Military Equipment Sperging Thread - The Tiger II is a better tank than the M1 Abrams edition

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VF-1J Armored Valkyrie said:
The USAF's idea of dedicated CAS currently seems to be F-16s with SDBs and APKWS. For better or worse, probably both. I can accept that the A-10 may be obsolete, but I can't understand not replacing it with an updated attack jet that has a low flight hour cost and can fly from shitty runways
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That jet is extremely niche and CAS against anyone with anything bigger than Heavy machine guns and light auto canon is suicidal in 2026.

If you want an anti Jihadi airplane, an armed turboprop works fine.
 
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Falcos_Commisar said:
That her is extremely niche and CAS against anyone with anything bigger than Heavy machine guns and light auto canon is suicidal in 2026.

If you want an anti Jihadi airplane, an armed turboprop works fine.
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Funny, just as we talk about it and I go looking for articles for a little news roundup, there's this gem; L3Harris wants to sell their Red Wolf drones to Skyraider operators.


The USAF is looking for other companies to manufacture their own SiAW-like missiles alongside the Northrop-Grumman design, and mentions B-21 and F-47 as future launch platforms. Presumably that may include the L/M design they passed over in the initial selection, which was faster than the N/G design and had more focus on maritime targets. Safe to say that USAF is trying to build more diverse options for future internal bays.


Speaking of B-21, one was very recently spotted doing aerial refueling. N/G has also recently agreed to speed up production by 25% using existing funding.


 
VF-1J Armored Valkyrie said:
Funny, just as we talk about it and I go looking for articles for a little news roundup, there's this gem; L3Harris wants to sell their Red Wolf drones to Skyraider operators.


The USAF is looking for other companies to manufacture their own SiAW-like missiles alongside the Northrop-Grumman design, and mentions B-21 and F-47 as future launch platforms. Presumably that may include the L/M design they passed over in the initial selection, which was faster than the N/G design and had more focus on maritime targets. Safe to say that USAF is trying to build more diverse options for future internal bays.


Speaking of B-21, one was very recently spotted doing aerial refueling. N/G has also recently agreed to speed up production by 25% using existing funding.


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I'm continually super shocked at how smoothly B-21 procurement is going. Clearly the right people are properly motivated to get these things in the air.
 
Sleazy Car Salesman said:
You'd at least want something that could survive a ZU-23 though.
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Even the A-10 wouldn't really survive 23mm shell hits to anything besides cockpit armor.

Honesty a modern OV-10 is perfect for anti Jihadi duties.

2 man crew, limited passenger and cargo capabilities, two turboprops, underwing and under fuselage hard points and built in .50 cals.
 
Falcos_Commisar said:
Honesty a modern OV-10 is perfect for anti Jihadi duties.
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Something like that would be a hell of a lot easier to operate off an improvised forward airstrip. There's a couple of those Vietnam era surveillance/CAS props that were culled before they got their shot. The Super Tucanu is one of a handful of low cost per flight hour planes currently on the market still in production.
 
Falcos_Commisar said:
Even the A-10 wouldn't really survive 23mm shell hits to anything besides cockpit armor.

Honesty a modern OV-10 is perfect for anti Jihadi duties.

2 man crew, limited passenger and cargo capabilities, two turboprops, underwing and under fuselage hard points and built in .50 cals.
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That's basically the OA1K SkyRaider II except the armed crop duster is single-crewed. Hellfires or rocket pods on hardpoints, long loiter. That thing is really fuckin dope
 
Falcos_Commisar said:
That jet is extremely niche and CAS against anyone with anything bigger than Heavy machine guns and light auto canon is suicidal in 2026.

If you want an anti Jihadi airplane, an armed turboprop works fine.
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Yeah, a pure CAS jet for uncontested airspace is dead because shit like Tucano and Skyraider II clearly do that just fine, no argument there.

But an updated low end attack jet could fit cheaply into a bunch of other important roles, like CAP against air and sea drones. Something like a Skyraider II has excellent endurance to yeet thirdies for hours, but wouldn't do as well with time-sensitive interceptions as a jet with a higher cruise speed; you would waste a lot of that turboprop efficiency trying to hit top speed to get to where the Shaheds or suicide boats are.

