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Northrup tried "fast light cheap" back in the 70's with the F-20 Tigershark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-20_Tigershark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

Northrup tried "fast light cheap" back in the 70's with the F-20 Tigershark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-20_Tigershark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-20_Tigershark As a direct competitor to the F-16, it was squashed (IMO). Are these guys savvy, have they learned the Tigersharks lesson? Maybe. This aircraft seems to compete with the A10, which has been retired. Edit: Correction the A10 is not retired yet, they keep talking about it though.

XorNot 12y ago
A ton of people are irritated about the A-10 being retired to make way for the F-35, since the A-10 is vastly better at the ground-attack missions that are currently needed in Iraq. Building a cheap plane with low running costs which can fulfill that roll would make a lot of people very happy (although no one's going to fit a GAU-8 onto anything but the A-10 airframe I suspect).
- MrMember 12y ago
  >although no one's going to fit a GAU-8 onto anything but the A-10 airframe I suspect You're probably right about that one. The designers of the A-10 didn't look at the plane and ask, "What gun can we fit on this?" They looked at the GAU-8 and asked, "How can we make this fly?"
- commandar 12y ago
  > (although no one's going to fit a GAU-8 onto anything but the A-10 airframe I suspect). Depending on the flight characteristics and just how strong the airframe is, it's possible it might be able to carry a GAU-13 gun pod, which is the GAU-8s 4 barreled little brother. The F-20 Tigershark mentioned elsewhere in the thread could carry it in a GPU-5/A gunpod and it was only slightly larger than the Scorpion. The 25mm GAU-12 from the Harrier or -- more likely -- the GAU-22 from the JSF would be more likely though. But, yeah, nothing else is going to lug around 1200 rounds of 30x173 like the A-10. :)
- noir_lord 12y ago
  > GAU-8 onto anything but the A-10 airframe I suspect. You could fit it but considering the thrust of the Scorpion you'd fall out the sky everytime you fired it ;).
- Someone1234 12y ago
  A lot of talk about the A-10 Vs. Scorpion. I just wanted to throw a little bit of interesting data into the mix... Cost per hour: * Scorpion (3K/hour) * F-35 (18K/hour) * A-10 (17.7K/hour) * AC-130U gunship (45.9K/hour) * B-1B "Lancer" (57.8K/hour) * B-2A "Stealth bomber" (169K/hour) * B-52H Stratofortress (69K/hour) * C-17 Globemaster (23K/hour) * CV-22B Osprey (83K/hour) * F-16C (22.5K/hour) * MQ-1B Predator Drone (3.6K/hour) * RQ-4B Global Hawk Drone (49K/hour) To me that really puts things into perspective. If the 3K figure is true, they're competing against drones not against the A-10 which cost almost as much as the F-35.
  - spingsprong 12y ago
    Where'd you get those numbers?
    - Someone1234 12y ago
      Two places, the BBC article from the OP (Scorpion + F-35 per hour figures), and this Times article from 2013: http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/ http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/ Since I posted the above I have learnt that the Global Hawk Drone's per hour cost has decreased quite substantially. It is now closer to 18.9K/hour, instead of 49K per above. You can read more about that on this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RQ-4_Global_Hawk#Cost_increases_and_procurement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RQ-4_Global_Hawk#Cost_increase...
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    That is the key, even a small country can deploy these things with people as opposed to drones. It will be interesting to see if any of them take a bite.
  - commandar 12y ago
    FWIW, those F-35 numbers are flat out wrong. http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-estimates-f-35-will-cost-32000-per-hour-to-operate-386430/ http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-estimates-f-3...
- kjs3 12y ago
  Less people than you think (people that matter, not people who blog). The A-10 is running into the same problem that the A-1 ran into before it: it's a world beater when it comes to CAS for a period in time, so good you can't imagine not having it. But the guys on the receiving end aren't standing still, and there will come a time when the A-10, just like the A-1, is no longer survivable on the modern battlefield. The people who are killing the A-10 see that day coming, and you don't want to figure out when that is the hard way. Not that they've got a decent replacement...
commandar 12y ago
The F-20's problem was that it was directly competing with the F-16 (and in some ways actually outclassed it). It was always intended to compete mostly for the foreign export market. The problem was that the USAF had already selected the F-16 and thus had a vested interest in increasing F-16 adoption to get their own costs down. The Scorpion is interesting in that it doesn't really have a domestic competitor. We're talking about a plane that that's going to cost less than a fifth what the JSF does, cost about 1/10th as much per flight hour to operate, and can fulfill a mission the JSF isn't all that well suited to in the first place. The problem they're going to run into, though, is the same one the A-10's constantly facing - the USAF doesn't really want to be in the CAS business. Personally, I'd be in favor of just axing the 60 year old Key West Agreement and giving the A-10s (and potentially the Scorpions) over to the Army.
- sremani 12y ago
  I agree about A-10s being transferred to Army. The A-10 ground support missions are too "unsexy" for Airforce.
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  > The problem they're going to run into, though, is the same one the A-10's constantly facing - the USAF doesn't really want to be in the CAS business. Personally, I'd be in favor of just axing the 60 year old Key West Agreement and giving the A-10s (and potentially the Scorpions) over to the Army. Absolutely agreed. The Air Force has three primary missions: 1) bomb shit for the Army; 2) haul shit for the Army; 3) stop the enemy air force from performing missions 1 and 2 for their army. If the Air Force would like to focus on being a giant intelligence agency with hella expensive but cool toys, than the Army absolutely should take those missions into their own hands to ensure the shit gets done properly.
  - hangonhn 12y ago
    With the exception of #3, the USAF doesn't want to do any of that. The USAF has from the start believed that it can bomb an enemy into submission through strategic bombing. There is some truth to this idea but I can't recall any major war where this has worked by itself without boots on the ground. Given that, the USAF must continue to perform #1 and #2. It's kind of unsettling that the USAF continues to want to neglect the less glamorous but vital roles.
josefresco 12y ago
Interesting section from the F-20 Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-20_Tigershark#Cancellation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-20_Tigershark#Cancel... Seems the playbooks was/is almost the same (hoping for sales to other countries). I wonder what lessons they learned from this failure, and how it effected their current efforts.
- commandar 12y ago
  I touched on it upthread and the wiki very briefly mentions it, but politics killed the F-20. It essentially ended up being a direct competitor to the F-16 which the USAF had already selected as its light fighter. The USAF wanted the F-16 to be adopted as widely as possible to help reduce their own operating costs. As a result, friendly nations that had previously been customers for aircraft like the F-20's direct predecessor, the F-5 Freedom Fighter, were being lobbied quite hard by the USAF to adopt the same aircraft. The USAF either didn't promote the F-20 at all or actively downplayed it versus the F-16. It didn't lose because it was inferior. It was a very solid aircraft and, in some ways, actually exceeded the F-16; it was BVR capable from the start while the F-16 didn't gain BVR capability until years later, for example. But the USAF was already all-in on the F-16 and Northrop lost the political game. The Scorpion is targeting a completely different market than anything the USAF really has a vested interest in currently other than the Air Force being hostile on spending on anything that isn't the JSF. I don't have particularly high hopes for the US adopting it given that, but the market they're going after is different enough that they're not fighting for the same customers like the F-20 did.

