an airplane driver but the ones I know all believe that Speed Is Life. It sounds like an uneducated peasant with a heavy duty rifle, sitting on a hilltop, could knock down a low and slow aircraft pretty cheaply. The proposed COIN aircraft appears to be a single engine aircraft as well — so one magic bb would do the trick.

Call me a pessimist but I just don’t see this being worth the money.