by Major David L. Peeler, Jr.
Download interim version of article as PDF
Within military academic circles and the special operations community, a call is being made for an aircraft dedicated to the COIN mission. Given the Air Force's budget constraints brought on buy the dedication to the F-22A, advocacy for a COIN aircraft needs the concreteness of hard numbers. Building on Arthur Davis' COIN aircraft advocacy paper, this research focuses not on further advocacy, but on a process and method to actually procure a COIN aircraft. The acquisition focus is on US Special Operations Command's acquisition authority to couple its GWOT mission responsibility with commercial-off-the-shelf aircraft procurement to specifically address the need for an airborne COIN capability.
Beyond the acquisition process, the performance, schedule, and cost information associated with Raytheon's T-6A NTA and Stavatti's SM-27 were reviewed and compared. Additionally, acquisition and operations, maintenance, and support cost estimates were produced for both alternatives. The estimates reflect respective acquisition costs of approximately
$211 million and $426 million; and operations, maintenance, and support costs of $38 million and $47 million, respectively. The latter two costs stated in fiscal year 2007 dollars.
The analysis of alternatives yields a recommendation based on the three key acquisition areas of performance, schedule, and cost. The T-6A NTA is recommended by this analysis. This platform possesses demonstrated performance, immediate availability, and lower costs.
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C-LVL is working on a new ultralight "tactical" autogyro that fits most of the bill laid out by Major Arthur D Davis.
The TOAD (Tactical Organic Airborne Demonstrator) is off the shelf technology (based on an proven autogyro platform), long range and long loiter (5 to 6 hours of loiter time, 600 miles + range), STOL (200 yard take off roll, lands vertically), diverse weapons capability (this is an ultralight so this is rather limited, but machine guns are possible), good navigation (it comes equipped with a full glass cockpit with GPS, speed is up to 120 mph and maneuverability is excellent thanks to the autogyro design, and finally high degree of survivability (very little heat and noise generated by the Rotax engine, radar signature is minimum with the fiber hull).
It can carry a crew of 2 or more with an extended cabin version. It is probably more suitable for observation and border control like mission than pure armed reconnaissance role but at less than $300,000 for acquisition and $50 an hour of flight, as well as an easy path for pilot training (in about 20 hour you are certified to fly solo. Ultralight/ LSA classification) I thought I should mention it here.
It could be an option for some mission as it would be cheap and simple to operate by a host country.
<a href="http://www.c-lvl.com/toad.html">www.c-lvl.com/toad.html</a>
warning
Stavatti is not exactly on the verge of producing these aircraft. I work in web design and we sometimes show the Stavatti site to customers as an example of how image can beat reality on the WWW.
I give you this old - 2003 -page from their site (courtesy of the internet archive)
<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20030127171941/http://www.stavatti.com/diver…;
The relevant paragraph is as follows
"Stavatti builds space fighters. We know what threats are out there. A 9mm just won�t cut it when you are facing 30 ft tall insectoids, or the reptile alien overlords from Rigel. That�s why Stavatti focuses upon the retail sale of effective, high caliber personal firearms, like the Wildey 0.475, Magnum Research 0.50 Desert Eagle and Armalite AR 50."
You might also want to examine the staff and non-executive developers. How many defense contractors have a 'Director of Phenomenology'?
As far as I know, the website's owner (and CEO etcetera of Stavatti Industries) is Chris Beskar. Allegedly he's a Class III fire arms dealer, and a musical instrument dealer. If you want to buy a new pistol or a drum kit, by all means get in touch with him. New COIN aircraft... not so much.
To be fair, he's obviously pretty good with web design and Photoshop (we'd hire him) but I don't think the military requisition community should be taking him too seriously.