Close Air Support in the CF: Bring back something like the CF-5 or introduce something with props?

[spitty]

OK now that was f'n funny.

It was.

A six foot long RC would be a cool toy, but hard to fit in a backpack. There's a guy in Vancouver hawking a new engine design. His prototype is 40lbs, 6"x6"x6", runs on diesel, and produces 42hp.

The slowest an A10 can go is 200MPH (published specs). A 1927 bulldog with a contemporary 14 cylinder rotary and fixed pitch wood prop did max 175MPH. I don't know how fast you could make a new one go, but you're right. I had the A10's minimum speed in my head. Newer biplanes are much more aerodynamic (lower drag) have better props, better engines, and better (computer designed) wings. They are likely much faster. A modern design would use a pair of engines with counter-rotating composite props.

Now.....

The requirements I have gleaned from this thread are:

• Rough or no airstrip required
  which implies:
  • low weight
  • sturdy wide stance landing gear

• Same fuel as LAV / Leopard etc (high compression diesel, kerosene etc)
• Can be towed / dragged by existing vehicles (< 5,000lbs)
• Fits in a C130
• STOL
• Low stall speed
• Good low speed maneuverability
• Optimum performance @ < 5,000ft
• pilot protection (armour) equivalent to an A10 (multiple hits with a 23mm)
• High survivability
  which implies
  • shred resistant skin
  • mulitple control surfaces
  • can lose ~33% of wing area and stay up
  • lower wings/fuselage/(cage?) pre-detonates contact fuse warheads
  • small IR signature

• crash protection -- any ideas? Will a 'chute be useful at 200ft up?
• 6-8 hour play time
• good speed to target (is ~300MPH cruise / ~350MPH max a useful speed?)
• useful munitions / electronics payload (will 1,200lbs do?)
• Cheap cheap cheap - (new design with as many off the shelf parts as possible)

I'm not adding any electronics requirements here except as part of the payload.

To keep costs down a base model should

• have civilian uses (highway patrol, agriculture)
• be useful enough to mass produce
• not include technology which cannot be exported

Is there anything else to add to this list?

 

[observor 69]

How about some of these?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano

The Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano, also named ALX or A-29 is a turboprop aircraft designed for light attack, counter insurgency (COIN) and pilot training missions, incorporating modern avionics and weapons systems. It is currently in use by the air forces of Brazil, Colombia, and Dominican Republic. Embraer has plans to sell it to other countries in Asia and the Middle East. Besides pilot training, it is heavily employed in monitoring operations in the Amazon region.

Edited:

And another link http://www.embraer.com.br/english/content/aeronaves/super_tucano.asp

 

[Edward Campbell]

I asked that same question, Baden Guy, a few months ago. I think the consensus was: No, too little weapons load and not enough range/loiter time.

 

[Kilroy]

Aw heck, let's just get Steve Branson to drop a few bombs out of his balloon on one of his record breaking attempts!! :rofl:

 

[TCBF]

Buy surplus USAF A-10s.

 

[aesop081]

Buy surplus USAF A-10s.

good luck finding any

 

[TCBF]

good luck finding any

Yup. They want to keep them in service to 2028, so we may have to wait a bit.


;D

 

[a_majoor]

I guess the problem isn't the idea that a light CAS airplane that could operate from unimproved airstrips, FARPs and so on is outlandish, rather there needs to be a much tighter definition of what is wanted/needed.

The thread has revealed a shopping list that would fill a Jane's handbook. Small jets, big jets, turboprops, tiltrotors, AC-130's and now biplanes (not actually a totally outrageous idea, some stunt pilots have installed turboprop engines in high performance biplanes, which should have the same relation to the base aircraft as a Piper Enforcer to a P-51D Mustang).

