No, nobody is making F5 or F4s and spares are getting scarce. This is going to be a simple, barebones workhorse that can do surveillance, light attack, training, etc.
This thing is powered by commercial Honeywell turbo-jets which means any vo-tech grad with an aviation engine certification can keep it running. No expensive fly-by-wire flight computer, just a simple glass cockpit that can be quickly swapped in and out.
The question is, will anyone see this small, cheap to operate plane once it's weaponized as useful for their airforce/surveillance force. It seems like an interesting concept. But then again if you're the US and you have hundreds of A10's, why bother?
Doesn't anyone do research? This was developed on Textron's dime for small, foreign militaries that don't need gold-plated shite that require millions of contractor hours to keep flying.
$3000 per flight hour. BAe, Lockheed, Boeing, Embraer, etc. can't even get close to that and don't want to...they want to bill users for contractor hours.
and the only A-10s that the US has will have will riding out sandstorms at Davis-Monthan in a year. All to pay for the F35
Why reinventing century fighters ? Isn't less costly to fly F5 tiger or F4 ?
ReplyDeleteNo, nobody is making F5 or F4s and spares are getting scarce. This is going to be a simple, barebones workhorse that can do surveillance, light attack, training, etc.
DeleteThis thing is powered by commercial Honeywell turbo-jets which means any vo-tech grad with an aviation engine certification can keep it running. No expensive fly-by-wire flight computer, just a simple glass cockpit that can be quickly swapped in and out.
Actually, Iran still makes a reverse engineered copy of the F-5.
DeleteI like this plane, it looks modern, simple and reliable, of course only an use in a real situation will show us its performance.
ReplyDeleteThe question is, will anyone see this small, cheap to operate plane once it's weaponized as useful for their airforce/surveillance force. It seems like an interesting concept. But then again if you're the US and you have hundreds of A10's, why bother?
ReplyDeleteDoesn't anyone do research? This was developed on Textron's dime for small, foreign militaries that don't need gold-plated shite that require millions of contractor hours to keep flying.
Delete$3000 per flight hour. BAe, Lockheed, Boeing, Embraer, etc. can't even get close to that and don't want to...they want to bill users for contractor hours.
and the only A-10s that the US has will have will riding out sandstorms at Davis-Monthan in a year. All to pay for the F35