The F-15 Eagle West Coast Demonstration Team and a pair of P-51 Mustangs fly in formation as part of the Heritage Flight during their final demonstration May 1 at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The Air Combat Command F-15 demo team has performed more than 150 times to spectators around the globe over the final two years. This is the final demonstration for the F-15C, completing a 26-year career that began in 1983. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Mike Meares)
And, since there was some whinging about no love for Corsairs...
But I have to admit, when it comes to Corsairs - this is my favorite of the genre.
All that said, given the discussion you guys were having about roles, missions, and aircraft, I thought I'd bring this up - from Jim Dunnigan at Strategy Page, an example of reaching to the past to skip to the future. Reprinted with permission, all rights reserved.
USAF Reconsiders The Spad
by James Dunnigan
May 8, 2009
The U.S. Air Force, is alarmed that the U.S. Navy (the Irregular Warfare Office) is investigating adopting a propeller driven warplane for use in irregular warfare. The navy, at the behest of SOCOM, has spent the last year testing the feasibility of using the Brazilian Super Tucano warplane to support U.S. special warfare operations. The Super Tucano is a five ton, single engine, single seat aircraft. It is basically a prop driven trainer that can be equipped for combat missions. The aircraft can carry up to 1.5 tons of weapons, including 12.7mm machine-guns, bombs and missiles. The aircraft cruises at about 500 kilometers an hour and can stay in the air for about 6.5 hours per sortie.
Colombia is already using Super Tucanos for counter-insurgency work, which is where American SOCOM operators saw it up close. They liked what they saw, and persuaded SOCOM to lease one and try it out. For some older SOCOM operators, the Brazilian aircraft is yet another attempt to revive the legendary Vietnam era A-1 Skyraider (nicknamed "Spad", after a famous World War I fighter). This was the most popular ground support aircraft during the 1960s. Developed at the end of World War II, the A-1 was an 11 ton, single seat, propeller driven aircraft that carried 3.5 tons of bombs and four 20mm autocannon. Cruising speed was 475 kilometers an hour, and the average sortie was about four hours. Ever since World War II, ground troops have been agitating for another A-1. The A-10 came close, but did not have the persistence (long time over the combat area) of the A-1.
The Embraer EMB-314 Super Tucano costs $9 million each, and come in one or two seat versions. SOCOM wants the two seater, with guy in the back running sensors. The bubble canopy provides excellent visibility. This, coupled with its slow speed (versus jets), makes it an excellent ground attack aircraft. The SOCOM Tucano could be equipped to fire Hellfire missiles and drop smart bombs. SOCOM wants to lease four Super Tucanos as soon as possible.
Several countries use Super Tucanos for internal security and border patrol (mainly looking for drug smugglers). So far, 144 Super Turcanos have been ordered (including 25 by Colombia and 63 by the Brazilian Air Force) since it entered service six years ago. The aircraft is an upgraded version of the older Tucano, which entered service 26 years ago. There are about 650 of these in service in 15 air forces.
The U.S. Air Force is looking at an armed version of its primary trainer, the propeller driven AT-6A. This would be a three ton aircraft that would carry less than a ton of weapons and have less endurance of the Super Tucano.
I'm also a huge fan of the Skyraider...
And, yes, the Corsair II was a great bird.
I had heard vague rumors about the Super Tucano, but this seems the firmest so far. The first time I saw a photo I thought of the Cavalier Mustang/Piper Enforcer.
Thanks for all the Corsair shots John. Like you, I enjoy the look of the A-7...sort of a slightly shorter, stubbier F-8 that gives the appearance of being able to take just as much as it dishes out.
I like the thought of the SOF community getting its hands on some Embraer Tucanos...we certainly have roles/missions for it. Embraer is definitely a leader in the aviation industry today. I believe they control market share for the regional jet class of aircraft, although that might belong to Bombardier. Also, their smaller regional jets (145s) are being used as ISR platforms.
Always hated the looks of the SLUF; loved the way that it kept winning air-to-ground competitions right up to the end.
