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This not the first time that it has been used or an executive order for the same purpose.
Biden invokes Defense Production Act for printed circuit board production
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Let me guess. We can't supply the seeker heads and electronics for all the Javelins and Stingers Ukraine is consuming. We probably have hundreds of missiles sitting on the assembly lines with fully functional rocket motors and warheads, but none of the electronics that make them guide to the target.
Apart from the missiles and guided munitions, we need low-cost attritable piston-engine airframes, perhaps made of composites or plywood to help reduce their radar signatures. You can still put high-tech sensors and munitions on a low-cost aircraft. I fail to see how Ukraine will be able to push back the Russians without affordable aircraft that don't require hundreds of hours of training time at a cost of thousands of dollars per flight hour. If we were smart, we'd have kept the Thunderbolts and Skyraiders in our inventory for these situations, but we didn't. We still have millions of Chevy and Chrysler big block V8 engines, though. Modern tech allows them to produce 600hp to 1,000hp, essentially equal to a WWII-era Allison V-1710 in output after weight is accounted for.
We could build a mid-mount pusher configuration airframe, sort of like a modern day P-39 but with the prop in the tail, using a 496 CID Chevy big block which runs on normal 87 octane motor gasoline. We would install a .50 caliber Browning or .50 caliber DShK machine gun in the nose with plenty of ammo for strafing runs, perhaps a heavier 14.5mm KPV which Ukraine has plenty of, fabricate ersatz iron bombs based upon the 155mm artillery shells we're already sending (6 of these should be plenty), perhaps a pair of Stingers for self-defense, and then we have a combat plane appropriate for fighting the type of trench warfare that the Ukrainians are already fighting. The avionics can be very simple, perhaps limited to a trio of redundant miniature commercial MFDs sold by Garmin and an iPad for moving map display and mission planning. We'll have cable-based flight controls and manual trim (no hydraulics except for the brakes- the F4F Wildcat used manual crank-up / crank-down landing gear).
There will be no autopilots or ejection seats or jet engines or other nonsense to complicate flight training. We can issue MBITR or whatever personal radio that the military issues these days for secure communications between the attack aircraft and the ground. The troops and support aircraft could literally be on the same network and using the exact same equipment. It'll be stick-and-rudder flying, obviously, but the missions should be fairly short in duration because the targets are not located hundreds of miles away. The mission is to locate the enemy trenches or armored vehicles, 50 miles away or less in most cases, drop some 155 on them to ruin their day, maybe strafe them once during or immediately after the drop on the way out, and immediately return to base to avoid being picked up on radar and shot down.
It'll be hazardous low-level flying with exposure to flak cannons, but these things should be able to fly at 250 to 300mph at treetop level. It worked well enough during the Viet Nam War, which had no shortage of flak or "flying telephone pole" missiles or infantry with heavy machine guns. Our Hueys and Skyraiders pulled this off on a daily basis, despite the MiGs and SAMs and flak. These planes are for dropping small bombs on a force not too far removed from the WWII era Red Army or NVA. They're re-issuing Mosin-Nagant rifles from WWII. The Russians have fielded some highly capable jets and missiles, but I'm guessing the Russians can't afford to shoot too many S-400s at planes that Ukraine can field an entire squadron of, for the price of a single missile. They won't be dogfighting with Flankers, either. They might encounter the odd Russian attack helicopter, but from actual combat experience in Ukraine, both Flankers (Russia's F-15 equivalent) and Frogfoots (Russia's A-10 equivalent) haven't fared any better than a Skyraider against Stingers or Patriots. If you venture within range, then regardless of how fancy a machine you're strapped into, your days as a fighter pilot are numbered. Unless you have the correct equipment, flying against modern SAMs and AAMs is suicidal in any kind of aircraft.
Why blow mad money on fancy jets that don't fare any better in a shooting war against a well-equipped but largely incompetent enemy, than WWII era attack planes did against competent Luftwaffe flak gunners?
We should learn to accept that some situations are not survivable, and that casualties are part of war, which is why you don't fight them if the enemy gives you any other options.
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I have a feeling that we're going to need much more economical attack aircraft if China decides to kick off the festivities in the South Pacific. We may as well start designing and building them now. Ukraine quickly devolved into WWI-style trench warfare. Both NATO and Russia had to bust out anything that could fly or drive, a tacit confirmation that nobody was prepared for war. In spite of the advanced drone sensor systems and guided munitions technology available here and there, we've gone right back to dropping grenades and small mortar rounds through the hatches of tanks and other armored vehicles. That sounds an awful lot like WWII-style fighting to me, which is the only kind of fighting we'll be doing if the war goes nuclear. Without the microchips and circuit boards for guided munitions, which nobody can truly afford at the rate they're consumed in a shooting war between similarly well-armed opponents, combat missions of the near future will involve "snake and nape", no different than Viet Nam.
We've been here before. We know how to fight this kind of war. We did it before during WWII against the Japanese, again in Korea, and then a third time in Viet Nam. Technology helps, but it's ultimately a numbers game. Quantity has a quality all its own. Despite the fact that our military is armed to the teeth for a nation-state conflict, it's every bit as unprepared as it was at the outset of WWII for the kind of fighting we would rapidly become engaged in.
The entire reason we can't afford to purchase enough combat planes is that they simply cost too much for the capabilities provided. The Navy says the purpose of combat jets is to put ordnance on target. That would be far more practical using planes that don't burn through 10 to 20 barrels of oil per flight hour. We're still purchasing Gen 4 fighter jets, despite the US Air Force's assertion that none of them are survivable against IADS. If that's true, then there's little point to purchasing billions of dollars worth of very expensive but vulnerable combat jets that would have service lives measured in minutes to hours in a shooting war.