Looking at the picture from the widest possible angle, I am in favor of a small jet, with the SAAB JAS-37 Gripon as the "here and now" example (with maybe the F-16 XL prototype or the IAI LAVI as "might have beens"). As medium to high performance aircraft, they have the ability to operate as fighters and interceptors (since some enemies do have air forces of their own, and UAV technology will eventually filter down, Hezbollah has deployed a few from Lebanon into Israel). If they can carry a useful weight of bombs and rockets, they can also carry more specialized items, such as anti-ship missiles, since you do need to be flexible. They can defend themselves if they get "bounced" on the way in, and they have the speed and range to respond quickly over an AOR. The other advantage is they can or at least should be logistically compatible with their "big brothers" like the CF-18. While parts might not be interchangeable (although some of the electronic modules and pods would be), training and maintainence would be similar enough to allow us to have two fleets with a fair degree of overlap. Some possible choices like the Hawk actually are trainers, so we can kill another bird with that stone.

 

[Kilroy]

While a biplane does seem to have a few advantages "Hey, I watched Iron Eagle too!!  ;D  )  How effective would they be at avoiding missiles like a sidewinder or such? Would the missiles even be able to lock on, or would the biplane even have a chance to avoid them??

 

[aesop081]

Would the missiles even be able to lock on,

Yes

or would the biplane even have a chance to avoid them??

No

 

[Kilroy]

Thanks for the reply. Wasn't sure if a missile could lock onto a small plane with very little metal in it (compared to a modern jet. Also, I thought the manouverability of such a small plane could avoid a missile. Learned a new thing today, thanks.

 

[spitty]

Gotta say I've also been confused by the grab bag of requirements.

The A10 is a beautiful plane but there is no way you could land one in a Manitoba hayfield and not be up to the hardpoints in muck. No way to throw on skis or pontoons. I'm seeing two completely different aircraft here.

The big one should do what an A10 does. When reading the specs for the A10 again last night I got a better idea of how they are used. 3 is the magic number: fly 300 miles (in less than an hour) and hang around low speed low altitude for three hours before heading home. To be useful for three hours the 16,000lb load and incredible variety of weapons supported by the A10 are a must. It might work as a bi-plane but 350MPH is pushing the speed with that much drag. An A10 with two wings would have a shorter wingspan and more lift, slowing down top speed but also reducing minimum speed and extending loiter time. The 1927 Bulldog had 310ft2 of wing to the A10's 200ft2. No way you could run it on diesel though. Three Pratt & Whitneys minimum, if not the same pair of turbofans. A big sucker like that could also be used in an armoured transport / gunship role.

A little one.... I'm still thinking more bomb tractor than bomb truck. The Tuscano is nice. It would be nicer with elliptical wings and a Supermarine brand name. A Spitfire hit 690MPH (Mach 0.94) in a dive from 50,000ft and retained control. Very stable and sweet to fly. If Wikipedia is right that's still a  prop driven speed record. A bi-plane is too slow. Most of my ideas are wrapped around a 1200hp single engine. With a small payload it would be better to have something fast that can get back to FOB and refuel / rearm in very short order. No minimum speed requirement could bump the top speed payload and weight up. A turboprop with available pontoons, skis, and foot-wide mudders would be go anywhere and could carry a WWII type load - 2 bombs, 2 30mm cannon and 4 7.62mm guns with enough ammo for (realistically) a single engagement. Harder to make a flying tank out of one though.

Sidewinders.... if the enemy jets and radar stations are still working, then either of these planes would be suicide.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

I'm not sure if we gain anything by aquiring a "cheap" manned aircraft to drop bombs instead of or augmenting the CF-18.  We have the CF-18.  I doubt very much that a plane will remain cheap once it is upgraded to employ the kinds of weapons we need with the required precision in both day and night.  That "cheap" airplane is still going to require support personnel.  It is not going to be cheap for very long.

If we insist on slow speeds then I'd much rather have AH-64s than some aircraft that belong at a historical airshow.  While the costs may or may by different, we will be still be putting pilots into them.  I don't think that we are going to risk pilots in that fashion when we don't have to.

