General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: bustr on November 01, 2018, 02:19:51 PM
Title: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: bustr on November 01, 2018, 02:19:51 PM
I've been watching this for awhile and I'm confused. The AT-6 Wolverine and Super Tucano are almost the same plane. They do the same job almost exactly the same. Why is the USAF looking outside the US for a plane they already have in the fleet? They have exported it to other countries to do what they are testing for right now in the trials between the AT-6 and Tucano. In bombing trials recently a Tucano crashed here in the US. This whole process is confusing.
Trying to save money on a junky old turbo-prop when the pilot is the real investment. Get a sucessor to the A-10 and give a pilot a real plane.
:aok Hard to believe that they are phasing out the A-10...IDIOTS
Title: Re: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: eagl on November 02, 2018, 11:21:40 AM
I instructed in the T-6. It's a nice trainer, but I wouldn't want to fly an attack version. It's fragile, wobbly up on the landing gear (ie. not ideal for dirt or unimproved runways), and the cockpit is pretty cramped even without tactical displays and other things like targeting pod controllers. In the training world, due to the program limitations driven entirely by unrealistic budget targets, there is a stack of unfixed discrepancy reports and engineering deficiencies nearly 2 ft tall. For example, a critical engineering discrepancy that was identified very early on was wire chafing for the elevator trim that could cause either trim failure or the trim to run full up or full down. After 7 years, there was no permanent fix and the temporary fix was wrapping the wires with tape where they pass through a hole in the tail, and re-wrapping the tape whenever wear was noticed.
That kind of chronic program neglect is ok for a trainer but in my opinion it's fatal for an attack aircraft probram. I don't think HBC is a mature enough company to run a weapons system program, based entirely on my experience watching how the JPATS / T-6 program has been run. Maybe throwing another few hundred million dollars at it would change things but again I'll point to the fact that the T-6 is inherently fragile when considered as a weapons platform.
I never flew the Tucano but from what I've heard, it's just a bit bigger and more robust, having been designed from the beginning with an attack variant in mind (from what I've read anyhow).
As for crashing one in training, I haven't read the accident report but there are many many reasons why something like that could have happened. I have NOT heard anything about it being a deficiency in the aircraft though, and I would have expected that to leak out into the public view if a wing had fallen off or something like that.
Title: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: Ciaphas on November 02, 2018, 11:48:34 AM
From a T-6 maintenance standpoint, all short comings are self inflicted.
Aircrew and crewdogs lodging buckles between the seat bucket and consoles, firing O2 bottles for no reason (no 781 documentation), over rotation of canopy latch hooks, placing crew-60's on the sill and trying close the canopy and break a chunk out of the canopy frame.
as far as stability of the airframe, I can't speak in that but from an MX perspective I have about a decades worth of experience in that airframe and over 20 yrs spanning 6 airframes.
The Item managers are the weak link in this airframes supply system. They new that the ejection seat undergoes a phased 120 month overhaul. we replace several component mechanisms but the items were not ordered in a timely manner. having exp devices that ship from out of country doesn't help at all, logistics can be a pain and finding a currier to transport them is a pain.
Engineers are interesting people, half of the "fixes" that they come up with often make us raise one eye brow. they design a fix and we implement that fix.
Having worked on this airframe for a decade, I hear pilots both old and new commend it's handling.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: icepac on November 02, 2018, 04:01:51 PM
Surprised that Pilatus isn't in the running.................or is it?
Title: Re: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: Busher on November 02, 2018, 06:21:10 PM
Props are for boats :D
Title: Re: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: bustr on November 02, 2018, 06:53:05 PM
The T6II is the PC-9 with modifications by Beechcraft. I thought the roles the Wolverine version is being tested for were all being replaced by UAV to keep from hanging people out over dangerous places in slow moving planes the UAV performed well in the Middle East.
Title: Re: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: Puma44 on November 03, 2018, 10:31:08 AM
It’s amazing that the A-10 was purpose built and does an exceptional job of it. In spite of that success, the powers to be want to spend money on a similar cheaper platform that will do the same type of mission. Logic would seem to suggest building a buffed up version of the Hog with advanced capabilities.
Title: Re: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: bustr on November 05, 2018, 03:43:48 PM
When you look at the mission role it looks like what UAV controlled by remote operators have been doing since the second Gulf war. I've seen variations of the Wolverine package where it carries the sensor module for remote personnel optical viewing of the target the UAV's carry standard now. Means they can laze their own targets for smart munitions which come in one of the packages. During the Obama administration there were some horrible collateral damage incidents while taking out bad people straining US relationships we needed for launch bases. It's possible someone decided having the operator on site flying the plane would cut down on the collateral damage along with the perceptual damage to how the US wages legal warfare.
It may be an urban legend, seems trained combat pilots suffer fewer emotional issues after taking out a car load of terrorists than none combat UAV operators realizing they just killed a car load of people in another country. I'm still confused by what kind of mission the US Military is projecting in the future where we go back to exposing our pilots to advanced aircraft destroying weaponry in vulnerable prop rides instead of our combat capable UAV.
Title: Re: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: mikeWe9a on November 05, 2018, 07:30:47 PM
UAVs have their place - they can be made with very long Time On Station by simply switching out the crew on the ground, making them great for long endurance missions such as surveillance and overwatch. They have several limitations, however, particularly if you want to carry out a strike role with them. The limitations of available sensors and the requirement to visually acquire and identify targets in low intensity/counterinsurgency operations make it somewhat difficult for UAV crews to locate targets on their own, and their awareness of the surrounding area is limited by the narrow field of view of their sensor (looking at the world through a soda straw). UAVs also require a lot of outside communications resources, especially high bandwidth satellite relays for anything beyond simple line of sight operations. These communications limitations may well limit your ability to increase the number of UAVs operating in an area, even if you have plenty of UAVs, control stations, and crews available.