For the price of a single F-15 or F-16 or F/A-18, would could purchase about 750 of the type of plane I had in mind. For the price of about 4 of these jets, we can have more combat aircraft than the entire Chinese Air Force. I'm guessing that the Chinese won't have enough jets or missiles to shoot all of them down. The money saved should go into better sensors and more accurate weapons. With the fuel saved, we can afford to fly about 2 squadrons of the piston engine planes for one hour, for each hour that 1 jet operates for. There are some scenarios where 1 jet is worth 2 squadrons of piston engine planes, but I can't think of very many. Most missions involve dropping bombs on vehicles and enemy positions. The jet can fly a lot faster, but when you can afford to have at least a quarter of a squadron in the air at all times, in practice a jet won't get there any faster and it can't be in multiple places at one time. Again, quantity has a quality all its own.
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Attack drones would be ideal for the sort of ground attack operations that will be needed against Russian artillery. The Ukrainians don't have enough skilled pilots. But with a drone, the pilot doesn't need to be on the same continent. And the Russians will have no way of knowing who the pilot is or where he comes from. So drones allow Ukraine to get around an important human resource bottleneck. Small commercial drones are obviously useful for reconnaissance. And they are cheap enough to be expendable.
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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Calliban,
There are 730 hours per month. Pilots who show up to the squadron, straight out of the RAG (Replacement Air Group), don't have that many hours under their belt. We've had more than enough time to train a new RAG. It's long past time to quit screwing around with that issue. Drones are like looking at the battlefield through a soda straw. The ones which are more sophisticated are every bit as expensive as a fast jet, and training a qualified pilot is every bit as expensive.
Edit:
The MQ-9 drone costs $40 million USD.
You don't quite seem to understand the word "economy". That would be equal to 400 of the types of planes I'm talking about, which are powered by V8 truck engines which we have millions of in storage warehouses.
496 CID big block Chevy: $10,000 with an all-forged rotating assembly and ARP studs for the entire engine (cast Iron block, Aluminum heads / oil pan / intake manifold / timing chain cover)
Engine Mount: $1,000 (4130 tubular steel)
Avionics: $4,500 (3 miniature Garmin MFDs for flight instruments and engine monitoring)
Airframe: $15,000 worth of materials (close cell foam, glass fiber, glass beads, epoxy) and $50,000 worth of labor, at 1,000 hours of labor and $50/hr
Airframe Wiring and Lights: I don't know what this costs, off the top of my head (shouldn't be more than another $5,000 or so for all basic navigation lights and the MFDs); most of the cost will be labor and about $1,000 for all of the basic lights
Alternator, Circuit Breakers, and Misc Electrical Components: $1,000
Retractable landing gear (oleo struts): $5,000 (specialty companies fabricate these, just like the engine exhaust systems and engine mounts)
Tires / Wheels / Brakes: $5,000
5-bladed MT prop: $25,000 (Uncle Sam can ask MT for a sweetheart deal for buying in bulk)
FNH USA GAU-21A (.50 caliber aircraft machine gun): $40,000 to $50,000 per unit (cost varies quite a bit by purchase quantity), but not included in airframe purchase price since this comes from a separate armaments procurement budget, although it is a part of flyaway cost since W&B will be affected in such a light airframe (Russian heavy machine guns and practice ammunition can be had for near-zero cost to the American taxpayer if this is a problem)
Fuel cost: $75 per flight hour, at an expected 25gph burn rate for normal flying
Initial flight training will cost about $15,000 at a normal civilian flight school, and the US has plenty of schools which need more students, ($9,000 for about 50 hours of flight time to pass the FAA's check ride, $800 for the headset plus study materials, the remainder for fuel and ground school and testing), plus the complex and high performance aircraft endorsements in their logbook. I only flew complex and high performance from my very first flight, so the one flight I had in a regular 172 scared me a little because I thought the plane had something wrong with its engine (wouldn't climb or turn like the 172RG). Could you put anyone in a 172RG from day 1? I think you could. Remembering to always check your landing gear is good practice. When you get used to. Instrument rating is another 50 hours and $15,000 from what I've been told. Multi-engine is another $15,000 or so. After another 50 hours beyond that, you can take your commercial test. To go any further, you're talking about becoming a CFI and then an ATP rated pilot with a specific type rating for a jet aircraft, which is not what we're after. All further training should be in-type training focused on teaching skills and tactics. This will be limited to strafing, dive bombing, level bombing, formation flying, and coordinating attacks with other aircraft and a ground observer who scores each student's attack run and provides feedback. All told, training would be another $100,000, excluding fees for munitions and range time.
You also need to attend water survival (4 days) and SERE school (21 days), but once we teach you all that, you're as good as any other military pilot, apart from the type rating for a jet-powered aircraft and ejection seat training, which none of our helicopter pilots require. Our military pilots start off in Cessna 172s, same as most civilian pilots. This is a 4 month training pipeline, versus 2 to 3 years or more. It contains all the same training, minus the fuel and maintenance costs and ground school time required to fly jets. Your training is much better than what most of our WWII pilots received. If all of our WWII combat pilots left the states with 400 to 500 flight hours, the Japanese and Germans would've been in serious trouble from the word "go", but they were lucky to get half of that.
Last edited by kbd512 (2023-03-28 08:47:01)
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We saw this for the ventilator, and for automobile o the flaw of everything made over sea is continuing to rise it ugly head.
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