Some things are more visible from the outside than from the inside or up close. This fully applies to such a purely American "rake" as a light anti-partisan attack aircraft.
It's amazing how long this problem has existed and how impossible it is to solve it.
Despite the fact that this is a purely "American" question, of little relevance for the Russian Federation, from the point of view of how everything is organized by our "opponents", it is very instructive. However, technical examples may also be useful in some way.
Attack aircraft has never been a priority for the Americans. Despite the abundance of tasks for the direct support of ground forces during the Second World War, fighter-bombers were the main instrument for their implementation. The Korean War "diluted" this rule by adding to the list aircraft important for ground forces and attack aircraft, for example Vought AU-1 Corsair, which is the development of a WWII fighter, or a future "rock star" - Douglas skyraider, an aircraft originally created as a dive bomber for attacks by Japanese surface ships, but eventually became famous as an attack aircraft over the jungles of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It is worth noting the fundamental thing - these were the planes of the Navy. The Air Force did not "bother" with assault aircraft, however, at that time they had "Inweaders".
Nevertheless, immediately after the war in Korea, the attack aircraft were, as they say, out of work. Moreover, if the Navy continued to create at least some semblance of such machines for strikes against surface ships of the USSR, then the Air Force clearly "buried" this class, hitting the creation of increasingly high-speed tactical strike aircraft for the use of tactical nuclear bombs, and fighters intended for conquest air supremacy.
However, back in the early 60s, a third of the Air Force aircraft was represented by various junk from the times of the same Korea, but this did not apply to attack aircraft. They just weren't there. It cannot be said that the Americans alone made such mistakes - in the USSR, assault aviation was eliminated as a class in 1956, and all Soviet Il-10 and Il-10M were scrapped, work on such machines as the Il-40 and Tu-91 have been discontinued. But the Americans had a war on their doorstep …
Back in the fifties, it was clear to the most perspicacious figures in the military-political establishment that the United States was being drawn into anti-communist wars in Southeast Asia. The United States used CIA mercenaries and a number of local tribes to fight leftist movements in Laos, and later secretly got involved in a civil war in this country, the United States supported the South Vietnamese corrupt and ineffective regime, which after a certain moment "sat" purely on American "bayonets", and from the beginning of the sixties, they planned a limited (as it seemed then) military intervention in the Vietnam conflict.
At the same time, there were people in the US Air Force who were able to correctly assess the conditions in which aviation would have to work in Indochina and other similar places.
In June 1962, Air Force Magazine wrote:
“There are few things in guerrilla warfare that favor the use of air power, but one of them is that insurgents in the jungle do not have the ability to air defenses or intercept air targets, and air supremacy is almost guaranteed. On the other hand, the enemy is mobile, it is very difficult to detect him and he is not a suitable "item" for a normal bomb attack. Aircraft are required that would combine the ability to accurately use weapons and the ability to stay in the air at low altitude for a long time; good forward guidance is also required."
The article was called "", in translation "", but this name turned out to be fundamentally incorrect - the Air Force did not "polish" anything like that, on the contrary, the entire development of strike aviation went to a high-speed and high-tech carrier of tactical nuclear weapons, to an aircraft that is exactly 100 percent matched what the US Air Force soon required.
In 1964, they were sent to Vietnam "Air Commandos"equipped with worn-out aircraft from the Korean War - the B-26 Invader piston bombers, converted into attack aircraft by the T-28 Trojan piston training "twin" aircraft, and the C-47 transport aircraft, which were put into production even before the Second World War. It would seem that the results of the first combat missions, when the pilots managed to "get" the targets assigned to them, firstly due to extraordinary skills not characteristic of the average pilot, and secondly, due to the low speed of the attacking aircraft, which allowed the pilots to aim, should have forced the Air Force come to your senses, but no - the Air Force was still guided by high-speed high-tech fighter-bombers. A little later, these aircraft will turn out to be catastrophically unsuitable for the tasks of direct support of the troops. For a variety of reasons, including too high a stall speed, and poor visibility from the cockpit, and, sometimes, an insufficient number of pylons for hanging weapons …
This situation began already in 1965.
The Air Force's willingness to support the ground forces was in stark contrast to what the Navy could do. The navy had, albeit not the most suitable due to low survivability, but quite combat-ready A-4 "Skyhawk" attack aircraft. These vehicles had insufficient survivability, but their flight characteristics allowed them to accurately place bombs on a target, having previously identified it. The Navy had Skyraders, which began to urgently return to combat units. The Navy very quickly adapted to the new conditions, creating on the basis of the carrier-based fighter F-8 Crusader a very successful and undeservedly removed from service later the attack aircraft A-7 Corsair 2. The Navy soon used the A-6 Intruder - its future "universal soldier" for many years.
