Low-Cost Fighter Aircraft: Old Planes Reborn

Me, I'm thinking of the stuff like the OV Bronco or maybe a revival of the P-51 Mustang; I'm surprised no one ever thought of doing the latter, unless I'm missing something.

There was a proposed revival of the P-51, the Piper Enforcer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-48_Enforcer

At some point in the 1980's, I think there was a New Zealand company proposing a updated version of another WW-2 fighter. The Hurricane, F6F, some other plane? All I really remember is a mention in a Jane's All the World's Aircraft, and maybe another mention in Air Force magazine? Sorry, I don't remember more to go on.
 
There was a proposed revival of the P-51, the Piper Enforcer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-48_Enforcer

At some point in the 1980's, I think there was a New Zealand company proposing a updated version of another WW-2 fighter. The Hurricane, F6F, some other plane? All I really remember is a mention in a Jane's All the World's Aircraft, and maybe another mention in Air Force magazine? Sorry, I don't remember more to go on.

If you're going old school go with the P-47. The Thunderbolt with 8 fifty caliber machine guns turned into a good attack plane. The AD-1 however is the end of evolution line for single engine prop driven attack planes in my opinion.
Actually I meant to say the P-38 Lightning instead of the P-51, sorry for the confusion but that's one aircraft from WWII I like to speculate on its revival in the present of OTL.
 
Perhaps what should be peddled is a conversion kit that could be adapted to any small prop duster type plane to be converted to assist in COIN/CAS role of a specific campaign/war, rather than a standing force. As an ongoing capability a batch of contemporary dusters could be adapted used /trained & experimented with to explore best combinations of munitions to missions.

Would they be army controlled or air-force? Most nations can't afford multiple air-forces - but most of us think of HELOS as army assets. Shouldn't all armies be 3 dimensional forces?

http://www.tank-net.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=42658

to get around KEY WEST AGREEMENT, what about getting the country struggling with the COIN, to officially request & purchase kits to be used by indigenous aircraft & personnel?
 
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What if you use prop driven aircraft as an airborne Quick Reaction Force (QRF)?

The USAF could attach a section of ressurected AD-1 Skyraiders to the Air Commandos just like in Vietnam. You deploy the Skyraiders to support Special Forces operators in places where you are trying to keep an American presence quiet, low key and on a budget. For example let's say you have Navy Seals working in South America. Parking a carrier off the coast draws too much attention and deploying a squadron of Jets is going to be expensive and also attention getting. You have some prop planes in country that can fly out of a dirt airfield. If you get a remote outpost that runs into trouble that is out of the range of helicopters you send in the Skyraiders.
Another solution is build smaller low tech gunships. Build something the size of B-25/26. Put a gunner in the rear with some side firing mini guns or a single cannon. Now you have a plane that could make a forward firing gun run or remain on station circling. Could a AC-47/B-25H hybrid be possible?

That's what the ac-130 specter does with the af spec ops wing
 
Bring back puff the magic dragon
Wasn't there an attempt to create an AC-47 replacement with the C-123 airframe? Seem to recall something like that before the AC-130 became the gold standard.
//edit//scrub that, it was the 119, not the 123...
 
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Wasn't there an attempt to create an AC-47 replacement with the C-123 airframe? Seem to recall something like that before the AC-130 became the gold standard.
//edit//scrub that, it was the 119, not the 123...
Operation Gunship III was the conversion of the C-119 to meet the demand for Gunships in Vietnam. The C-130 was busy as a normal transport as well as serving as a gunship. The C-119 was being taken out of frontline service so some of them were converted to fight along side the AC-130.
 
Operation Gunship III was the conversion of the C-119 to meet the demand for Gunships in Vietnam. The C-130 was busy as a normal transport as well as serving as a gunship. The C-119 was being taken out of frontline service so some of them were converted to fight along side the AC-130.

AIUI the Gunship III program created at least three levels of conversions for Boxcars to CAS support and attack.

Initially in 1968 ~25 C-119G were converted to AC-119G known first as Creeps then as Shadows,
These had only 4 GAU-2/A miniguns making then a little more powerful than the AC-47 but less than even an AC-130A of the same date.

