Yes, when I first read this post I thought that here we go with yet another guy trying to find a sophisticated way to get rid of his late mother-in-law.

One remark: Working titanium is what makes it expensive (machining, drilling etc…).

Titaium can be 3D printed now.

https://3dprint.com/111142/3d-printing-with-titanium/

So I could get 1 kg of titanium for just $7. Good to know. I think I’ll set up a home gym with titanium rods, plates, dumbbells, machines… the works. It’ll be really cool.

Unless, y’know… it was actually $7000/kg i.e. $7 mil/ton.

http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/ferro-titanium/5-year/

https://www.reference.com/science/much-titanium-cost-per-pound-31584d4cff105cec

What does that have to do with the fact that it is single or dual seater? And most aircraft out there are single seater and are being used to some degree for CAS.

Very light anti-tank plane?

Cessna Caravan armed with Hellfire missiles, or else SAAB Gripen with Brimstone – another relatively light aircraft. In any case the attack aircraft will have to be a certain large size if its going to carry the necessary detection and targeting systems and the anti-tank missiles themselves.

It doesn’t have to be big. The ATGM systems use very light targeting systems for instance. The Javelin system has several zooms, up to 10 times or something like that, enough to ID the target at up to max range.

An aircraft using a TGT pod would have to search for a long time to find a target and engage, which would render it vulnerable to SAMs. There is also the problem of locking the missile on the target at long range.

For the light plane I am talking about, the pilot would see the target visually, it would be much faster, the EO system would only be for IDing the target from as far as possible to make sure it is not friendly.

highlighted for you the important bit.

as Iraq has found out, you lose the element of surprise the moment the first missile hits. therefore you need missiles which are both CHEAP and allow the pilot / operator to designate several targets and fire them ASYNCHRONOUSLY at multiple targets at the same time. Current EO/Laser targeting systems are mostly single channel… i.e. track first missile to target. then acquire next one after hit and track it etc… 40+ seconds between shots! madness.

so I would say the number one thing to do is to have a multi channel target tracking built into the airframe or somehow make your missiles fire and forget by building the sensors into the missile (added cost). With the advancement in new low cost thermal imager sensor and lower cost optics as well as “throwaway” priced commercial microprocessors it may be possible to achieve that… sometime quite soon.

?? I have said since the beginning that the main weapon should be fire and forget, and that the goal should be to fire one missile every 2 seconds. The EO system is cued to the helmet.

That doesn’t mean that the idea you describe could not be interesting for some platform. I had started a thread about that about 1 year ago.

I am not talking about using a civilian helicopter for that. Build a really armored one ( around the cockpit at least ), make the frontal size as small as possible.

A-10 titanium bathtub:
https://c4.staticflickr.com/7/6073/6109946779_b0b3b0d9b6_b.jpg

I doubt it costs a lot to build that.

there’s that iranian single seat helo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_285

but surely in today’s world you’d go for a UCAV armed with some ATGMs.

Easier said than done. You’d need to have the ability to fly extremely low, and also a pilot can quickly acquire the targets for the missiles thanks to the helmet. When the helicopter launches, it is likely to be quickly detected, so you have to launch the missiles as fast as possible. And there is no concern with the datalink.