The Air Force could not boast of anything like that.
The available aircraft in general did not fit the conditions of the Vietnam War - only the F-100 fighter, who was retrained as a striker, could work well along the front edge in front of its troops, but it was let down by an insufficient number of weapons on board, the F-105 turned out to be good when striking targets in North Vietnam, but as an aircraft of direct support "did not take place", the F-4 Phantom turned out to be "jack of all trades", but, firstly, it was unrealistic to drive such expensive aircraft at the request of each infantry platoon (sometimes not American), and -second, they also lacked the ability to "hover" over the target.
In fact, the main means of air support for ground forces for the Air Force was the "old man" F-100.
The Air Force, however, did not sit still. "Skyraders" were received from storage and put into operation - they were equipped with all air squadrons that "worked" along the "Ho Chi Minh trail" and were involved in special operations. The same planes were used to escort rescue helicopters. "Skyraders", according to the reviews of the pilots who flew on them, and the ground troops who saw them "in action", turned out to be very successful in the role of precisely counterinsurgency aircraft. They matched what was expected of them - they could aim accurately and accurately, flew slowly enough so that the pilots could distinguish their troops from the enemy under the trees, and carried numerous and varied weapons.
But, alas, they turned out to be very "knocked down" machines - by the middle of the war, the number of aircraft lost (in general, in the Air Force and Navy, where they continued to fly from decks) went to hundreds of units.
A little later, the Air Force followed the example of the Navy and acquired its own A-7. I must say that the Air Force did not "take" this aircraft themselves, they were literally forced by Defense Minister Robert McNamara. The experience of using the A-7 in the Air Force turned out to be quite successful, but the first combat aircraft of this type in the Air Force units in Vietnam were only in 1972.
In general, it is obvious that Vietnam was a kind of misunderstanding for the Air Force, and they wanted to get away with half measures in terms of armament and military equipment.
There were, however, two aircraft that were out of the Air Force's "trend" of abandoning attack aircraft. The first of them was the OV-10 Bronco, and the second was the little-known machine in our country - the Cessna A-37 Dragonfly.
"Bronco" became a product of the interspecific program LARA - Light Armed Reconnaissance Aircraft (light aircraft of armed reconnaissance. In the terminology of the US Armed Forces, armed reconnaissance not only finds, but also independently attacks targets, if possible). In its creation, not only the Air Force, but also the Navy and the Marine Corps were noted, but - and this is the most important moment - the Air Force was included in the program only when the Marine Corps invested in it. Only after that, the program received a start in life in all types of the Armed Forces, and not only from sailors. In fact, and this is now obvious, the Air Force supported the "anti-guerrilla" aircraft program, and joined it only so that it would not "go" without their participation.
This is how the Bronco appeared - an icon in the world of anti-guerrilla light attack aircraft. However, here we again come across the fact that the Air Force basically did not want to have an attack aircraft. The Air Force did not use these aircraft as strike aircraft until the end of 1969. Moreover, until the moment when the Air Force gave the go-ahead to its squadrons armed with these aircraft to perform strike missions, all weapons were basically removed from them, even machine guns of 7.62 mm caliber!
Yes, the Marines also used the Bronco as an attack aircraft to a minimal extent, relying more on its qualities as a forward guidance and reconnaissance aircraft, but no one disarmed them to make it impossible to fire on detected targets, and in addition, the Marines there were very "close" relations with the naval aviation of the Navy, where there were enough attack aircraft. And the Navy used its Bronco for strike missions from the very beginning. The Air Force, in its rejection of the light attack aircraft as a class of aircraft, went “to the end”.
Thus, one of the two "Vietnamese" specialized light attack aircraft appeared in the Air Force only because it was first tried to get hold of a different type of aircraft.
And second?
And the second one.
The A-37 appeared in service with the US Air Force after it tried to acquire another type of armed forces with its light attack aircraft - the US Army (in the US, the Army is ground forces).
In the early sixties, the army, worried that the Air Force was insanely investing in aircraft that were unusable for anything but a nuclear strike or two, were puzzled about how to secure themselves air support. In those years, there were no specialized attack helicopters yet, their time came later, but the Army had a very specific and very successful experience with its own aircraft.
In 1959, after five years of development, the aircraft began to enter service with the US Army Aviation OV-1 Mohawk … It was a very successful reconnaissance aircraft, capable of accurately finding various targets in front of the leading edge of the American forces, which proved to be extremely useful both in reconnaissance tasks and in directing artillery fire. The army received and until the 90s operated hundreds of Mohawks. Initially, it was assumed that the aircraft would be able to attack detected single targets, but the Air Force used all its influence to keep the Mohawk an unarmed scout. For the time being, it remained so.