XorNot 12y ago

A ton of people are irritated about the A-10 being retired to make way for the F-35, since the A-10 is vastly better at the ground-attack missions that are currently needed in Iraq. Building a cheap plane with low running costs which can fulfill that roll would make a lot of people very happy (although no one's going to fit a GAU-8 onto anything but the A-10 airframe I suspect).

MrMember 12y ago
>although no one's going to fit a GAU-8 onto anything but the A-10 airframe I suspect You're probably right about that one. The designers of the A-10 didn't look at the plane and ask, "What gun can we fit on this?" They looked at the GAU-8 and asked, "How can we make this fly?"
commandar 12y ago
> (although no one's going to fit a GAU-8 onto anything but the A-10 airframe I suspect). Depending on the flight characteristics and just how strong the airframe is, it's possible it might be able to carry a GAU-13 gun pod, which is the GAU-8s 4 barreled little brother. The F-20 Tigershark mentioned elsewhere in the thread could carry it in a GPU-5/A gunpod and it was only slightly larger than the Scorpion. The 25mm GAU-12 from the Harrier or -- more likely -- the GAU-22 from the JSF would be more likely though. But, yeah, nothing else is going to lug around 1200 rounds of 30x173 like the A-10. :)
noir_lord 12y ago
> GAU-8 onto anything but the A-10 airframe I suspect. You could fit it but considering the thrust of the Scorpion you'd fall out the sky everytime you fired it ;).
Someone1234 12y ago
A lot of talk about the A-10 Vs. Scorpion. I just wanted to throw a little bit of interesting data into the mix... Cost per hour: * Scorpion (3K/hour) * F-35 (18K/hour) * A-10 (17.7K/hour) * AC-130U gunship (45.9K/hour) * B-1B "Lancer" (57.8K/hour) * B-2A "Stealth bomber" (169K/hour) * B-52H Stratofortress (69K/hour) * C-17 Globemaster (23K/hour) * CV-22B Osprey (83K/hour) * F-16C (22.5K/hour) * MQ-1B Predator Drone (3.6K/hour) * RQ-4B Global Hawk Drone (49K/hour) To me that really puts things into perspective. If the 3K figure is true, they're competing against drones not against the A-10 which cost almost as much as the F-35.
- spingsprong 12y ago
  Where'd you get those numbers?
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    Two places, the BBC article from the OP (Scorpion + F-35 per hour figures), and this Times article from 2013: http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/ http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/ Since I posted the above I have learnt that the Global Hawk Drone's per hour cost has decreased quite substantially. It is now closer to 18.9K/hour, instead of 49K per above. You can read more about that on this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RQ-4_Global_Hawk#Cost_increases_and_procurement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RQ-4_Global_Hawk#Cost_increase...
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  That is the key, even a small country can deploy these things with people as opposed to drones. It will be interesting to see if any of them take a bite.
- commandar 12y ago
  FWIW, those F-35 numbers are flat out wrong. http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-estimates-f-35-will-cost-32000-per-hour-to-operate-386430/ http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-estimates-f-3...
kjs3 12y ago
Less people than you think (people that matter, not people who blog). The A-10 is running into the same problem that the A-1 ran into before it: it's a world beater when it comes to CAS for a period in time, so good you can't imagine not having it. But the guys on the receiving end aren't standing still, and there will come a time when the A-10, just like the A-1, is no longer survivable on the modern battlefield. The people who are killing the A-10 see that day coming, and you don't want to figure out when that is the hard way. Not that they've got a decent replacement...

