AHRLAC aircraft cristened as Bronco II enters OA competition

I don't have info if Rockwell is involved in this variant, but I do know it's different from the old AHRLAC.

The old one had these stats:
- 20mm cannon
- 6x pylons, 800kg total
- 2200km range
- 10 hours loiter
Pic 1 is new Bronco II version artists impression, pic 2 is old AHRLAC version.

In the OA it's going to go up against AT-6 and Tucano. Compared to them the Bronco II has less payload, but a better internal gun compared to their 12.7mm peashooters, plus 2-3x the range and endurance.

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archive.fo/v8MRh
airforce-technology.com/projects/mwari-light-multirole-aircraft/
hooktube.com/watch?v=Saoj7382Upg
hooktube.com/watch?v=49BpdALG3iU
hooktube.com/watch?v=P6iI9NfNTpk
hooktube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:F-111-Fuel-Dump,-Avalon,-VIC-23.03.2007.jpg
lockheedmartin.com/us/products/InfraredSearchTrack.html
docdro.id/xSfcoRT
nytimes.com/1997/08/23/world/the-2-billion-stealth-bomber-can-t-go-out-in-the-rain.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

What's the ROF on the cannon?

It will probably be the M61 Vulcan so it will be rated for 6,000 Kebab Removed per minute.

Unknown. The American BroncoII variant has no stats out, I think the Ahrlac version uses a french cannon.

ROF was around 750-1500 since it was just an M197 (same used on the Cobra)

Note, not all OV-10s used the 20mm cannon, only from the OV-10D onward (maybe)

The original AHRLAC carried a GI-2, which fires at around 700-800rpm.

Fucking finally.

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Impressions of the new design attached.
archive.fo/v8MRh
airforce-technology.com/projects/mwari-light-multirole-aircraft/

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Fun fact Boeing integrated defensive systems (BIDS) is actually 100% rockwell engineers or people trained by rockwell engineers.
Explains the Bronco II name considering these old timers made the original Bronco.

The one they mounted on the original Ahrlac is a naval cannon, because it's all the company had. As such it's very heavy for what it shoots because the peoeple who engineered it didn't care about weight. It weighs 332kg (gun+feed system) and fires 750rpm.

Compare it with proper aircraft cannons, which are built for lightness. M197 and M39 both fire around 1500rpm and are under 150kg, so it might be feasible to put two of each on the Ahrlac to get 3000rpm. The Vulcan the bong mentioned is 252kg gun+feed, and fires 6000rpm.

high rof isn't strictly necessary, since that's purposed for air to air. 20mm minimum is nice, because that affords payload munitions.

Stupid question if I may.
Would a miniature A-10 with prop-engines be effective or is the engines placement non-beneficial for prop planes?
Also why not just a heavily modernized A-37?

Why the fuck doesn't America make something that is not half century+ old?

How exactly would you improve the M61?

The problem with gattlings though is that in air combat they never achieve the theoretical maximum RoF. Not sure about it but I think that both recoil-operated and revolver cannons reach maximum rate of fire much more quickly, if not instantly.

Don't want to sound like a smartass but I think after half a century of operational experience, development of different caliber airborne cannons and advances in material engineering would leave enough ground for improvement to engineers that are not memeing in a chinese cartoon forum as leisure.

Ples, it should be called Bronco One Half.

There was a new version to be made for the Comanche called the XM301 which was half the mass and could fire up to 1800rpm, but that got cancelled with the Comanche


The replacement was supposed to be the GAU-13for all multirole aircraft for ground attack which would make every F-16 and F-15E about as comparable to the A-10, but that also got scrapped.

The Giat F2 (M693) south african knockoff is actually around 71kg, the 300+kg includes the naval mount.

It can also be dual fed

Oh is that so? How much does the feed system/ammo weigh?

It should just be called the Bron-

Why are these aircraft so beautiful?

Attached: AHRLAC.jpg (780x385, 98.02K)

uses a regular belt feed ratchet and claw system to feed and is gas operated.

It'll just feed from belts of ammo.