Now, a UAV that can take off and land from a short rough strip and could carry a night optics package and a PGM or two would be great.  If the view from the optics package could be fed real-time to ground troops with ease then that is even better.

 

[Old Sweat]

Tango2Bravo beat me to the response. What do we want from close air support? It seems to this old gunner that we want accurate fire of the right type on the target as soon as possible. To my little military mind, that is not possible with centrally controlled high performance aircraft or even a specialized COIN platform. That leaves UAVs and armed helicopters as well as A10 type aircraft.

We have already determined surplus A10s are not available, so our choices are reduced to two. Both have a place and I suggest we are more likely in the short-medium range to see UAVs, although I would like to see both. If I had my druthers I guess I would opt for the armed helicopter. However the controlling factor is the budget. As the Chief of the General Staff of the Canadian army said in response to an 1927 suggestion to replace horses with mechanical transport in 1927, "We are long on sympathy, but short on cash."

One last thought, the CF5 was not an ideal CAS platform. It was short-ranged and very restricted in the weight of fire it could deliver. This should not be a surprise because the aircraft was designed for a different purpose as were the Western Allies' air support aircraft of the Second World War.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Thanks for the reply. Wasn't sure if a missile could lock onto a small plane with very little metal in it (compared to a modern jet. Also, I thought the manouverability of such a small plane could avoid a missile. Learned a new thing today, thanks.

Size does not have anything to do with RCS (Radar Cross Section) of an object, which is not the same as its OCS (Optical Cross Section) where size is directly related.  Its all about angles.  A good example of OCS vice RCS is the decoy that was once used on the B-52, the "Quail".  The RCS of the Quail was larger than that of the B-52.  (All of this can be found using Google, I checked for open-source info before posting.)

Bearing in mind OPSEC, the rest of the equation is not something likely to be discussed here.

 

[aesop081]

Size does not have anything to do with RCS (Radar Cross Section) of an object, which is not the same as its OCS (Optical Cross Section) where size is directly related.  Its all about angles.  A good example of OCS vice RCS is the decoy that was once used on the B-52, the "Quail".  The RCS of the Quail was larger than that of the B-52.  (All of this can be found using Google, I checked for open-source info before posting.)

Bearing in mind OPSEC, the rest of the equation is not something likely to be discussed here.

Keep in mind that RCS has jacks**t to do with an IR missile like the AIM-9 that Kilroy asked about.

While a biplane does seem to have a few advantages "Hey, I watched Iron Eagle too!!   ;D  )  How effective would they be at avoiding missiles like a sidewinder or such? Would the missiles even be able to lock on, or would the biplane even have a chance to avoid them??

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Keep in mind that RCS has jacks**t to do with an IR missile like the AIM-9 that Kilroy asked about.

Roger that.  I was trying to expand on the 'small plane with little metal on it' idea.  (I wasn't going to dive into EO or homing/guidance topics  :-X)

 

[spitty]

I've tried feeding video over wireless. With civilian radio restrictions (low power and open unlicensed frequencies) the range and bandwidth are very limited. Illegally boosting the power would...er... open every garage door, change every TV channel and ring every wireless doorbell in town. Nothing like getting the video from your RC plane with audio from someone's baby monitor mixed in. A buddy tried it with a car once. The range was 350ft, if line of sight.

