How effective would an Air wing of these loaded with APWKS be at combatting the dreaded drone swarm?
>>65085637Not terrible, but less than an F16 with APKWS because it won't be able to cover as large an area on account of being fucking slow. Comparable to a helicopter, I would think. Faster than the helicopter, like a helicopter can loiter for a while if you don't know exactly when the drones will show up, but it's not a stable gun platform like the helicopter.
>>65085637Very.But then why not put the extra effort of buying old MQ-1 from the US ?You get to preserve pilots from getting titre or even killed : just swap the guy in the container.You get to keep the fuckers in the air for 24 hours instead of 4 hours.And since these old rustbuckets have a proven record of dropping asian cunts, they're used for CAS without risking the pilot.You can still have a few squadrons of AT6 for when ECM might be a problem.
>>65085653Wouldn't using F16s drive the costs up too much though and make you lose the war of attrition? >>65085654>why not put the extra effort of buying old MQ-1 from the US ?sounds like a good idea
>>65085654>old MQ-1I suspect they don't have enough missile payload compared to OP>>65085653>it won't be able to cover as large an area on account of being fucking slowthis is the main drawbackit would make pretty good zone drone defence though, I think
>>65085664>sounds like a good ideaAkshully I'd like to make a slight retraction. It turns out the MQ9 (which is what came to my mind because it had comparable payload to the A6 and the MQ1 for that matter) are more expensive to per flight hour than the A6 wolverine. Although they do have longer loiter times and more crew safety which is a factor but, I never really imagined much crew risk shooting down fire and forget drone swarms desu
>>65085637>the dreaded drone swarmthere's no such thing but it'd be very effective against sporadic individual drone attacks we're often seeing these days
>>65085637About the same as a couple of these but several orders of magnitude cheaper
>>65085637Good, better than having actual frontline fighters do that job, but the best would be a modern jet trainer and a layered system together with other kind of defences. You can't have a single platform do everything.
>>65085654>But then why not put the extra effort of buying old MQ-1 from the US ?Reception, even satellites would have massive latency issues over range
>>65085792Good point, though not really a problem :Starlink's coverage is pretty good.It can become an issue if the enemy manage to disturb comms but then you triangulate the source of the jamming and send the manned planes to kill the ground station.
Hear me out; pic rel with V-12 engine swapped with a Pratt PT-6A turboprop. 37mm replaced with M230 chain gun (Apache gun) with proximity fused 30mm, 50 cal guns deleted as unnecessary. Ammo in wings replaced with fuel. Modern avionics. Make a few thousand as illustrated in old Bell war time film:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-IFb4RRxk8
>>65085637>Defiant TacanoIts got a nice ring to it. Slap a radar guided turret on it and its game over for drones.
>>65086063>Defiant TacanoIt's called the A-29N
>>65086094I don't see a dorsal turret.
>>65085637Hear me out.>huge range>huge cargo capacity so you can stuff enough power generation, C&C, and whatever other shit you need for lasers in there>already has turrets, put lasers in them>works just fine on prop engines>huge loiter time>FUCKING SEXOB-29s with lasers is the way to go, double points if they're shiny.
>>65087113Last I checked there was only 1 that was flyable, with a second being worked on.
>>65087156Is "Doc" ill, I thought it was two.
>>65087168Oh they finally got it flying? I haven't been great at paying attention. I saw fifi fly over the summer camp I was at in the 1990s. It was flanked by a B17 and a B24.
>>65085664>Wouldn't using F16s drive the costs up too much though and make you lose the war of attrition?You know what's more expensive than operating an F-16? Replacing whatever the doritos are headed for.
>>65085653> on account of being fucking slow.Slow is a bonus, not a negative... Means you are cheaper, better loiter, more time to maneuver/aim/etc
>>65087156So we make more. Obviously we don't send a museum piece to shoot down drones they've earned their rest. We just build new B-29s.>why not B-52sNo turrets>what about cargo planesSee above, also not sexo>why not make B-17s or 25sWhat part of sexo shiny plane do you not understand?
>>65087193You know whats more effective? Being prepared for threats you saw coming 20+ fucking years ago when consumer smart GPS electronics got everywhere
>>65087224With what tooling? It's all gone.
>>65087193Not if you prepared lower cost alternatives before hand. The whole point of drone spam is to either destroy their target or make you bleed money at a faster rate than the aggressor by shooting them down
>>65087229>inb4 "BuT wE mAdE iT bEfOrE!"Show me a high precision vertical lathe with a 38m throw in use right now and we can *maybe* talk about a nuApollo
>>65087241The aircraft was manufactured prior to current day
>>65085637When I think “drone swarm,” I’m thinking hundreds of small UAV’s strapped with explosives targeting a single asset. How would this system defend against such a diffuse but coordinated attack?
>>65085637>No radarMight as well just shoot out the window with assault rifles like they do in Ukraine if you have to get into visual range anyway.
>>65087411This isn't for temu quadcopters. American long-range drones like LUCAS and Altius 600/700 have swarming capability that lets them identify and prioritize potential targets and then assign drones to each target with the ability to redirect drones to higher priority targets in case of interceptions. At some point, the tech will get cheap and easy enough that thirdies can invent it, too.
>>65085637Extremely.
>>65086054This wouldn't be effective, the fixed cannon would be too hard to aim. An airframe that allows a flexible cannon mount would be much better at shooting small targets... but having a forward firing flexible gun is hard for a single engine propeller aircraft so maybe a twin engine design... and since it's going to be bigger maybe have multiple cannon to increase probability of kill... and having multiple guns complicates aiming so have a centralised aiming system for the pilot that compensates for airspeed and range... ah fuck Bell came up with that too dammit.
>>65087554you aint built for multi domain sensor fused joint battlespace operations son
>>65087229It is, but we wouldn't be hand machining and riveting shit together. Build the bodies just like any other, much larger, much more complex aircraft. Use modern turboprop engines. We already have almost all the engineering (to an extent, just need to make sure the new engines don't rip themselves off) done on the thing. I'm not looking for a perfect 1-1 as made in the 40s rebuild, I want something that looks like a B-29 shooting lasers at shit.
>>65085637AT-6, my beloved.
>>65087691Closest you're gonna get is a C-130 variant
>>65087224While modern built B-29's would work as a stopgap solution they're not really optimised for that role. You don't need all-round .50 cal turret coverage to knock out drones. Instead restart the NEPA/ANP program. A nuclear powered aircraft would have the endurance to provide long term cover for its assigned area, as well as the onboard power to charge the capacitors needed to run modern laser weapons. A single laser could also be routed through multiple turrets to cut down on the weight (so you can put more capacitors on it). If you make it a drone you can really capitalise on the endurance of the concept, and possibly even cut down a little bit on the heavy reactor shielding that made the original NEPA designs too much of a pain to actually work with.
Pic related has proven track record for shooting down drones, we just need a modern version.
>>65087691But those riveted glass noses!
>>65087605>multi domain sensor fused joint battlespace operationsTL note: eyes and talking to the radar guys over radio