So again, the gun weighs 71kg

Why it is not even half a Bronco:
hooktube.com/watch?v=Saoj7382Upg
hooktube.com/watch?v=49BpdALG3iU
hooktube.com/watch?v=P6iI9NfNTpk

The Bro


I was including feed system and ammo in my comparison, can you not see how erasing that might make it an unfair comparison, or are you just being a dick?

For example the gun the original Bronco used was a 20mm cannon, 60kg without feed system, with 1500rpm. Could definitely fit it.

And the original Bronco carried 1600kg payload while this one carries 800.

Ergo the Bro is a pretty decent nickname… especially for guys on the ground wounded, surrounded, with no hope, when they hear its single engine purr….

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You're including the naval mount which does not make any sense since it's also installed in lightly armored vehicles as well as the Rooivalk.

Pics related.

As you can see the Naval mount is huge while the gun itself doesn't have alot going on.

Now quit being some sort of retard and use that head of yours

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I also fires 20x139mm, which unlike the 20x102mm is actually somewhat effective against light armor.

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I recall there was a competition for a "mudfighter" for which Rutan designed this ducted-fan plane, built around no less than a 30mm cannon in a way that the yaw and gas ingestion problem was mostly eliminated.
It was axed together with the entire project.

Would the ARES be competitive with these? Or was it just a meme?

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Rutan ples.
hooktube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg
Though ARES was quiet interesting and it even had readily available space to cram in co-pilot that is must for ground attack in the year 2018.

Anyway guns are outdated who cares abut them except couple Zig Forums spergs?

Because it works? Same reason why the M240 is still in use.

Yeah, because that attitude worked so well for the Burgers in Vietnam. You don't even need to go full BRRRRRT to get cannons doing a lot of damage, as long as your pilot can figure out what a gun sight is for then even a 1940's vintage Oerlikon will fuck up everything that isn't very well armoured.

It did. Crafts with missiles only had better k/d ratio than crafts with guns and missiles and over 9000 better k/d ratio than crafts with guns only.

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They should just mount a 75mm+ cannon on it and be done.

Oh for fucks sake… Canons on aircraft aren't for penetrating even light armor. They exist to kill everything that isn't armor, which is 99% of targets on the ground. The pylons are for the armor, the cannon is for everything else, capische? If the cannon was for armor, attack aircraft wouldn't even have pylons.

Also if we just had missiles, it could take out eight AFVs the enemy had…. but what the fuck would it do for the fifty trucks or 250 troops? When CAS is called in, its usually to save a team of guys on the ground who are surrounded by enemies. Usually the team of guys on the ground aren't surrounded by main battle tanks.

The cannons are:
1. Dirt cheap
2. Unjammable
3. Directed
4. Cluster munitions dispenser
As such even a low velocity M230 chain gun can do the job, because its job isn't to stupidly penetrate a surface, it's to carry a payload to the target.

Also why 20mm on Bronco II is oodles superior to 12.7mm on Tucano and AT-6… the 20mm can actually pack an explosive load.

Just imagine what a 75mm+ cannon could pack in explosive load.
Though I have always wondered what it would be like to attach a flamethrower to an aircraft instead.

...

Well you could always dump a load of oil over an area and have the pilot open the window and throw a match down.

I think you're taking shitposting a little too seriously.

...

It would only work if it was ethylene glycol dumped out the back of the airplane, and then a flare ejected to set it on fire. Like crop dusting but hotter.

I like the idea.
Might talk to a local farmer.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:F-111-Fuel-Dump,-Avalon,-VIC-23.03.2007.jpg
Admittedly facing the wrong way

Part of me is hoping you're serious.

Why am I not surprised?

As a kid I always wondered why can't bombers have disposable fuel tanks that can also serve as incendiary bombs. I still wonder that but I am afraid to ask.

Have we reached maximum Zig Forums design now? Also, isn't this what napalm bombs are for?

For one, it would be empty by the time they reached their target. For another, drop tanks are a thing for fighters, even multiroles don't drop tanks if they aren't being shot at.

