Quoting Jwenting (Reply 9):
It's been tried, look up the Piper Enforcer for example. |
Well, one is bound to succeed, while most others would fail. It's survival of the fittest (or the one best connected). At the moment, that one seems to be the
AT-6B, with its first export sale to Iraq - courtesy of the US
AF. The parallel purchase of the basic trainer variant for the US air force and navy could only help it along. Maybe Afghanistan would follow. The Super Tucano isn't doing too badly either, with another recent sale.
Quoting Jwenting (Reply 9):
I'd want something like that for my air force if I had to go on a budget and wanted to buy new, not a cropduster with rocket pods under the wings. |
It may be a bit difficult for you to appreciate what minuscule "budgets" air forces contemplating this "improvised" solution are working with. To give you an idea, they're having a very hard time just providing their men uniforms and keeping them shod. Don't even mention housing.
Quoting Jwenting (Reply 9):
Apart from some armed trainers doing double duty as light attack aircraft (heck, the RAF planned to use their Hawks as point defence interceptors to shoot down Soviet Bears and Badgers over the North Sea) there's not been much commercial success.
Bronco is probably the last one that did sell, and that one was quite a bit larger than a cropduster. |
While Air Tractor would certainly be hoping for bigger sales, I think they also realise that there is no prospect of a long production run for such an endeavour - that they're just filling up an unfilled need, which hopefully, could tide them over until they could revert to their regular bread and butter products. The conversions wouldn't take much investment on their part, and they could call themselves lucky if another two or three countries order the same. And those air arms will definitely look to Hawker or Embraer first if they had the money.
As it is, the adoption of converted
GA aircraft seems to be going well.....
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/art...ty-flies-first-combat-mission.html
MC-12 Flies First Combat Mission
(Source: U.S Air Force; issued June 11, 2009)
Quote:
"JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq --- The Air Force's newest intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft flew its first combat sortie June 10 over Iraq.
The MC-12 Liberty, assigned to the 362nd Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, arrived in Iraq June 8 and took off from Joint Base Balad at approximately 2:30 p.m. local time for a four-hour mission."