Then Fairchild did a more comprehensive conversion on another ~ 25, creating the AC-119K call signed Stinger.
They added auxiliary jet engines and two M61 Vulcan 20-mm cannons plus a wider range of sensors and passive protection.
This made it roughly equal to the AC130 at the time, but obviously less well armed that later models with 40mm or even 105mm main guns.
Their mission was more offensive... mainly truck hunting over the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Later models & field upgraded airframes often replaced the ad-hoc minigun mounts with purpose built purpose-built MXU-470/A minigun modules.
These had some teething troubles but once debugged
provided an improved 2,000-round drum and electric feeder allowing simplified reloading in flight.

Note: number of airframes modified down after more careful research
 
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A turboprop skyraider would be a very effective counter insurgancy aircraft.
Putting turboprops on a Neptune would give you a good Maritime Patrol aircraft.
A B-29 could easily become an AWAC .
 
The Chinese had their own turboprop version of the Soviet B-29 clone, the Tu 4, and some of them were used as AWACS type aircraft.

Douglas themselves built a turboprop version of the Skyraider, the Skyshark, with less than stellar results...
 
The modernized J-7 and Q-5 that can use smart munitions are pretty cost-effective choices. Users can upgraded to JF-17 with relatively low transition costs.
 
Crop-dusters with bolt-on weapons satisfy the OP's question for ground attack.
How about Dash 8s with 20mm Gatling sticking out the doors?

Business jets carrying jamming gear?
Business jets carrying Exocet/Harpoon/Penguin anti-ship missiles?
 
The modernized J-7 and Q-5 that can use smart munitions are pretty cost-effective choices. Users can upgraded to JF-17 with relatively low transition costs.

The problem is that "smart weapons" are not "cheap weapons" especially at the mud mover end of the spectrum.

Modern Paveway weapons cost £15,000 +

The Small Diameter Bomb £30,000 (more in better versions)

the Brimstone £120,000 in dual mode

even the APKWS ( a smart version of the 2.75" rocket) cost £25,000

all prices approximate because few makers actually amortise the development cost when publishing prices per shot

basically that is big bucks to kill 3 guys with Kalashnikovs whatever platform they are launched from.

For example, in June 2015, a deal to sell 6 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft to the Lebanese Air Force was approved
that included the sale of 2,000 APKWS rockets for use on the turboprops.

The US$462 million sale was financed by Saudi Arabia.

FYI the A-26 costs $9M .. $14M to buy depending on electronics fit
and around $400 per hour to operate

So those smart weapons cost roughly the same as the platforms to carry them.
and if used firing one weapon would be equivalent to 75 flying hours i.e. about a months patrols.
 
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thorr97

Banned
As racevedo88 pointed out, Close Air Support (CAS) means your aircraft is gonna have do just that - get close to its target to attack it. This, whether it's dirt cheap crop duster with infantry machine guns bolted to its wings or whether it's a multi-million dollar digitized network centric integrated battlefield top of the line purpose built jet aircraft - it's still gonna have to get in close to its target to attack it.

That means the bad guys will be shooting back at it.

Whether those bad guys are shooting back at it with their own multi-million dollar digitized network centric integrated battlefield Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA) or are using 5th hand Cold War era ex-Soviet MANPADS that've spent the last decade rusting in their shipping crate or whether it's just a bunch of Shining Path "rebels" firing off their AKs - should determine what's the best level of expenditure to accomplish the CAS mission.

Yes, going against peer - or near peer - opponents would call for a much more sophisticated aircraft in order for it to stand a chance of surviving long enough in that threat environment to fulfill its mission. And mind you, the Air Force planners of the 1970s knew full well how frequently their A-10s would be getting blown out of the skies over Germany so they needed an aircraft like the A-10 that was the right balance of being sophisticated enough to accomplish the mission while also being cheap enough to afford being lost at appalling rates.

Outside of such peer to peer threat environments however, something like the A-10 is going to be massively over-capable. And its cost would mean too few aircraft being available to do the required jobs because even as overcapable as the 'Hog is, it can only be in one place at one time. So for the lower threat environments, something like those crop dusters - where you could field several of them for each individual A-10 you'd have - would be a much better solution.

An advantage of going with the "low tech" solution - i.e. equipping your CAS bird with the same weaponry the infantry it supports is using is that the aircraft's cycle time can be vastly reduced. When that bare bones ex-crop duster hits either bingo fuel or is winchester on its ammo, the plane can simply land immediately behind the front lines are refuel from the same sources of the infantry's own vehicles and also rearm from the same stocks the infantry already is already using and already has right up there at the front. Thus instead of hours consumed flying back to a rear area based and regenerating there, the bare bones CAS aircraft could be back in the air in just a relative handful of minutes.

