http://www.dodbuzz.com/2010/02/03/coin-air-wing-in-the-wings/#comment-19584
The Air Force already owns 550 Cessna 172 and 182 airframes and gave them to the Civil air Patrol which is a 501(c)(3) but is being used to do things decidedly un-civilian.
Granted, a glass cockpit 182 isn’t an OV10 and isn’t going to come screaming out of the clouds firing rockets…but I have seen Piper Cubs come screaming out of the clouds firing rockets and Some CAP 182s are sporting predator pods under their wings.
http://www.suasnews.com/2009/10/92/there-are-not-enough-predators-in-this-world/
182s are flown as military aircraft in ten countries. So we have those and we have OV10s and we still have some Skyraiders..and for a cheap thrill, we still have a lot of A4s rotting at Davis-Monthan. Why not use what we already paid for and have sitting out there?.
I may be biased. If we need something new I think a small, fast airplane with laser illumination and sensing capabilities would work nicely and my choice, from having flown all of these is a Vari-Eze. I understand that it does not meet ANY of the specifications but maybe the specifications are wrong.
A beefed-up Vari-Eze is almost invisible to radar, as hard to hit with groundfire as a hummingbird, and could EASILY carry ordinance. And it flies like a P51 on steroids. If you remove the pilot, you can buy hundreds of them for the cost of a few Predators.
We have to stop wasting money we don’t have. We have simple solutions available but no way to implement them over the influence of lobbyists.
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts... the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." -~Edmund Burke Follow me at http://drtom.posterous.com\
The FBI does, so you are in good company!
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