As everyone and their mum moves from cheap rotor propelled drones to cheap rocket propelled drones, has pic rel finally reached irrelevancy?
Its always been barely relevant, drones wont change that. Too vulnerable for contested airspace or to fly in daylight even in areas of air supremacy, too overkill for the vast majority of COIN situations. It would have been priceless if authorized for Mogadishu, and was crucial in operation Anaconda; but those are once in a decade occurrences.
Why not use it to shoot down drones?
>>65508128it's always been a plane for dabbing on insurgents in secured airspace.
>>65508142too big, slow and expensive for that.mount a ball turret on a cessna instead.
>>65508148>secured airspacesNo such thing anymore, unless you're really dealing with mud hut dwelling skinnies. Which brings us back to why bring out an AC in the first place?
>>65508162it's not a thing that exists, it's a thing you create. manpads are an issue but it's possible to deal with them, by flying at night for example, which is coincidentally one of the primary roles of the plane since the Vietnam war.but since JDAM, SDB, APKWS, Hellfire and newer low cost systems are widely available it does get closer to obsolescence.
>>65508128It's the only thing fat enough to mount a DEW reactor, so you might see C-130 fighters in the future.
>>65508128Hopefully it's replaced with an AC-5 gunship. >b-but those don't use propell- yeah I don't care bro, that shit would be sick af
>>65508210but what gun would you put on it? 155mm? 203mm? Iowa's 406mm?
>>65508215Eight GAU-8/As in the nose and fill the entire payload capacity with ammo.
>>65508226Can we fit a GAU-8 in an Osprey?
>>65508226ok but just mount them backwards and replace the engines and fuel with more ammo
>>65508128Oh, yeah. Long ago. If Iraq/Syria weren't defeated militarily, this aerial siege machine would have been a Strela 2 magnet.
>>65508253>Strela 2lol
>>65508128Still better for sustained obliteration over a target.
>>65508162>Which brings us back to why bring out an AC in the first place?Because it's a way to have sustained, low-volume, precise direct fire support from 105mm and 30mm guns on-demand. Being able to talk into an antenna have a flying howitzer start shelling whatever you're concerned about from above is pretty fuckin' neato. That building? Fuck it. That hillside MG nest? Fuck it. Those trucks? Fuck 'em.Sooner or later the AC is going to become a semi-expendable loitering UAV built around a 105mm gun like the A-10 was built around the GAU-8 and the MW4 killstreak is going to become real life.
>>6550826620 years ago maybe, nowadays night vision, interceptor drones and manpads are everywhere and drones have made everyone scramble for anti air guns again so catching an enemy unit without any form of air defense cover is probably unlikely.
>>65508162it was a thing when we zabbed on wagner in the middle east lol
>>65508266*in an environment where the US has total air superiority and the enemy has literally 0 anti-air capability
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khashamcertified lol, lmao moment
>>65508162>Which brings us back to why bring out an AC in the first place?Limitless suppression wherever and whenever you need it, for an hour if you need it, to enable you to manouevre, withdraw etc. It's part of what gets sleight of handed away in the CAS argument by fast jet pilots who just want to do strike - you can't use bombs to do an FPF for a ground force to achieve clean break or close to break in during a meeting battle, because bombs can't suppress for long enough to enable any kind of manouevre and strike, by definition, is a transient battlefield function.
imagine that slow as fuck fat plane over the ukrainian frontline. it wouldnt last 5 minutes.
>>65508128nope, because the latest models of the AC-130 removed the 25mm machine guns
>>65509113what is that, a picture of your mom's dildo?
>>65508170>manpads are an issue but it's possible to deal with them, by flying at night for exampleit's the worst possible scenario you can have against a IR guided missile you fuckwit
>>65509113>two countries with the biggest pre-war arsenals of gbad go to warthere's no point in even brining up the ac-130 in the context of the ukraine war
>>65508128>rocket propelled dronesSo missiles?
>>65510902These drones can be made by anyone.
>>65508128Realisticaly, why couldnt you make a drone carry a few smaller drone each one with a specialised weapon?Instead of a large A-10 you have a smaller drone specificaly built around dumping a lot of large rounds like that.One thats built to use the 105 gun and so on
>>65511105A missile is automatic,A drone is piloted remotely
>>65511895So TV guided missiles are drones and western countries had this technology in service in great numbers from the 1960s onwards but abandoned it in favor of inferior fire and forget solutions?Drone fags are the worst.
>>65510881>IR guided missile doesn't need to be manually aimed and locked on prior to launchhow does it feel to have room temp IQ?
>>65511904>So TV guided missiles are dronesno because those were automatic and fire and forget.MCLOS missiles are drones and are ww2-era technology.
>>65511904A fiber optic drone can manuever 50km aeay and hit a tank in the engine block inside a shed.Big difference from tv rocket drone the west had back then.
>>65511105>>65511904Well yes, but that's just a minor continuation problem. If it looks like a drone, people will call it a drone. Same as Ukraine's V1, ehh, i mean flamingo.
>>65511942they have viewfinders you absolute nigger
>>65511944>those were automatic and fire and forgetNo they weren't. Pilots steered them like a little aeroplane from the perspective of a TV camera in the nose of the missile.>>65511950Wrong. Martel, produced from 1972, had a 60km range and, like other MCLOS weapons, had accuracy that depended on the pilot.Again. Drone fags are the worst. Drones are important because Chinese electronics are so cheap, not because of some special capability that never existed before. They're really cheap sensors/PGMs - that's it.
>>65511985I'm sure they have really good night vision on them.
>>65511978I want more Ukrainian weapons based on Nazi designs because I know it pisses off ziggers even more.
>>65512007>No they weren't. Pilots steered them like a little aeroplane from the perspective of a TV camera in the nose of the missile.you're an absolute retard.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-62_Walleye?useskin=vector>The bomb was a true fire-and-forget system because once launched, the plane could immediately turn away from the aim point. The Walleye maneuvered itself using four large fins. Later versions employed an extended range data link that let pilots keep flying the weapon after its release, and even change aim points during flight (command guidance).
>>65508215a single bushmaster II and some viper strikes
>>65512007>They're really cheap sensors/PGMs - that's it.Lmao, what a sentence
>>65511942>Giant fucking fireballs from the artillery and the drone of 4 turboprops>Surely they won't know our general position
>>65511891Love this cow-eyed skank.
>>65509113Good thing it flies over 10 miles up
>>65517182Max combat altitude for AC130 is 12,000 feet.
>>65512007>They're really cheap sensors/PGMs - that's it.Yeah, that's it. Just cheap sensors and cheap pgms, nothing crucial to war, nothing important you know