This is to the point where LockHeeb is offering an IRST system integrated into… what should be a drop tank, but is in reality a permanent attachment to the aircraft.

lockheedmartin.com/us/products/InfraredSearchTrack.html

The 20x139mm HEI round has a ~10g filler with no frag liner. It's no more deadly to soft targets than regular old API, and with such a small volume of fire that simply isn't happening. A single seven-tube Hydra pod or Mk.82 would be several times more effective than the Ahrlac's entire magazine of 20mm.
Most APCs could be mission-killed if not destroyed outright with half a dozen 20mm rounds. Assuming 30% accuracy, that's around fifteen APCs you just disabled without even touching your very limited external payload, and for a tiny fraction of the cost of a single Hellfire.

Embed related?

...

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So when does Zig Forums make the Expendabros?

pic related

Also am I correct in assuming you meant to say that effectiveness goes from
Missile Only>Missile & Gun>Gun Only

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Can you take out Muhammed's cock out your mouth Sweden for a second and actually make sense?

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I don't think 800m/s is slow, it might not be buttnaked fast but it isn't slow, it's only about 200-300m/s less than the GAU-8 and Mk44


It never really had a payload beyond the gun and Fuel and was more of a proof of concept that never really got taken off the ground.

I think with an IRST system and SAR it would be pretty decent for low intensity conflicts today.

Personally, however, I rather the PZL Skorpion

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1500rpm, 10g, that means it dumps 750g of explosives in one three second burst. And this is more evenly spread than a single 750g bomb, so it's more effective pound for pound, which is why you're wrong on the bomb. You're right on the rockets though, they're also a type of directed cluster munitions dispenser, if a bit more innacurate and a bit less "directed"…

In fact depending on some design choices - the perfect attack aircraft weapon would be something like Balkan AGS caseless mini-rocket grenades stacked in the same way as Metalstorm in long tubes axially to the attack aircrafts body. No one is doing this because it's still very much an untested system with a lot of drawbacks…

My bad, I'm mentally classifying APCs under light armor, since some of them can be penetrated by black tip 7.62 NEATO at

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*2018 fuck

Weren't F-4s kinda often raped by Vietnamese MiG-15/17/19 and MiG-21's guns?

It wasn't the fact that the MiGs had guns, but it was the fact that the US didn't learn how to use their missiles effectively, while the Russians kept gunfighting as part of theirs.

That was fixed when they learned how to use their missiles properly and how to dogfight like in Korea.

It was a combination of gunfighters, halfway capable air defense fire from the ground, zerg rushing tactics on the American side, and the plain fact that Vietnam had less aircraft to shoot down. I think the final score is Vietnam lost 150 jets in combat of all types, whereas America lost 1500 jets in combat. Not 100% sure on the numbers, but I know it was a 10:1 difference.

The issue with cannon in air to air combat isn't that its somehow a massive advantage, but that in 1/10 situations that a fighter finds itself in actually requires the use of the cannon, and its absence is felt strongly by pilots that don't have it. Maybe it means losing a fight, maybe it means letting an easy kill go home. Its just still not worth the weight savings that are equivalent to one extra pylon carrying one sidewinder.


It was actually quite as bad in Korea. USAF lost 2 aircraft per 1000 sorties in Korea compared to 0.5 aircraft per 1000 sorties in Vietnam. The vietcong bit us longer, but the koreans bit us harder.

I think that had more to do with later variants in the war actually having a gun. What was the launch/kill ratio of guided air to air missiles in 'nam?

10/10


Those were made because the US and USSR had Parity with their aircraft, Vietnam was different because the F-4 was 2 generations ahead of the MiG-15 and 17 and 1 generation ahead of the MiG-19, MiG-21s were on par but had very little numbers and were thus ineffective.

The US did not know how to correctly utilize their aircraft and paid for it early in the war. You'll see the same with the F-22 and F-35 vs 4th and 3rd Gen Aircraft still in service.


I'll find the numbers for you, but it had more to do with the TOPGUN program than just the guns.

