On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:22:15 -0700, Ed Rasimus
wrote:


Who is going to buy this plane for the Army? Train the pilots? The
maintainers? The supply chain? The weapons? Just buy a plane and give
it to the Army?

Funny thing, but there may be a way around that.

Let me draw a parallel here starting with a WW-I trick that we should be
looking at.

Prior to WW-I, we had this thing called "The Preparedness Movement." One
of the interesting things about that, is that you had rich folks on the
East Coast buying power boats from outfits like Herreshoff's which had an
interesting attribute. In the event of war, they could be quickly
converted to small gunboats for coastal patrol. The Navy termed these
"Section Patrol Boats." And as it happened, they turned out to be rather
useful. You can see pics of them at the Hazegray site.

Not only did those boats provide a quickly convertible patrol boat force,
but also a pool of men experienced in handling small power boats.

Now fast forward to 2008. The FAA and the EAA have come up with a new
class of pilot's license, called Sport Pilot, and have created a new class
of plane weighing between 255 and 1300 pounds. Thus far, the offerings
from various manufacturers like the Diamond Katana and Cessna's new, and
Chinese built, Skycatcher, are all in the $80,000.00 per unit range, but
they don't have to be. I did some cost analysis about four years ago, and
came to the conclusion that a plane capable of rough field operation
within the Sport Pilot parameters set up by FAA could be produced for
about $12,000.00 each using an automotive conversion engine like a
Suzuki-Geo. It would not be
hard to design such a plane so that it could handle light close support
and interdiction after it's converted. For example, you could do
machinegun mounts similar to the ones used by French with their T-28
Fennecs in Algeria.
Bomb racks for small bombs, rocket launchers or even small missiles could
be carried.

There is precident for this. Count Carl Gustav Von Rosen operated with
planes like these in the Biafran Civil War and did quite well with them.
The CIA was attacking Nicaraguan oil facilities for a time using similar
aircraft.

And with the development of some of the new diesel aircraft engines, the
options for tactical employment are greatly improved.

The pilots skills one gets from a Sport Pilot certificate, roughly is
equivalent to the skills of a Huey or Aircobra pilot from Vietnam who was
carrying a TAC Ticket, if one excludes weapons delivery.

Such planes, if designed for rough field use, could provide several Army
Brigades, with a couple of Aeroweapons Companies, say, with twenty
aircraft a piece and the necessary support organization, for very little.

The planes could be designed for air delivery, truck transport, or going
back to Operation Torch, launch from Escort and Merchant aircraft carriers
with the intention of having them land at airstrips in the lodgement area
of an amphibious operation to provide TACAIR for troops thereon.

They could also function as FACs, light air support for air rescue,
patrol of lines of communication, ect. In short, they'd be useful. Not the
glamorous jets that one usually thinks of, but very, very useful
nonetheless.

And at twelve grand a pop, they'd be dirt cheap.

If nothing else, they're worth consideration given that our offshoring of
existing industrial base and the merge & RIF mania we've had since 1947,
doesn't leave us with much in the way of excess aircraft production
capacity.

In short, they're worth thinking about.

You also seem woefully ignorant about the entire concept of joint
operations.

No, actually I don't think that joint operations are all they're cracked
up to be. For example, in Afghanistan, the Air Force told the Army that
they couldn't even deliver towed artillery and that all heavy weapons
support would have to come from the air. That's okay until weather goes
below Air Force weather minimums like they did during Operation Anaconda,
when the Air Force called the game and the troops on the mountain had
nothing heavier than 81mm mortars for support. Artillery is an all weather
weapon, but the Air Force would neither deliver, nor support it.

At least towed artillery and light planes would belong to the Army
commander and he could operate them as the situation dictated without
having to worry about what REMFs in some rear line Air Force billet
thought about it.

Best of all, the industrial base needed to produce these things is a
whole lot more modest than what we'd need for something as advanced as
we'd like to have.

BTW, I've been reading about the Blitzfighter for years, but I've never
seen a picture of one. Usually Air Material Command's guys will do artists
renderings of various proposals at the drop of a hat, but I've never been
able to locate a drawing of Burton's Blitzfighter. Does one exist? I'd
dearly love to see what the base proposal was, coming out of Wright
Patterson's concepts shop.


"Implications leading to ramifications leading to shenanigans"-- Admiral
Elmo Zumwalt, USN.