I've heard whispers that there is a guerrilla group of Air Force junior officers who keep pointing out that they can buy a squadron of a scaled-down twin engined Spectres (including crews) for the same price as a single F-22.
Now, that's not nice, you have put your foot in it. "It" is defined as lower than their wallet (money) but more centered. You have caused two problems, one, for yourself and one, for them. The first is a problem for them, you've caused brain damage. The second is a problem for yourself, how do you get your foot out?
Have a *great* week!
Granted, those areas in Brasil are sparsly populated, but still, a pain and real danger for those small communities along the border regions.
As you say, the old stuff is quite sufficient for most folks. I've run WinXP on a 667Mz Pentium III system with 512Mb of RAM, and an old Voodoo 3 3000 video card. It ran like a champ, with the exception that I never installed a DVD drive on that box. Ended up giving it to a friend who needed a system, quick.
Heck, back in the day (when Win95 was just released) I ran an NT-console BBS program (Opus) in the background, and played Quake while folks were online to my BBS. That was on a 486-66DX system with a whopping 8Mb of RAM. Mind you, they could tell when I was playing Quake since there were some obvious pauses while they read messages and such, but the system still worked cleanly and efficiently. No blue screens of death or locked-up machines.
The question here is: how well does this scale up to military applications? Certainly COTS systems have become more prevalent the past 20 years in the Army. While they might not be as state-of-the-art as the purely military designs, they seem to be doing the job quite nicely. There's also the question of reliability; while Spitfires and Mustangs would be cheaper, by the historical record they were also far less reliable than modern designs. So the question becomes: can we develop a design with both modern reliability and effective simplicity?
Despite all the table-thumping about the need for the F-22 and B-2, the historical record shows that the United States has traditionally won wars with lower-tech, more-plentiful weapons systems used by (eventually) well-trained troops. The latter part is why some of our wars have fairly high body counts. Until the early 70s, the tradition was to have a tiny standing Army which was supported by mass civilian conscription in the face of war, which resulted in mass-produced units of poor quality. These units eventually learned (on the battlefield) how to fight a war, but not until many of their comrades died unnecessarily.
"High-tech" vs. "low-tech" questions are mostly a 20th-century phenomenon. Let's look at WW2. Most aircraft in service in 1939 never served in a combat theatre. The most-recent B-17 was the B model! Note that the Fortress was not considered combat-ready until the E model. The first P-37Y wasn't delivered until late 1940. At least we had the Garand by then. (BTW, John, will you PLEASE explain why Garand and the U.S. government thought that the "en-bloc" clip was such a great idea!?)
During the war, the Garand was eventually superseded by the German StG-44, we never matched the 88, both the Germans and (especially) the Soviets had better tank designs, the Brits had better amphibious tanks, and the Luftwaffe consistently developed more advanced designs during the war, including the FW-190 and the Me-262. Japan's "long lance" torpedo was (to my knowledge) never matched during the war, and their naval optical instruments consistently beat US Navy forces during night battles until the destruction of Imperial Japanese Navy aviation assets.
Heck, the M-4 Sherman was totally outclassed by later panzers, although the former were far more reliable. One could argue that the US Army relied more on "quantity" than did the Soviets, in this case.
In the Pacific, America generally relied more on superior tactics and "brute engineering" than superior technology. Both US Navy and Army Air Force planes had stronger engines, more armor, stronger frames, and self-sealing fuel tanks. Most pilots tried to avoid actual dogfighting, while demonstrating a preference for quick-in, quick-out, "zoom" attacks where the higher terminal speeds of US aircraft competed well with the more-manueverable, but unboosted, controls of the Japanese aircraft, which tended to "stiffen up" at high speed.
In both theatres, it was effective training using appropriate technology which won the war; not higher-tech, with the exception of the atomic bomb.
I'll even state that as a principle: high-tech does NOT win wars, but it does save lives. Better training and logistical support generally trumps higher tech.