They were lobbing the missiles without locking onto target (similar to what the Vietnamese did with the MiG-21) and had to learn how to use them properly. This did more to fix the fight than just the gun.

As user said, the gun is more like having a knife when you run out of bullets for your guns, it's nice to have when you run out of missiles or in a sticky situation where you can shoot down an aircraft while maneuvering.

Nevermind, found it in wiki:

AIM-7

AIM-9B
In total 452 Sidewinders were fired during the Vietnam War, resulting in a kill probability of 0.18.[16]

Is there anything that would prevent the reintroduction mine rounds? They managed to squeeze 18,5g of PETN filler into a smaller round (20x86mm) during WW2.

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Would have it been possible to make seaplane fighters during ww2?

Modern "made in China" industry can't into Teutonic technologies.

Don't worry we'll stick to bombing durkas, they don't have jets. Politicians have learned long ago to stay away from competent enemies.


Unfortunately in this case fragments matter more than explosive filling, when killing soldiers on the ground. That's why even the 20mm shells in use for the M197 this thing will likely be packing should probably have their explosive load reduced to fit proper preformed shrapnel. Also why that guys complaints about explosives were weird.


Some were, I think some Zeros were modified as seaplanes. But the floats kept them back, they do add drag and make it harder to turn. Less of an issue for tactical bombers and multiroles, whose main job will be strike missions.

I feel bad for constantly bringing it up, but how about thermobarics?

So the most obvious solution also have some serious drawbacks. And thinking up a retarctable float now would be a bit late to the party. Still, seaplanes sound like the best thing ever for the Pacific front.

Even here people have forgotten that the PBY catalina had a positive kill ratio against zeroes in the pacific, in addition to everything else it did. In my opinion, this was because the PBY crews had a lot more time to train and get used to their planes pre-war, iirc it was first made in 1936 and remained both in service and effective throughout the war.

For a looooong time i thought the Marines would love a floating, flying gunship, an amphibious ac-130 able to refuel/rearm on ships at sea or at any harbor with diesel and ammo. (diesel and jet fuel are almost interchangeable, easy to design into the engines. Many engines already use either). Guns will need to be mounted much higher in the fuselage than on the ac-130, to not catch too much water on takeoff/landing. Perhaps this would work better as an airframe that can be either a gunship or AWACS for the carrier group, that way one ship could service four or five large aircraft running a near-constant patrol around the carrier group. The plane would be a four-engined turboprop, The japanese us-2 recon/coast gaurd plane is almost exactly the right plane to do this to. As it stands, the planes are equipped for search-and-rescue and apparently anti-submarine work, but have th payload capacity and range for what I'm envisioning.

The main problem i see with this is that releasing a gunship from the shackles of an airfield also mean it can effectively operate in places friendly fighters can't(at least not for the time a gunship needs to do its job) due to fuel range limits. However this isn't very important in counter-insurgency warfare.


God I wish i was burt rutan, he's basically this generation's kelly johnson. So many fantastic designs. I wonder if you could make a velocity into a v-bomber with some small turbojets. Some napkin-tier math told me it would need about 1000f*lbs of thrust to match the 180hp twin props. Two engines mounted inside each wing with intakes at the wing root leading edge. Am i retarded for wanting this?>▶

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Where the hell did those two unicode symbols at the end of my post come from? I didn't do it, at least not intentionally

Marines stopped being cool a long time ago. They lost their mojo.

Fun fact: M67 hand grenade has filling ratio of 45%, 20mm mine rounds has 20% filling ratio. Makes you think about case weight.

Ples.

But how did they win dogfights? Or did zeroes just fly into the arc of their guns?

As far as I know the US armed forces only use one kind of jet fuel in all of their vehicles.
I vaguely remember a similar discussion from a long time ago where an user suggested putting the guns on the bottom in turrets, but it was shot down because the bottom of flying boats need to be quite sturdy. But how about going the opposite direction and mounting them on top of the plane, in turrets? They could still fire a broadside against ground targets if they can be depressed while facing left or right. And if they are 30-60mm autocannons, then they could be used as CIWS.