commandar 12y ago

The F-20's problem was that it was directly competing with the F-16 (and in some ways actually outclassed it). It was always intended to compete mostly for the foreign export market. The problem was that the USAF had already selected the F-16 and thus had a vested interest in increasing F-16 adoption to get their own costs down. The Scorpion is interesting in that it doesn't really have a domestic competitor. We're talking about a plane that that's going to cost less than a fifth what the JSF does, cost about 1/10th as much per flight hour to operate, and can fulfill a mission the JSF isn't all that well suited to in the first place. The problem they're going to run into, though, is the same one the A-10's constantly facing - the USAF doesn't really want to be in the CAS business. Personally, I'd be in favor of just axing the 60 year old Key West Agreement and giving the A-10s (and potentially the Scorpions) over to the Army.

sremani 12y ago
I agree about A-10s being transferred to Army. The A-10 ground support missions are too "unsexy" for Airforce.
vonmoltke 12y ago
> The problem they're going to run into, though, is the same one the A-10's constantly facing - the USAF doesn't really want to be in the CAS business. Personally, I'd be in favor of just axing the 60 year old Key West Agreement and giving the A-10s (and potentially the Scorpions) over to the Army. Absolutely agreed. The Air Force has three primary missions: 1) bomb shit for the Army; 2) haul shit for the Army; 3) stop the enemy air force from performing missions 1 and 2 for their army. If the Air Force would like to focus on being a giant intelligence agency with hella expensive but cool toys, than the Army absolutely should take those missions into their own hands to ensure the shit gets done properly.
- hangonhn 12y ago
  With the exception of #3, the USAF doesn't want to do any of that. The USAF has from the start believed that it can bomb an enemy into submission through strategic bombing. There is some truth to this idea but I can't recall any major war where this has worked by itself without boots on the ground. Given that, the USAF must continue to perform #1 and #2. It's kind of unsettling that the USAF continues to want to neglect the less glamorous but vital roles.

josefresco 12y ago

Interesting section from the F-20 Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-20_Tigershark#Cancellation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-20_Tigershark#Cancel... Seems the playbooks was/is almost the same (hoping for sales to other countries). I wonder what lessons they learned from this failure, and how it effected their current efforts.

commandar 12y ago
I touched on it upthread and the wiki very briefly mentions it, but politics killed the F-20. It essentially ended up being a direct competitor to the F-16 which the USAF had already selected as its light fighter. The USAF wanted the F-16 to be adopted as widely as possible to help reduce their own operating costs. As a result, friendly nations that had previously been customers for aircraft like the F-20's direct predecessor, the F-5 Freedom Fighter, were being lobbied quite hard by the USAF to adopt the same aircraft. The USAF either didn't promote the F-20 at all or actively downplayed it versus the F-16. It didn't lose because it was inferior. It was a very solid aircraft and, in some ways, actually exceeded the F-16; it was BVR capable from the start while the F-16 didn't gain BVR capability until years later, for example. But the USAF was already all-in on the F-16 and Northrop lost the political game. The Scorpion is targeting a completely different market than anything the USAF really has a vested interest in currently other than the Air Force being hostile on spending on anything that isn't the JSF. I don't have particularly high hopes for the US adopting it given that, but the market they're going after is different enough that they're not fighting for the same customers like the F-20 did.