Real time video is very bandwidth intensive. Securing a wireless link incurs a huge performance penalty. The guys at slashdot.org had a field day during the war in Yugoslavia when someone figured out that anyone with a TV satellite dish and the knowhow to point it and change the channel could watch real-time feeds from various predator drones at home on their TV sets. The guy who discovered this spent two months trying to find someone stateside who would fix it before he went public. (same protocol most geeks follow with new Windows vulnerabilities). An encrypted low bandwidth fault-tolerant control signal that could carry basic data like position, altitude, attitude etc and send basic commands coupled with a decent autopilot -- a radio system entirely separate from sensor feeds -- would be a good start. A lot of progress has been made with vehicles that can navigate themselves, and sending GPS coordinates takes a lot less bandwidth than keeping a realtime link to your remote Logitech joystick. With enough storage space a drone could keep all data and images it collects on its own hard drive. With enough CPU it could cherry pick images based on known signatures -- human, vehicle, etc -- and send those with co-ordinates as fast as possible to the remote controller. I could maybe do this with an Xbox mainboard. Depends on the internal bandwidth and power needed. Sending 800x600 JPEG images uses a lot less bandwidth and requires a less steady radio link, which would increase the range. Sending real-time video through a satellite (as the Predator does) is unbelievably f'n expensive, and I don't like relying on satellites. Not since the Red Army very publicly tested a satellite killer on one of their own last year. Getting position without GPS needs multiple radio signals from the ground to triangulate from, which may not be easy in the field.

On a side note, the F-22 apparently uses its own juiced up version of Firewire (IEE1394) to transmit data to and from its various peripherals. Nice. USB is too slow. Whatever they have running it would look fantastic on my desktop. CS3 and FSX like I've never seen them. Wow. One way to get around the bandwidth limitation is to send vector data instead of the pixel data used in video and still images. Same protocols the computer game industry uses. A highly compressed data stream from a ground mapping system combined with good topographical mapping software on the receiver could allow a UAV to be flown much like a commercial flight sim game, including stuff on the ground with a known signature. Telling the receiving computer to draw a LAVII or prone human at x,y,z co-ordinates takes much less bandwidth than sending a picture of one. Thanks to the game industry there are existing 3D models available for most of the world's current military hardware. It might cause problems with staff though. People would spend too much time ... er... "training". EA Games is based in Vancouver. Hire a couple of those guys and your Toughbook would never be the same.

Different wing shapes are good for different things. It has nothing to do with history or sentimentality. For subsonic flight a bi-plane configuration provides the best lift with the least power but has high drag. The resistance of the air would rip them right off at high speed. An A10 biplane would be slower but have longer loiter time, as it would take less fuel / power to keep it in the air. It's a trade off. Faster planes have swept wings, very fast planes have small delta wings, but these don't have the same lift and aren't as good under 500-600MPH. The elliptical wing shape used on the Spitfire is as good as it gets for subsonic flight. They have the best balance of lift, maneuverability, and control at both low (near stall) speeds and high (mach 0.8) speeds. Those elliptical wings took three times as long to build as the simple square wings of the Me109 but they were worth it.  The square wing can stall suddenly in a tight turn. The elliptical stalls partially (no lift at the root near the fuselage) but not at the wingtips, which causes the wings to vibrate but still retain control. They were much safer to fly when pushing them right to the stall point in a tight turn. Put a 1600hp turboprop on those wings and you'd have the best subsonic fighter ever built. The fuselage could be a brick outhouse it wouldn't matter.

You're right about the cost. The airframe and engine seem to be about 1/10 the cost of an airplane. Most of the cost seems to be software, radio / wireless gear and sensors. 

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Sending real-time video through a satellite (as the Predator does) is unbelievably f'n expensive, and I don't like relying on satellites.

We do rely on satellites for a whole range of things, and things are expensive.  If the Russians knock out all the satellites then perhaps B.A. Barracus and Face can make us a new plane from the scrapyard using old-school technology during the montage.  Of course, if we are fighting Russians then I guess we are also fighting against fast jets and modern air defence so they had better cook up an F-35 or something like that. 

In the meantime I'll take my Preds, A-10s, B1s, Harriers and whatever else is effectively bringing hate to the enemy.

 

[aesop081]

Sending real-time video through a satellite (as the Predator does) is unbelievably f'n expensive, and I don't like relying on satellites. 

Thats why the rest of us are using (or soon will be) TCDL to send real-time video.