The side would still be the best bet. It would just be a little higher with the floats on…

The C-130 already has a seaplane version, I don't think it would even be difficult to convert the AC-130 into a seaplane version.

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They still got more kills with the AIM-7s and AIM-9s however.

Sure they were unreliable, but they gave more reliable kills than guns.

Start from Page 117 and go down
docdro.id/xSfcoRT

There is a way to pull it off, most rounds, even artillery, have very little filler for round mass.

This is because you need the round to "protect" the filler while in the chamber from the high pressures.

The easiest way to deal with this, is using a lower pressure system (as with the 20x82 rounds they had much lower pressure than the 20x139 used at the time) so they can use heavier rounds, at the cost of velocity. Another example is comparing the SBD GBU-39 to the Mk82. The GBU-39 uses basically fiberglass for its outer shell while the Mk82 is still an iron bomb. The GBU-39, however, is much lighter at almost half the mass (129kg) compared to its Mk82 partner (227kg) but carry about the same amount of filler (GBU-93 has 93kg while the Mk82 has 87kg).

The best system to deal with a thinner casing is to lower chamber pressure.

How would you do this? With a high low pressure system.

Think of it as a reverse rocket system, all the high pressure is kept within the case and chamber, but the gases bleed over time out the top of the case through holes.

This way, you can propel more filler, for less overall round mass with similar velocities.

If you want to propel the same round mass with even more filler at the same velocity, it's about the same (give or take 10-15%) amount of propellant.

There's more advantages as well, you can make the gun itself lighter since the barrel doesn't have to deal with as much pressure as it gradually expands evenly along the bore rather than a sharp dropoff.

It's already used in grenade launchers, the Germans during WWII tried using it for antitank guns (the 8cm PAW 600 comes to mind, there were also plans for a 10cm called the 10H64 but that never came to fruition) and post war in some anti sub launchers, but that's about it.


The same can be said of VTOL turbine aircraft. The USMC used Harriers in Iraq out of a football stadium and kept them well protected, it's also the way they use their Cobras, unlike the US Army who keeps them at airstrips, they have an Arming point close to the front lines with just a few trucks and personnel to load them up and send them off. Same can be said of the V-22.

But you have one thing, Aircraft Carriers (and LHDs in the case of the Harrier, V-22 and F-35B) basically do the same thing you're talking about but would need the ship close by to pull it off.

There's also the issue with jet aircraft of sucking in sea water at takeoff in the wake it would create and all of that that I'll get into if you want to discuss it further.

Point at him and laugh.


Wiki normalfags explanation for high low pressure system and is benefits is completely wrong.

More relevant use was in the Kampfpistole. Tweaked burger copies of this Wunderwaffe after became M79/M203.

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wew lad


I didn't explain all of them, but it used thinner walls for projectiles and held the same amount as filler as its higher pressure counterparts.

It also used less propellant for almost half the mass of the projectile used in the PzGr. 38 HL/B round (2.7kg compared to 4.57kg).


If you'd take Ahmed's cock out your ass for a while and read what I said you'd understand what I'm talking about.

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It was not. Kampfpistole was made from the ground up. Later there was also more numerous Sturmpistole, mod kit to turn flare gun into weapon able shoot rifled ammo for Kampfpistole. This rifled ammo had high-low pressure propellant system.

Third Reich literally invented all weapons.

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If it can carry AA missiles, parasite fighters/drones like the Zveno, or just refuel the escorts mid-air, that should not be an issue.
Excuse to post pictures of the SeaMaster

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Seamaster-like flying boat bombers should have been our main strategic bomber, not B-1 or B-2. Flying boat bombers can operate anywhere in the world we have a carrier battle group, or a single supply ship. So they can take part in any operation, at any time.

We had to launch B-1 and B-2 from Europe, and mid air refuel, to use them in the middle east. This means that observant enemies could easily put spotters outside the airbases in Europe, and warn their friends hours ahead of time about incoming bombers. This is what happened to us in Yugoslavia, the Serbs put spotters outside the Aviano airbase in Italy and they knew the exact bearing, and based on cruise speed could calculate the location of the F-117.