The army also had its own "fleet" of transport aircraft DHC-4 Caribou, a distinctive feature of which was the ability to take off and land on unequipped sites, as well as a very short takeoff run.
To assess which attack aircraft to choose, the US Army tested the A-4 Skyhawk, AD-4 Skyraider and the Italian lightweight subsonic fighter-bomber Fiat G.91, which in its flight characteristics is also capable of "working" as a light attack aircraft, and converted into a combat training the Cessna T-37 aircraft, which "performed" under the "experimental" designation YAT-37D (earlier the Air Force paid for the production of this prototype, but after the tests the project was abandoned). The tests turned out to be successful, the idea of a light attack aircraft turned out to be "working", but then the Air Force again intervened, which again did not smile at getting a competitor, and crushed the initiative, not allowing the Army to get its strike aircraft.
Then, when intensive hostilities began in Vietnam, they had to "adapt", especially since the army men, disregarding the pre-war prohibitions, still armed their "Mohawks". This again threatened the Air Force with the emergence of a competitor, which, like the aviation of the Navy, could well have been more effective. And this already threatened to redistribute budgets. And budgets, this is serious, this is not some kind of war, it’s not clear where.
Therefore, along with its consent to participate in the LARA program, the Air Force "shook off the dust" and from the proposal of Cessna.
Although the armed version of the T-37 turned out to be quite good, and although all the shortcomings of the machine "got out" during testing, the Air Force, instead of ordering a series of reinforced aircraft of special construction, first ordered 39 machines to test them in Vietnam. The fact that the first prototype was flown back in 1964 was not accelerated by the Air Force, and the first Cessna ships arrived in Vietnam only in 1967. On the one hand, their tests in combat conditions confirmed all the weak points, and on the other hand … the car had great potential precisely in the role of a light striker. Light and nimble (if necessary), a very compact aircraft could very accurately reach the target, identify it due to low speed, accurately use on-board weapons, but at the same time, unlike the Trojans and Skyraders, it was distinguished by the ability to sharp and fast, characteristic of jet aircraft, maneuvers. The survivability of the aircraft turned out to be really very high for such a "accidentally" found design with almost no armor, and the time required for inter-flight maintenance was only two hours. It was clear that the potential of the aircraft in the specific conditions of the counter-guerrilla war in the jungle is very high …
A year before the first Dragonflies arrived in Vietnam, the Air Force secured itself against the army's claims to its own aircraft.
After lengthy negotiations between the commands of the two branches of the Armed Forces, the so-called agreement (!) Johnson - McConnell.
From a non-American perspective, this is an unprecedented document. According to an agreement (in fact, a treaty) between the Army and the Air Force, the Army refuses to have its own aircraft - both strike and transport or auxiliary, and transfers its transport "Caribou" to the Air Force. In return, the Air Force undertakes to "stay out" of the Army's helicopter-related affairs and limit the use of helicopters to its own narrow air military needs, such as search and rescue operations. The agreement was prepared in the course of informal negotiations between the Army and the Air Force in 1965, held with the mediation (!) Of Secretary of Defense McNamara. The document was signed by the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Harold Johnson, and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General John McConnell, on April 6, 1966, and contained mutual obligations to fulfill all its conditions by January 1, 1967. It was then that the US Army "tied" with the planes, leaving only the Mohawks and only until they run out of resources, and the army aviation - helicopters - guaranteed itself a place in the Army, and not somewhere.
Having secured themselves, the Air Force "threw" a bone into the ground units in the form of a full-fledged, and, as it turned out, a good light attack aircraft. Having “run in” in 1967 the “Cessna”, converted into the strike version of the A-37A, the Air Force ordered a series of specially improved and reinforced A-37Vs.
These vehicles have forever remained the only relatively massive type of light attack aircraft in the US Air Force. And they turned out to be very successful. To characterize the A-37B, suffice it to say that it was one of the most "low-kill" American aircraft, for hundreds of manufactured and abandoned aircraft, and for hundreds of thousands of sorties, the US Air Force lost only 22 such aircraft.
And this despite the fact that they simply went "point-blank" to the DShK and the anti-aircraft guns of the Vietnamese, attacking targets from heights, where they could get them even from small arms. An experienced crew, when dropping unguided bombs from a telescopic sight, usually showed KVO in the area of 14 meters, which can now be considered a very good result. The six-barreled Minigun machine gun, caliber 7, 62 mm, mounted in the nose, was very effective both when weeding the jungle and against unarmored point targets.