Another advantage of keeping is bare bones is the lower pilot training requirements. Most of the training that modern pilots go through is to get them able to multi-task sufficiently while also flying the aircraft sufficiently. Considering the complexity of modern combat aircraft with their multitude of communications systems, their multitude of sensor systems, and their multitude of weapons systems - achieving the ability to operate all of that at the same time AND keep their heads out of the cockpit sufficiently to fight their opponents is no small feat.

A bare bones machine would simply dispense with that complexity and thus the associated pilot training costs to handle it.
 
"FYI the A-26 costs $9M .. $14M to buy depending on electronics fit" what advantage does it really have v 3 guys with Kalashnikovs over a Unit cost US$4.03 million (MQ1, 2010) drone?
The drone will only get cheaper with time and as it doesn't have a life on board you could risk using it with ever cheaper dumb guns/rockets/bombs at close range to cut costs even more?
 
"FYI the A-26 costs $9M .. $14M to buy depending on electronics fit" what advantage does it really have v 3 guys with Kalashnikovs over a Unit cost US$4.03 million (MQ1, 2010) drone?
The drone will only get cheaper with time and as it doesn't have a life on board you could risk using it with ever cheaper dumb guns/rockets/bombs at close range to cut costs even more?
Well, the Super Tucano packs more firepower. Current drones only carry one or two missiles
 
"FYI the A-26 costs $9M .. $14M to buy depending on electronics fit" what advantage does it really have v 3 guys with Kalashnikovs over a Unit cost US$4.03 million (MQ1, 2010) drone?
The drone will only get cheaper with time and as it doesn't have a life on board you could risk using it with ever cheaper dumb guns/rockets/bombs at close range to cut costs even more?


The big difference is that an mq1 4.3 m price tag doesn't include the cost of the van/ building/ antennas or satellites requires to beam the control signal from the operator. This is to only bandwidth intensive, but requires one pilot/operator per drone. Secondly, the drone you describe weapons load around 300 lbs is not even close to what one of the aforementioned planes can carry which makes it unsuitable for cas I.e. You need 10 of them to give you the firepower of a single cas plane. The weapons you are using a hellfire or another missile ( sorry the lightest bomb is a 500 pounder) would be a waste of money to engage four guys with an ak as you described (110,000.00 each), you could fly an ultralight With two m60 and be more cost effective and efficient than an mq1. ( obtw the cost of the 60 full of ammo is about 2000,00 and an ultralight about 5000.00). Thirdly, is that you are not taking into account the psychological effects that drone operation have on their pilots. MY former boss was an Air Force f-15 pilot ( joint environment) who as a wing commanderr had two drone squadrons under his command. He tells me that they had a hardertime de stressing, and coping with the missions that regular pilots had. He cites many causes, first contrary to popular belief they know it is not a video game, so they cannot distance themselves from their actions. Also, they had the issue of normally leaving the war zone and then going home to their family which causes an aural and reality disconnect. They also have a harder time justifying taking life when the enemy doesn't have a sporting chance of taking theirs, sound silly but think of you favorite professional sports team and just asked them to play a grade school team, they will get depressed and despondent real fast. They also lack the camaraderie of a front line squadron, including bragging rights, etc.

Finally as Thor97 stated above your likely enemy determines the type of aircraft you need. If you enemy is always to be guerrillas without a real counter air threat an ultralight with 2 m60 can do the job. (They will not spend a precious $10,000.00 missile on a $6000 aircraft). However, if you are like most AirForces and your likely enemy is both an internal and external threat, you are going to spend your precious money on aircraft that can support that even if they are overkill for a coin threat.
 
As the world evolves to more and more automation of the battlespace, it hardly seems like the time to reinvent the "colonial air force". Junkers are not going to survive and billionaire's toys are too precious to lose. I say go with the drones and other remote nightmares...and in the meantime (and I do mean mean) keep the A-10's flying as long as possible, or buy them Yak-whatevers from the Russkies. Hear we got an "in" with 'em...
 
Stop thinking of fighting 20th century wars of massive ground armies on wheels spearheaded by heavy mechanized units and around the massive logistical trains of huge fast merchant ships stretched 1/2 way around the world and instead start to envisage entire armies utilizing.....what?

It has to be light enough to be easily deployable and powerful enough to require as few troops as possible and therefor as small possible.
 
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