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There is no such thing. Cessna makes light attack aircraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_A-37_Dragonfly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_A-37_Drago
by azernik 9y ago
There is no such thing.
Cessna makes light attack aircraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_A-37_Dragonfly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_A-37_Dragonfly) and variants of its unarmed aircraft for tasks like forward air control and reconnaissance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_O-2_Skymaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_O-2_Skymaster)
Beechcraft (formerly a Raytheon subdivision) makes utility aircraft (usually variants of civilian models), trainers, and target drones. They also have a light attack variant (AT-6) of one of their trainers, which as far as I know has not managed to get adopted; and have proposed a from-scratch jet-powered light attack aircraft as part of a USAF competition.
EDIT: And they also use this class of commercial jetliners; the main USAF mid-air refueler is a 767 variant, and the military has a dozen or so C-40s (a 737 variant) for logistics and airborne command posts.
- metaphor 9y agoTo be sure: 2 down, 165 to go[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Aircraft_manufacturers_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Aircraft_manufacturer...
- azernik 9y agoDid a bit of not-super-random sampling; the only ones I'm seeing that don't produce for the military are kitplane manufacturers and this lovely oddity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrafugia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrafugia (And of those kitplane manufacturers, many of them also make drones for the Army and Navy.) There is just so much overlap between civilian and military models (much more so than in, say motor vehicles) that the line between military and civilian products gets fuzzy.