Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog 11/18/2022
At first, I was not at all enthused about the Air Force’s new Sky Warden platform, a step back to a single-seat, propeller-driven combat aircraft not used since the Douglas A-1 Skyraider was retired in 1973. Some background:
U.S. Special Operations Command on Monday announced it has selected the AT-802U Sky Warden, made by L3Harris Technologies and Air Tractor, for its Armed Overwatch program.
The indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract will be worth up to $3 billion, L3Harris said in a release Monday. The initial program contract award is for $170 million.
Air Tractor is an aircraft manufacturer from Olney, Texas, that typically makes firefighting aircraft and agricultural planes such as crop dusters.
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When I heard that the Air Force was considering going back to a prop plane for a ground attack aircraft, I thought that: A.) This was a sign of their continuing disdain for the A-10, and B.) This was a role better suited for drones that manned aircraft, and thus the Air Force wanted it only to keep their institutional budget up, since anyone can fly a drone.
However, if it’s specifically geared toward supporting special forces operations, then the move makes a lot more sense. In that case, you need the hyper-loiter capabilities, and larger drones can be of limited use if you’re out of line-of-radio-control (say, in mountainous terrain) and you don’t have them set up for satellite relay.
Here’s a YouTuber who’s quite enthusiastic about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwpQlMHXUJM&t=1s• “That is an up-armored crop duster with rocket launchers on it. It looks like somebody maxed out the starter item in a video game.”
• “It’s got bulletproof windows, a heavily armored cabin engine compartment, self-healing fuel lines [and] reinforced landing gear allowing you to land virtually anywhere. And it absolutely packed with ISR [intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance] equipment, [basically] making this a spy plane.”
• “The standard payload is currently set to be 14 APK WS laser-guided Hydra rockets.”
• “It’s basically an acoustic version of an F-22.”
• It can loiter about 6 hours, as opposed to 1.5 hours for the A-10.
• It’s also cheaper: “For every hour the A10 is in the air, there’s $20,000 in maintenance to be done. Compare that to the Sky Warden, which is less than $1,000 per flight.”
• “Nobody wants to be the guy getting murked by a plane with a propeller in 2022. If you wake up dead, and you got to explain to all your buddies in the afterlife you got taken out by an A-10 Warthog, that’s respectable. You tell them you got taken out by a crop duster, they’re gonna talk shit for the rest of Eternity. ‘Hey guys, you hear that Groot over here got taken out by the bleep Wright Brothers.'”
The Pentagon is spending $3 million for the program, which is a lot of cheddar by normal people standards, but nothing by Pentagon standards. Being the biggest and baddest on the bloc means you can buy niche role weapons like this.
While it remains to be seen if this is effective in modern combat, it’s hardly the first time the U.S. military has done this. In World War II, spotter pilot Charles Carpenter put bazookas on his Piper Cub and successfully took out panzers.
(Trivia: The last P-51 used by the U.S. military was actually used by the army as a chase aircraft for helicopters in 1968.)
More:
https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=53119