Idk maybe this is just my autism, but I still feel like an updated low end attacker designed for modern missions with all the things that makes A-10 useful but none of the obsolete Cold War features that it carries around on it, would be useful.

Edit: A modern attack jet should ideally also be a servicable basic bitch missile truck, and that leads me into this news tax.

In January, the USAF did a live warhead test with the Extended Range Attack Munition, one of the budget cruise missile designs they're looking at. ERAM is supposed to carry a 500-pound penetrating warhead to a max range of around 460km while costing ~$250k per based on the current Ukrainian order of ~3500.

 
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VF-1J Armored Valkyrie said:
Idk maybe this is just my autism, but I still feel like an updated low end attacker designed for modern missions with all the things that makes A-10 useful but none of the obsolete Cold War features that it carries around on it, would be useful.
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See the issue is that by the time you get rid of the Cold War tech, particularly on something built for a niche role that doesn't really fit in with the rest of the military that well, your cost per unit has probably risen to the point that it just doesn't make sense to buy them.
 
Sleazy Car Salesman said:
See the issue is that by the time you get rid of the Cold War tech, particularly on something built for a niche role that doesn't really fit in with the rest of the military that well, your cost per unit has probably risen to the point that it just doesn't make sense to buy them.
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That's why we need to keep the 30mm, strap it to a swing wing frame with afterburning engines and lots of hard points for laser guided rockets, and go TOPGUN on those drones while spending untold billions on the program
 
Sleazy Car Salesman said:
See the issue is that by the time you get rid of the Cold War tech, particularly on something built for a niche role that doesn't really fit in with the rest of the military that well, your cost per unit has probably risen to the point that it just doesn't make sense to buy them.
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You're probably still correct on the end result, too expensive to justify in the end when there is already so much airforce to pay for, but I'm not convinced it would be such a niche.

Above all you'd be making a cheap truck for stand-off weapons first, keeping the low-cost high-efficiency design, keeping the tolerance for shitty forward airstrips, and using them to pad out saturation attacks using cheaper developing weapons like ERAM, Barracuda, or Red Wolf. That's a very important aspect of emerging warfare that needs to be done cheaply and would keep the jet out of contested airspace and free up F-15s/16s/18s for other missions. For a jet like that, carrying high-volume lightweight PGMs like APKWS and SDB to do counter-drone patrol or yeet thirdies would be easily achieved secondary capability. All the things A-10s are doing now, without the benefit of being able to contribute low-cost saturation to large scale air campaigns, and without all that armor and a lot of the mechanical redundency, you would probably have a faster, longer-legged, more efficient jet in the end.

A man can dream.
 
GAU-8_meets_VW_Type_1.jpg
The GAU-8 is still the most glorious cannon put into service
 
WelperHelper99 said:
That's why we need to keep the 30mm, strap it to a swing wing frame with afterburning engines and lots of hard points for laser guided rockets, and go TOPGUN on those drones while spending untold billions on the program
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Tell me something. What does the color of the sky mean to you?
 
WelperHelper99 said:
Also this feels like an ace combat reference
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That's because it is.
VF-1J Armored Valkyrie said:
A man can dream.
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It's not at all a bad dream, and if it were something along the lines of the Skyhawk or the Tiger II it would probably kick fucking ass especially as a plane for underdeveloped nations that still field an airforce and who don't want to buy MiGs. But as the Tiger II showed in Vietnam or the A-10 showed in Desert Storm that sort of fighter just doesn't seem to fit in very well with a modern first rate military.

ETA: I just realized that what I just described is basically just an early block Viper or Hornet anyways. Would be cool to see Northrop dust off the YF-17 for international sales though.
 
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Sleazy Car Salesman said:
ETA: I just realized that what I just described is basically just an early block Viper or Hornet anyways. Would be cool to see Northrop dust off the YF-17 for international sales though.
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...the F-18 already has export variants for international sales
 
HX-2 said:
...the F-18 already has export variants for international sales
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One does also have to remember that the primary reason why governments might not want to buy it is that they inevitably would have to deal with ITAR and all the strings that come with buying expensive American stuff. It's one of the big reasons why companies like Dassault have an easier time making sales because the French have less strings attached to it.
 
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