Re: Low Cost Battlefield Attack Aircraft
Air Support for ground forces
Light-attack turboprops are cheap both to build and to fly. A fighter jet can cost $US60 to $US80m. By contrast the EMB314, a light-attack turboprop made costs barely $8m. It also costs as little as $500 a hour to run when it is in the air, compared with $10,000 or more for a fighter jet. And, unlike jets, turboprops can use roads and fields for takeoff and landing
Nor is it only jets that light-attack turboprops can outperform. Armed drones have drawbacks, too. The Reaper can cost $10m or more, depending on its equipment. On top of that, a single drone can require a team of more than 20 people on the ground to support it, plus satellite communications. A manned turboprop can bomb an insurgent for a third of the cost of using a drone, and there are strategic considerations, too. Many countries' armed forces rely on allies such as America for the expertise and satellite networks needed to run drones. Such allies can let you down in a pinch. Piloted light-attack planes offer complete operational independence—and, being lower-tech than many drones, are less subject to restrictions on exports in the first place.
They are also better, in many ways, than helicopters. To land a chopper safely in the dirt requires sophisticated laser scanners to detect obstacles hidden by dust thrown up by the downdraught of the rotors. On top of this, such dust makes helicopter maintenance even more difficult than it is already. Maintaining turboprops, by contrast, is easier.
Turboprops are also hard to shoot down. The Pucara IA-58 took many hits from ground fire—Despite some planes' having been hit by more than 200 rounds, though, many pilots and aircraft returned to base.
In part, this is because of the robust mechanics of turboprops. Add extra fuel tanks, which let the plane stay aloft for more hours hours, six 225kg precision-guided bombs and more than 1,500kg of missiles, rockets and ammunition for two 50-calibre machineguns or 20mm gun (depending on the turboprop), and you have a formidable yet reasonably cheap warplane.
Light-attack aircraft also now sport much of the electronics used by fighter jets. The MX-15, an imaging device made by L-3 WESCAM, a Canadian company, allows a pilot to read a vehicle's license plate from a distance of 10km. It is carried by both the AT-802U and the AT-6, a top-of-the-range light-attack plane made by Hawker Beechcraft.
Not surprisingly, then, many countries with small defence budgets are investing in turboprops. Places that now fly them, or are expected to do so, include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco and Venezuela. And the United States AT-26. For the biggest military establishment in the world, too, recognises the value of this new old technology. The American air force plans to buy more than 100 turboprops and the navy is now evaluating the Super Tucano, made by Embraer, a Brazilian firm. In aerial combat, then, low tech may be the new high tech.
