New low cost US jet fighter

[RN7]

Anyone noticed this little monster emerging from Cessna.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion

Expected to cost less than US$20 million a unit, its subsonic but long ranged and uses affordable but advanced build material and sensors. Its designed to perform similar roles to ISR armed drones but has an internal bomb bay and six wing hard points. It can perform armed reconnaissance using sensors to cruise above 15,000 ft which is higher than most ground fire can reach, and it is rugged enough to sustain minimal damage. You could buy 5 of them for the price of an F-35 and the USAF is showing an interest in it and Nigeria is going mad to get its hands on it as it will be ideal for combating Boko Haram. So far Bahrain, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and the UAE have also shown an interest.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Not sexy, not stealthy, some mud-moving capability = no sale.

[pmulcahy11b]

Well. it's cheap, but are you getting what you pay for?

Might be more attractive to Second and Third World Countries like India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, etc.

And Cessna doesn't have the pull in military R&D that other firms have.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Oh and as far as rugged goes? Yeah a 57mm round from a radar directed S-60 would break that thing into messy pieces of metal and pilot.

[RN7]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

Oh and as far as rugged goes? Yeah a 57mm round from a radar directed S-60 would break that thing into messy pieces of metal and pilot.

Put it this way raketenjagdpanzer. A radar directed 57mm round from a S-60 would probably break an F-22 and an F-35 into messy pieces of metal and pilot if it got a direct hit on it, and would at the very least damage an A-10.

In a combat environment were there is no direct air threat from opposition fighter aircraft as in most of the anti-insurgency wars fought by the United States over the past 13 years and many other countries elsewhere around the world, why use an expensive 100 million dollar plus aircraft to do the job that an aircraft like the Scorpion could do equally well for a fraction of the cost? To use an F-16 which is no longer the cutting edge of American air technology to fly missions like counter-insurgency, irregular warfare support and reconnaissance costs US$ 18,000 an hour in fuel bills. A Scorpion can do the same job for US$ 3,000 an hour. Also besides an A-10, ISR drones and a few modified training jets and turbo-props what does the Western world produce to do jobs like a Scorpion could as cheaply?

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Originally Posted by RN7

Put it this way raketenjagdpanzer. A radar directed 57mm round from a S-60 would probably break an F-22 and an F-35 into messy pieces of metal and pilot if it got a direct hit on it, and would at the very least damage an A-10.

In a combat environment were there is no direct air threat from opposition fighter aircraft as in most of the anti-insurgency wars fought by the United States over the past 13 years and many other countries elsewhere around the world, why use an expensive 100 million dollar plus aircraft to do the job that an aircraft like the Scorpion could do equally well for a fraction of the cost? To use an F-16 which is no longer the cutting edge of American air technology to fly missions like counter-insurgency, irregular warfare support and reconnaissance costs US$ 18,000 an hour in fuel bills. A Scorpion can do the same job for US$ 3,000 an hour. Also besides an A-10, ISR drones and a few modified training jets and turbo-props what does the Western world produce to do jobs like a Scorpion could as cheaply?

I don't disagree with anything you're saying; but what I think doesn't matter. How many awesome, light, useful solutions has the five-sided puzzle palace discarded just in our lifetimes?

Bombcat? Gone - we need F/A-18-E/Fs, now! Oh and F35s! So throw that old F14 away (...and just ignore how incredibly effective it was reborn as a strike fighter, a sort of carrier-borne F15E).

A10? Oh god the dirty shit the USAF is pulling trying to throw the A10 away makes me sick to my stomach. They have literally told Congress that pilots and ground crew and armorers for the F35 program can and will only come from A10 squadrons, period.

So while the USAF "has to" keep some 200 or so A10s for another few years they're going to play little asshole games to keep them as unready as possible.

Don't get me started on the light armor issue. The Army can't even call things like the M8 a "light tank". remember the nomenclature throughout the 80s? "RDF Tank", "Expeditionary Tank" etc. Now? "Cancelled Tank" (again).

RAH-66? My wife was at the epicenter of that cluster-fuck. Pilots slated to start flying the first sqdns of those birds calling her in a panic when they found out via CNN that the fucking thing had been cancelled, because they had sold houses and moved families to the Orlando area to start training on flight simulators for it.

I'm not questioning the utility of that bird one bit.

I'm telling you what you'd hear from <$MILITARY_BRANCH> if you propose it.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

Not sexy, not stealthy, some mud-moving capability = no sale.

The A-10 isn't sexy -- as far as USAF pilots are concerned, if it's not an F-22 or a B-2, it's not sexy. And they're too expensive to keep around in large numbers. The aircraft we have are damn capable, and the F-35 seems to be dying the death of a thousand cuts. We need new aircraft that have that kind of capability -- for example, the FA-18E Super Hornet.