JL-8 doesn’t offer great time on station, nor much for payload.

A modernized Skyraider would have some structural hardening surrounding the turboshaft to make the new design as surviveable if not much more so than in the past. You’d almost want this to use existing ots equipment like the T700 in the Apache, something your people are familiar with. The ov-1 was built around Huey T53 motors for the exact same reason. A pair of the Apache motors would give you roughly 3200 – 4000 shp to work with at minimal space requirements. Worldwide the same engine is used by quite a few planes and helicopters, so it offers good export potential.

I could see the viability of using a joined driveshaft running from a pair of motors to a crankbox that drives tractor and push propellers independently. (Sure the new machine won’t resemble to original Skyraider, but its crazy to think its a necessity to do so.) I’m thinking that by using variable pitch propeller with tilt rotor controls to give a low tech thrust vector control you overcome the complexity of scaling the technology. Less engine speed range to cut down wear and tear, counter spinning blades to minimize gyroscopic forces, both affordable and readily available parts, plus minimal training to teach such a controllable beast. These types of controls are used worldwide in helicopters already so its not a huge leap of faith to think its possible. That way you could potentially lose a prop and continue to fly. You could lose stabilizers and potentially still fly under full axis control. Not only that you could potentially lose an engine and continue to fly.

Now for the main wing I think you would go for a straight high wing and take a page from the Burt Rutan book of design and use low mounted stub wings only both in the front and back. Think of the Rutan Quickie only symmetrical front to back. His Quickie layout is very simple to build. Instead of a large front stub wing I think the pair of smaller ones offer a large amount of lift without really compromising the view of the pilot, is quite durable overall as a design, but most of all it simply works.

There are 1000 nm (US) in 1852 km. Unless of course you meant the UK nm variety; there are only 999.3611 nm (UK) in 1852 km. 🙂

There are plenty of solutions for manpads.

I wouldn’t put it past our sigint birds in loe testing their electronics.

Pucara was pounded senseless by the Blowpipe. I’m not so sure you have much room for improving that design to where it really makes it a COIN aircraft.

One of the enduring traits of the A-1 Skyraider was the roomy cabin. You had room to haul a crew of people inside. Imagine the cabin on something built around the NK-12.

Pretty tough for the side away from the sun to get the reflection of the sun. The cgi artist must have been asleep on that one.

Something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrsjnC3W1mg

That was a very entertaining video! It makes the Pogo truly look like a risky proposition as a tractor propeller design. Seems like when I was younger there used to be something similar in rc magazines only using a push propeller. Thrust vectoring definitely was wanted for such a beast.

But I was thinking in a more conventional design like the Skyraider. You could afford massive amounts of armor, probably even use a staggered pair of seats for pilot and weapons officer like in an attack helicopter. As much raw power as a C-130, sprint speed of the Bear bomber, armor that makes an A-10 look wimpy, and so on. Imagine so much raw size you could fit forward firing cannon under the wings and with a high mounted wing go for side-firing cannon sticking out the fuselage. Maybe even add insult to injury with a remote control tail gun.

The larger propellers might make a tractor propeller impractical. You always have the twin boom with the central pusher propeller option. That would make a tail gun impractical, but the forward and side firing would still be possible out of the wing booms. The layout would more resemble the bronco. But with so much raw power in an NK-12 you have a whole bevy of options to explore.