Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Got To Be The Ugliest Thing Flying

We just sent about 27 million manpads to the Ukraine. There is no longer any such thing as uncontested air space.

I like it! Looks like a crop duster with rotary guns!

And nothing comes close to “ugly-beauty” like an A-10!!

I think it looks pretty badass.

Looks like they took a crop duster and pimped it out for gunfighting.

It looks like a spinoff of Erik Prince's project. Way to much to cut and paste but a pretty good background on trying to get these planes into Africa.

Echo Papa

We could have saved a lot of money and just taken all of the A-29 Super Tacanos we left in Afghanistan since this was their primary use there.

I have avoided making any comments about whether it's needed, or could do the job, or even if it is survivable. I'm a half century off that battlefield environment. If there are any smart people left in the military, I'm going to assume they've analyzed this and thought it was a good idea.

The thing that got my attention was that they now have GUIDED 2.75" rockets. Astounding.

Interesting concept. Except I thought that the next generation of drones that are being developed, (drones are always evolving), was gonna take over lots of "sky warden" roles.

Yep, Biden left 20 over there at $30 million a copy.

Interesting it talks about "permissive environment" as well. I wonder tho, what's the cost to operate a drone vs this particular piece of kit? Replace it should it be lost/battle damaged? etc.

Ag roots might mean the ability to canabalize indig acft to keep it flying at the long end of a supply chain. Wonder if that's also part of the idea?

And you missed completely on both counts.

It's just not intended to fight against other aircraft or against any kind of anti aircraft capability. It's essentially an assist to ground forces working against insurgent/CI or militia forces.

And as for being late for the fight, special ops doesn't work that way. They never fight fair, or re-actively.
If a mission is laid on, they'll plan for air assets to be in place, likely just over the horizon, before the insertion of ground forces takes place. The crew of the CAS aircraft will be on station, fully aware of the environment and what awaits the ground forces probably before the ground forces board the bus to the LZ. And yeah... ISR capability is valued more than weapons in most cases.
It's one of the prime reasons for concern about loiter time capability.

In my opinion, The weapons on board this aircraft are not even designed for real combat. They're designed to smooth the way to the XP in the event of a contested extraction

That was my thought when I saw the title of the thread. GD

I give it two years until interest is gone. Then on to another toy.

As I said, there is nowhere from here on out where there won’t be anti-air capability. We just sent enough manpads to the Ukraine to keep the goat herder insurgent market supplied for the next twenty years.

And the aircraft is already on station before the ground forces even board the bus, I guess all the goat herders will know where to congregate and what is coming.

Even goat herders these days have smart phones and access to technology that would have been Buck Rogers stuff as little as fifteen years ago.

It’s just a boondoggle that no one will want to fly nor buy.

That big nose reminds me of an 80s Jaguar.

That's one of the reasons for it. From the article:

"Indeed, the crop duster roots of the AT-802U should make this aircraft, in particular, extremely useful in very small-footprint operations in extremely spartan locales with tiny rough runways. Furthermore, the fact that Air Tractors operate all around the world means supportability should be easy and reliable."



Seems like the whole point of this is to operate away from any well established US base.

So, basically, the Moon and Mars??

I'll bet a bunch of Texas crop dusters would love to have a couple of mini guns or a rocket pod slung under their wings. They would probably line up around the block for a chance to volunteer to patrol the Rio Grande for a few hours.

We're sending stuff to Ukraine, and that's a fact. I don't know about your claim of 27M.
Germany sent 1500 Strela 2M (Grail) missiles. These are a copy of the Redeye.
No doubt the US is sending Stingers. But I doubt, due to the nature of the weapon, that it's going anywhere in huge numbers.

How may aircraft sorties do you figure are generated daily in this war?

To be sure, I wouldn't care to face even a grail, or redeye if flying in a small slow airplane.

I think your numbers are off by orders of magnitude.

No schit? You got Asperger’s or something?

It seems to me that there’s a place for low tech air to ground support for the type of engagements we’ve been in over the past 3+ decades. The fast movers and warthogs are great but they aren’t perfect for every situation.

Everything doesn’t have to go Mach 3 and cost $100,000 per hour to fly. If the helicopter is a useful tool for air to ground support then these turboprops should be too. Nobody would argue that helicopters aren’t useful in CAS missions and we know that they ain’t considered “fast movers” so I don’t know why these types of aircraft wouldn’t also be useful.