God knows how fucked we would be if we had to use ground based bombers in China sea.

I would expect any serious attempt for RCS reduction, similar to the B-2 and B-1B, to be a maintenance nightmare for a flying boat that would have to deal with more salt than the usual carrier-borne spray.

nytimes.com/1997/08/23/world/the-2-billion-stealth-bomber-can-t-go-out-in-the-rain.html

Well it doesn't need to be stealth, in fact it should be made from all-stainless-steel construction for extra cheapness, rigidity, and resistance to rust. Better to have 1000 cheap aircraft that can take a hit and are so expendable that entire fleets of them can be scrapped for an upgrade…. than to have 10 glorified white elephants that need to desperately be kept in service for generations, and are unusable in combat.

I have to point out though that it's critical for a strategic nuclear platform to be able to deliver its load instead of just zerg-rushing enemy air-defenses. If it was WWII where heavy bombers were expected to mass cheap dumb bomb a generic area your suggestion would have significant merit but delivering broken arrows to the enemy's door doesn't sound as a particularly good idea.

Instead of wasting billions making a plane stealthy why not decide to not make a plane at all yet say it's there? Imagine how much resources will be wasted trying to find a plane that doesn't exist?

If you're speaking of peer fights between superpowers, a bomber is a really dumb way to deliver a payload. That type of thinking really IS a mainstay of WWII thinking.
Nowadays a few multirole aircraft with buddy refueling can deliver a city busting nuke. Or any number of ballistic and cruise missiles.


That's actually a viable tactic in game theory, America has used it several times, Arabs and Asian countries do it pretty much 24/7.
I think our strategy is better, by using it only once every little while, it makes it hard to guess whether we're bluffing at any given moment. Whereas everyone who has followed Chink threats for the past 50 years thinks they're a paper tiger no matter what technology they adopt because they have always lied in the past.
Never bluff to Soviets though, they can smell it coming a long way off, because they do it so rarely. Very expensive for them though.

A seamaster-type plane would be suboptimal for for bombing and shouldn't be used for it. The way bomb bay doors work makes the seaplane bomber rather hard, now your seal has to be watertight as well, adding significant weight depending on the type of seal and perimeter it needs to cover (basically like pressurizing a bomb bay) The only advantage of a seaplane bomber is being able to resupply at a seaplane tender at sea rather than needing to all the way back to a freindly airbase, improving effective area.

It would, however, be fantastic for a carrier/fleet based awacs/beyond-the-horizon radar system, as well as a tanker. In fact, the Seamaster probably would have excelled in this role especially, it has the right flight envelope to refuel the many airplanes it would need to and enough gross weight.

The amphibious C-130 is pretty much exactly what i think they need. Rather than land your cargo on the carrier, why not land on the water?
(While they apparently can land a c-130 on a nimitz or ford class carrier, i doubt they can do it anywhere close to max weight)

It would also prove useful for all the auxiliary shit the USAF finds itself doing with its c-130 fleet. Imagine the whole Harvey relief supply thing, except the ocean was a runway too. I have a friend who lived in the area who did nothing but unload c-130s as a volunteer. With a seaplane fleet, you could almost litterally zergrush all your emergency supplies into any coastal location at once given decent enough conditions.

I'm a big seaplane advocate, I think the world needs more of them.

The intake issue is minor, and has been solved before. Pic related, 20yr old russian seajet. The issues i would be worried about is corrosion and seaworthiness in high waves, but i suppose the soviets solved the corrosion part. But being able to land the plane in most situations

I'm saying the seaplane will be better for all the supporting roles in the airforce, namely awacs and refueling. Especially refueling.

Imagine the falkands bombing raids if the RAF could have simply acquired a single oil tanker carrying jet fuel and flown a hypothetical seaplane tanker directly up to it to fill up. It would have been half as complicated as it was.

Or if the bombers were resupplied directly by a ship some 500m offshore of the falklands.

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Same aircraft you posted has bomb bays, they just collect water and dump it to smother forest fires.