The Air Force even equipped these aircraft with a boom for the in-flight refueling system, however, under the "hose-cone" system adopted by the Navy - there was nowhere to install an intake valve for a flexible refueling rod adopted by the Air Force in the A-37. "Dragonflies" fought very well, they left a good memory of themselves, but it seemed that the Air Force was not even interested in its own successes in this matter. Immediately after Vietnam, all A-37s were decommissioned and transferred in all directions to storage, to the national guards of the states, to the allies … In the Air Force there were only vehicles converted into forward guidance and reconnaissance aircraft. They served under the designation OA-37 until the early nineties.
After Vietnam, the Air Force acquired a new attack aircraft - the A-10. But firstly, they were faced with a ground war with the USSR, which could not be ignored just like that, and secondly, this plane immediately fell into long-term disgrace. The Air Force is trying to replace him to this day. It has now become obvious that the F-35, which was created under the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, will not be able to replace the A-10 in strike missions, but the opponents of ground attack aircraft in the US Air Force are not surrendering.
I must say that after Vietnam, many companies tried to promote the projects of their light attack aircraft in the Air Force. Cavalier Aircraft and later Piper with a modernized version of the WWII Mustang fighter - Piper PA-48 Enforcer.
Scaled composites by Elbert Rutan with the ARES project - many people tried to revive the theme of a light attack aircraft in the Air Force, and not only counterinsurgency, but also, for example, anti-tank aircraft.
In vain.
The years passed.
The Soviet Union and its army were gone in Europe. The nature of threats has changed. The US Air Force, in terms of attack aircraft, continued to adhere to the following line: there is A-10, and that's enough, the rest can be decided by fighters, bombers, "Gunships" and army aviation, at the first opportunity the A-10 will be replaced by a fighter-bomber. End of story.
However, under the pressure of objective circumstances going on around the world since 2001, American military operations, and due to the high efficiency of the A-10 attacks, the Air Force resigned itself to the fact that at least until 2030 it will be in service.
On this, the Air Force would like to close the assault topic altogether, but again other types of the US Armed Forces intervened.
In 2005, in the fourth year of the "crusade" launched by the Americans, it is not clear why, in Afghanistan, in the province of Kunar, four SEAL fighters were ambushed by the Taliban. There is no point in retelling this story; in the end, the American patriotic film "Survivor" with Mark Wahlberg in the title role, whoever needs it, will revise it.
It is important that after this incident, the Navy again sharply raised the question of the absence of a cheap and ready-to-use light attack aircraft optimized for fighting irregular formations with weak weapons.
Further in the case were mercenaries. In the same 2005, Eric Prince, then the owner of the Blackwater company, turned to Congress to issue and somehow obtain permission for his company to purchase and use in hostilities Embarer Super Tucano aircraft - the most "advanced" light attack aircraft in the world. both at that time and today. Prince, as usual, was "given a hand", and nothing was allowed, but SOCOM - US Special Operations Command, with the help of a former commando and military "contractor" Prince, was able to rent one such aircraft. The car was bought and registered by one of Prince's subsidiaries without any permission from Congress, and she already leased it to SOCOM. The entire next year, 2006, the aircraft was tested for the possibility of using it in special operations.
According to Air Force Brigadier General Gilbert, who was involved in the experiment, "They liked this aircraft so much that they invited the Air Force to participate in the tests, and they were going to use it in combat conditions in Afghanistan, during the second phase of testing."
It was a big mistake to call the Air Force about the light attack aircraft.
The Air Force has arrived.
And at first they began to actively participate in the endeavor, but very soon they simply began to play for time. Thus, the official "Request for information" from potential suppliers of such aircraft to the Air Force, which took the project under their "wing", was released only in 2009. This is how the LAAR program began - a complete analogue of the old LARA project, even the meaning is the same - Light Attack / Light Reconnaissance ("Light attack aircraft / Armed reconnaissance").
Then the epic began. A year later, the Air Force issued a new, updated request. Five years have passed since the death of the SEAL group in the mountains, and more than four years have passed since the first takeoff of the Super Tucano in the United States. The next year, 2011, was marked by the Air Force receiving and studying proposals from Embarer and the American light aircraft manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft Defense Company, which proposed a light attack aircraft based on its AT-6 Texan-II trainer aircraft.
Then the "fight of bulldogs under the carpet" began - the Committee of the House of Representatives of the Congress on the Armed Forces threatened to deprive the program of funding until the approval of the Tactical and Technical Assignment Committee, the Air Force at the end of the year verbally gave victory in the tender to the Brazilians, then their losers "Hawker Beachcraft" with the support of congressmen from their state filed a protest, it was dismissed, a lawsuit was filed against the Air Force in court, but ultimately, in 2013, by a court decision, the Air Force received the green light to continue the program on its own terms.
