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I have been thinking about what qualities make a CAS plane good. And I would like to see what others think.
Please post some design ideas about what would make a good CAS plane, you know armament, armor, etc. etc.
And please do not ridicule others ideas. And please explain your reasons for your ideas.

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Enthusiast Joined: May 30, 2005 Posts: 36 Status: Offline

Well, in a combat air support, i think some planes are better than other. Specially the attack planes that are created to this mision. Firts i think they have to take off in 450 meters, they have carry a lot of weapons and they have to survive.

Then i think the A-10A Warthog is one of the best, it has a easily maintenance, can received AAA impact, have a lot of bombs, misiles and the best gun, and have a lot of fuel inside.

Another great air support plane is the Harrier II Plus, because can take off and land in vertical or in short runway and can use Maverick, and bombs.

In adittion, other planes like the Su-25 are very good in this mision.

More importantly, they have to be able to deliver ordnance EXTREMELY PRECISELY and they have to be able to communicate quickly and directly with the troops, preferably in digital (machine to machine) for speed and accuracy. The latter sounds obvious but has been a bigger issue than one would expect. Remeber when a buff missed it's target and balasted a bunch of grunts? the coordinates were being communicated by voice and somewhere in the chain a coordinate got goobered up.

None has done it better than the A-10.

A-10

Edit: Damn, Habu said it first!

Let me rephrase my original post. If you were designing a plane for Close Air Support, what would you design it with, what kind of armament, armoring, speed, survivability measures and other things it would need. Good posts so far, by the way.

The best design in my mind is this:

The aircraft should need to be small in size, length, width, etc......, with a heavily armoured airframe and bullet-proof glass on the glass cockpit, but with ability to upload a minimum of 5 pylons on each wing for missile carriage, plus extra small pylons for the bombs to be attached, some of these should be considered for attachment also on the under side of the fuselage a minimum of one 25-30m callibre gun attached to the nose or side of the craft.

If the design incorporates a dual engine, then engines should be seperated and far between for minimum damage on both engines in case of getting shot at or caught fire. The design needs to have a relatively large wing span for increased performance and stability in low speed manuveres.

Armaments apart from the guns: Maverick, Mk-8...s, Paveway laser bombs, sidewinders, JDAM, JSOW.
Speed: Engine(s) should give amaximum speed of Mach 1.5-2
Although there is no need for much speed, but a fighter must be supersonic.
The A-10 combines the best features

The best CAS bird would be big UAV with a 25-30mm cannon and some hardpoints

well the A-10 is great, but it has one big problem. Its SLOW and UNDER POWERD!!!

I think the AC-130 just about takes the cake.....

Ideally the plane would be small, to present less of a target.
It would pack a powerful gun around 30 mm, to take out most anything.
It should have long but not large wings, for low level maneuverability.
Very long loiter time, to spend more time supporting the troops on the ground.
Low level, low speed maneuverability is a necessicity, to avoid dangers on the ground.
The pilot area should be well armored because in American and Israeli wars, about 18% of planes brought down were because of pilot incapacitation.
The fuel tanks need to be seperated and shielded and in the body not the wings, because many planes are destroyed by fuel fires.
The plane needs redundant flight controls, and control surfaces because loss of controls or control surfaces is a large cause of destroyed planes.
It needs countermeasures against heat-seeking and radar guided missiles, not electronics, just chaff and flares.
It needs to be easily maintained, with the innards accessible, and the parts need to be interchangeable, so what can be used in the right side can be used in the left, and vice versa.
Weapons other than the gun should be mostly stand-off weapons, not bombs or cluster bombs but missiles, and rockets, because A-10 pilots say that part of the reason they survive is not having to fly over the target.
Top speed needs to be high subsonic because asking for a too high top speed degrades performance across the spectrum.
And the plane needs armor in the entirety of the plane to prevent "the golden BB" as pilots call it.
But one aspect that the plane would especially need is low cost so the battlefield can be flooded with them.

what about a CAS drone that is controlled from the FAC?

Enthusiast Joined: Aug 24, 2004 Posts: 50 Status: Offline

Well, I have to agree that few airplanes if any have done it better than the A-10. But, how would the A-10 do if it was going in against an enemy which had a lot of modern fighters/SAMs and AAA (RUSSIA) ? I guess in that scenario the F-15 or F-16 would be the better choice ? Of course they wouldn't be as effective in giving support to the grunts but they would be more likely to survive..... am I right ? Rolling Eyes

Yes, the F-15 and F-16 would have a higher chance of survival in that kind of environment, but going up against a MiG is another story (and another thread). The A-10 was built solely for the CAS role. That's why we have other aircraft to fill in for the other missions. As far as SAMs and AAA, we've all seen pictures and heard the stories of A-10s getting shot up pretty bad and still making it home, in which, if say the F-16 was in the same predicament, mostly likely would have never made it.

This is a great issue and for many, a difficult proposition to say the least. So where do we start? A-4, A-7, A-10, F-105, F-4, or F-16? I've heard many stories from Naval Aviators about the SkyHawk (A-4). Small, agile, quick, high payload (greater than the B-17). Flew the most sorties in Vietnam, perhaps a "Super SkyHawk"? It's too late. The Kuwaiti's had a nice version complete with drag chute and was replaced by the F/A-18.

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The ideal CAS Plane