Most likely, no. I’m pretty sure they couldn’t. And anyway, i’m surprised that a proposal to arm Tucano planes was considered serious enough for the UK to stay in the air so long. Personally, i think it is… totally absurd a proposal for a whole series of reasons.
1) The RAF has Tucano planes, but they are used for training and i doubt they could be used for any other role, so NEW Tucano would have to be bought.
2) The RAF Tucanos have no weapons capability, nor any credible self-protection electronic suite. Even to fight guerrilla, a Tucano would need to be integrated with weaponry, from Paveway IV to Brimstone to rocket and gun pods, and armed with sensors that allow the usage of this weaponry. All this would have to obviously be paid for, and a series of electronic countermeasures would also need to be added onto the planes.Result is: buy new planes, integrate weaponry and defenses, and run a “Counterinsurgency” air squadron. Savings over using Tornado and Harrier already available? None, in the short term. To be precise, money (a lot of it) would have to be spent creating this capability.
Same thing would happen using the Hawk or any other “unexpensive” platform.
The hope is to realize “savings” on fuel and running costs.The most concrete result, anyway, is that there would be even less money to spend on actual planes like the F35, which will be able to do anything from High-Intensity Warfare to Counterinsurgency work.
While the Tucano would be a flying coffin if used against any sort of even weak air defence system and thus is good just for Afghanistan (and not without serious risks either).
It’s the Super Tucano the General was talking about, not the earlier Tucano trainer used by the RAF. The Super Tucano has been evaluated recently by the US Navy as a COIN aircraft to support Special Forces, under the ‘Imminent Fury’ programme; they seem to be very happy with it. It flies almost as fast as the A-10, which as we all know, has been extremely popular and successful in Afghanistan.
….And anyway, arguably, the best platform to support from the air an operation like Afghanistan would be a bunch of AC130 Spectre working together in a network with a number of Fire Shadow loitering ammunitions and possibly other drones like Predators.
That would offer:
A) Endurance on the field to ensure the lads on the ground are covered constantly, true 24/24 hours, 7/7 days.
B) Intelligence and overhead observation of the battlefield
C) Selective precision effect against a range of targets, with the ability to go from pin-point accuracy strikes in villages to a potentially devastating barrage of fire to quickly erase any serious resistance or moving group of enemies.
Not sure, but I think the AC-130 is limited to night ops only, because it’s too vulnerable in daytime.
The air search radar on CVF will be the ARTISAN, a derivative of SAMPSON that’s also been earmarked for the Type 26 frigates. You can see it in the model; it’s the single-faced rotating antenna on the rear island.
As for the SAMs, there’s definitely a lot of space considering these will be 65000 ton ships with only 40-50 aircraft embarked, but I doubt it’ll have anything more than a point defence system. Probably the CAMM, which will also be used on the Type 26.
This image from some years ago shows that the initial plan was to fit Sampson on the CVFs.
They’re very small. 200 kg MTOW.
True, but unless they’re regarded as disposable, why would you need to carry six of them? The German Braunschweig corvettes will carry two each.
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