Title: Re: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: eagl on November 05, 2018, 08:29:31 PM
Regarding light attack aircraft...
A SOCOM general and I got to discuss light attack aircraft in the bar for an hour or so. In a nutshell, the idea is to get combat capability as close to our A-10 and UAVs into the hands of our allies who simply cannot afford any portion of the cost, infrastructure, or training effort required to employ the A-10 or UAVs. To be effective, each predator or larger UAV operated by the USAF requires about 100 people per orbit, 24/7. That's simply not reasonable for a great many of our allies. Hence putting UAV quality sensors and weapons onto a light attack aircraft not much different than the primary and intermediate trainers used by most air forces around the world. Less cost, less infrastructure, less training, and as much combat capability over the battlefield as practical. We're developing these things primarily for our allies, not for widespread adoption by the US armed forces. We'll fly them enough to prove them in combat then provide the planes and advisors to anyone who wants 60% of the capability of an A-10 for 1/100th the cost.
bustr,
Regarding your brief comment about emotional issues, yes there is a bunch of urban legend out there. Here's a personal perspective from been there, done both of those jobs.
A typical deployment for a strike fighter pilot is 3-4 months long. In that time, he'll carry out maybe a dozen strikes. He'll ID the target, blow it up, monitor it for a few minutes to see who shows up or to make sure it's dead, then rtb or go to another tasking.
A typical deployment for a UAV driver lasts 4 straight years with no breaks other than weekends and the usual vacation time. In that time, he'll carry out or witness a couple hundred strikes. He'll spend a week profiling a target, watching him interact with his community, family, friends, children. Then when the target is more than XX meters away from anyone else, the UAV driver will whack him in the head with an anti-tank missile while watching up close and personal with a modern high definition video feed. After the strike, the UAV driver will hang out over the target for up to 8 hours. If it took more than a few minutes for the target (or his associates) to die, he'll witness their last moments. Or minutes. Or hours, bleeding out slowly, holding his guts in with one hand while crawling blindly with the other. Sometimes the first people who show up will be his family or children who the UAV pilot got to know over the previous week's worth of surveillance. Sometimes one of those kids runs into the target area right before the missile impacts, so those follow-on hours involve watching a child die and the beginning of the grieving process of a whole village. Then the UAV driver goes home, plays with his kids if he's lucky enough to be on a day shift, goes to bed, and does it again the next day. For 4+ years.
I was "lucky", my nightmares started after around 8 months on the job and lasted only 2-3 months before my brain settled into a new normal. Then I spent 4 more years watching up to 12 strikes per shift, hunting people and killing them, every day. That old story "the most dangerous game" is far closer to the truth than most people will ever want to believe, except our hunters are doing it several times every day instead of one wayward traveler at a time.
There's a bit of difference in the war experience a modern fighter/bomber pilot has and that of a UAV driver, yes there is. As a fighter pilot, I drove circles around and after a "real" combat deployment, we had maybe 2 dozen strike videos to add to our squadron library. As a UAV driver and ops center director, I watched or participated in that many in live color hi-def video every week or two, for about 5 years.
The caliber of the people being called on to do the UAV role has little to nothing to do with the impact it has on the UAV driver's emotional or mental state. For quite a while, many UAV drivers were pulled into that job directly from operational fighter or bomber assignments. And some of the most hard core stone cold killers I've ever met were the tactical leaders in UAV squadrons. Professional, dedicated, utterly ruthless when it came to hunting, pursuing, and killing those human beings who were their targets.
Somewhat different level of exposure, there. The element of personal risk was reduced from the chance of getting shot down or crashing, to the chance of falling asleep on highway 95 or running into a herd of wild donkeys at 1am and dying in the resulting car crash. In some ways, that made the mental whiplash that much worse since that 45-60 minutes on 95 was the only buffer from the world of the human predator to playing with your kids, kissing your wife good night, and hoping that night's nightmare didn't wake anyone else up, hoping the nightmare wouldn't include the faces of your family on the bodies again, that your own executioner wasn't your own brother this time.
Title: Re: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: Oldman731 on November 05, 2018, 08:59:54 PM
I was "lucky", my nightmares started after around 8 months on the job and lasted only 2-3 months before my brain settled into a new normal. Then I spent 4 more years watching up to 12 strikes per shift, hunting people and killing them, every day.
Thanks for that, Eagl. It really is a perspective not appreciated by most people.
- oldman
Title: Re: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: Puma44 on November 05, 2018, 09:14:52 PM
Eagl and Mike, thanks for a dose of reality vs the cartoon internet world. :salute
Title: Re: Modern USAF Aircraft Procurement
Post by: bustr on November 06, 2018, 12:16:35 PM
Thanks Eagl I didn't think about export to helping our allies.
Long before the modern Hi-tech days it took me ten years to un-program so someone could sleep with me in the same bed. I was single fortunately, and can only imagine how much extra stress having your head in that space impacted you while trying to be part of a functioning family. During the cold war my father was a Russian chatter translater for SAC right after the Gary Powers incident, then USAFSS, and retired from the NSA. My mother was a Russian militairy analyst for NSA.
Thank you for helping me understand why this kind of program has merit for our allies.