once had a working
breakfast on an exercise
with a British general
(now retired) who was a strong
advocate of light attack aircraft
as a more cost-effective way of
fulfilling the counter-insurgency
role in Afghanistan. I delighted
him by saying that I thought
his idea was brilliant (he wasn’t
getting much traction from
other senior airmen). However,
he was less impressed when
I followed up with “...as a
replacement for your Apaches”.
Over recent years, rather than
being specialist, modern combat
aircraft have increasingly been
designed for and employed in
multiple roles. Some of this has
occurred due to the need to
be flexible in terms of mission
employment, but it has also been
driven by cost – on tight budgets
it’s increasingly difficult to afford
multiple aircraft types, each
optimised for a specific role.
Designing a multi-role capability
into a platform is always a
compromise and trade-offs are
made, based on the most likely
employment and the probable
opposition forces to be faced.
Because of the lead time for
aircraft development and the need
to address the most dangerous
or potent threats rather than the
ones it’s likely to meet most often,
modern air forces tend to set their
requirement specification up to
the highest levels affordable. This
results in aircraft inventories that
are highly capable (and expensive)but able to deter and, if necessary,
defeat the deadliest opponents- if you like, the ultimate, gold
standard insurance policy.
Counter-insurgency
campaigns
That such assets have proven
highly versatile in meeting roles
and scenarios that were not ‘built
in’ from the outset is testament
to their designers and the air
forces and aircrew who operate
these aircraft. The recent
decades of counter-insurgency
warfare in the Middle East and
Afghanistan have seen modern
combat aircraft using only a
fraction of their overall capability
and completely overmatch an
unsophisticated enemy with
no air power or credible air
threat. Understandably, this has
caused some to question the
balance of investment for aircraft
that appear over-complex and
costly for the operations they
are being asked to conduct.
Of course, light attack aircraft
have always been a good
option for those air forces who
can neither afford or need the
capability to defeat a high-tech
adversary, where the purchase of
more advanced capability would
be more for vanity than necessity.
Increasingly, light attack aircraft
can carry both the sensors and
weapons of a more expensive
fighter, and they are well matched
to meet some or all of the
counter-insurgency mission,
especially where control of theLight attack aircraft
Cost
effective
air power
or a false
economy?I
http://www.airforcesmonthly.com #363 JUNE 2018 // 87Light attack aircraft
‘When you are fi ghting
a counter-insurgency
air campaign in
geographical areas
that cover hundreds of
thousands of square miles,
the additional speed of
response of an advanced
combat aircraft
saves lives’A Textron AirLand Scorpion prototype releases an AGM-114 Hellfi re during initial weapons trials. The Scorpion
participated in the USAF’s same OA-X evaluation as the A-29, AT-6 and AT-802L Longsword. Although rejected for
further USAF tests, it has been demonstrated to Saudi Arabia. Textron AirLand/Jim Haseltine