Naturally, no one signed any contract with the Brazilians.
Until 2017, the Air Force introduced and came up with new requirements, clarified tactical and technical tasks, and studied proposals. In 2017, the light attack aircraft program was relaunched as OA-X, "forward guidance aircraft and attack aircraft-X" by that time, even the legal entities producing competing aircraft were different, instead of the "Hawker Beachcraft" AT-6, now under the name Wolverine and already in the form of a ready-made attack aircraft with corrected design flaws, it was represented by Textron Aviation Defense, and "Super Tucano" became the American A-29 produced by Sierra Nevada, a partner of Embarer, without which the Brazilians would have flooded the American market Congress.
The number of contestants was very large:
1. Embraer and Sierra Nevada's A-29 Super Tucano
2. Textron Aviation Defense AT-6 Wolverine
3. Textron Aviation Defense Scorpion
4. Leonardo M-346F
5. BAE Systems Hawk
6. Boeing OV-10X
7. Boeing / Saab T-X
8. Lockheed Martin / KAI T-50
9. Iomax Archangel, 10. L3 Technologies OA-8 Longsword
11. Northrop Grumman / Scaled Composites ARES
12. KAI KA-1
13. TAI Hürkuş-C
14. FMA IA 58 Pucará
The Air Force chased applicants until April 2018, until they selected two candidates for victory - A-29 and AT-6. The rest were politely shown the door, and the two finalists were told they would now be screened for network efficiency, cost, and service requirements.
13 years have passed since the battle in Kunar province …
In December 2018, the Air Force cautiously announced that they would like to conduct additional experiments for the foreseeable future - of course, in order to get a better option in the end, for a reason. And in January 2019, Air Force Minister (Secretary) Donovan announced that there would be no purchases of light attack aircraft in 2019. Maybe there will be new experiments, but when the budget for 2020 comes out, then it will be clear …
The Air Force fought off a light attack aircraft, and this time the army will not be able to take them into service - due to the Johnson-McConnell agreement.
Checkmate, infantry.
Meanwhile, "Super Tucano" with American money appeared in the Afghan Air Force, the Iraqis received the "Cessna Combat Caravan" with guided missiles, Eric Prince put his mercenaries on Air Tractors and fights them in Libya and Somalia, and in the US Air Force everything is the same.
The only thing that the Air Force is not really able to do so far is to dispose of the A-10. But these planes don't last forever …
The US Navy, whose special forces are operating in Iraq, went on a move similar to the one from which the Americans "entered" Vietnam in 1964. In 2018, a pair of OV-10 Bronco was sent to Iraq, completely renovated, modernized, equipped with modern sighting and reconnaissance equipment. The planes fought alongside a classified abduction and assassination squad. Allegedly, against ISIS (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation). It is said to be very successful.
But this is already acrobatics, a modern aircraft that the United States does not have produced now. The Navy was able to find a pair of Broncos, but what if they needed a hundred? However, the United States is rapidly reorienting itself to the fight against militarily developed countries.
What conclusions can we draw from this all?
Simple ones. In the United States, even the branches of the armed forces have long and finally turned into independent corporations, which even a war (real!) With a common enemy cannot force them to join forces. And over which even state structures have no power.
From this, firstly, the political consequences follow, so we cannot count on the technical possibility of negotiations with the United States, because in fact there is no longer any United States. They can fight with a united front so that their military-industrial complex receives orders, but they will not be able to take a common consolidated position on all issues.
Secondly, it follows from this that it is high time for our special services to learn how to rock the boat there, with them. If there are warring clans, there is also an opportunity to arrange a fight between them. It's time to work on these features. Weakening the United States, causing harm to this country is a completely worthy goal in itself. The worse it is for them, the easier it is for us.
Third, and most importantly, the example of sabotaging the US Air Force on a topic that is vital for Americans shows us what a military organization can degenerate into when it is puzzled by control over financial flows. An F-16 flight hour costs twenty times more than that of the Super Tucano, and as we all understand perfectly well, if someone spent money, it means that someone else received it, and the Air Force's unwillingness to reduce costs for military action speaks very eloquently about the interest of the "owners" of the Air Force in part of this money.
And we must understand that such a problem may not escape Russia - after all, we also have financial flows, large armed forces, and a military-industrial complex. And there are no guarantees that a cancer tumor of the same consequences will not grow in our country. Unfortunately, there are already signs of its appearance, but so far we still have the opportunity to learn from other people's mistakes.
