Civilian Aircraft and Military Training Aircraft Converted to COIN Missions

[elmayerle]

Perhaps, also, COIN versions of the twin-Navion and turboprop conversions of both the standard Navion and the Twin Navion?

[FishHead]

There are different aviation 'worlds' out there. Not just military and passenger/cargo 'domains' (for want of a better word).

I did a bit of geophysical survey, that's different, and we shared a hangar with the ag pilots - cropdusters.

So I suppose that gives me an interest in things like Grumman AgCats, and Air Tractors.

Air Tractor has a variant of it's cropdusters called the AT-802U. Basically an armoured cropduster with a couple of Gatlings, rockets, and a couple of bombs.



You could maybe also similarly modify a Gippsland Aero 'Fatman'.

I thought it may give some scope for exploring a 'different' approach to counter insurgency - think outside the square maybe?

Fertile ground for some backstories and profiles, I thought.

{edit to add}

You might like this vid of some pretty impressive ag flying as well?;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zf3ESqb5aI&feature=related

[Weaver]

IIRC, wasn't the armoured version invented for dusting drug field with herbicide in Central America, in the face of small-arms fire?

I wonder how you could exploit the tank and/or spray bars for COIN/ Internal Security? Poison is a natural but nasty thought, of course. How about spraying a riot with dye so that perps who flee can be picked up later? How about a second pass with Mace or some such irritant for those who don't disperse?

On the COIN battlefield, spraying petrol on a bunch of guerillas advancing to contact is going to seriously sap their will to fight, whether you come around and ignite it with an FFAR or not....

[rickshaw]

IIRC, wasn't the armoured version invented for dusting drug field with herbicide in Central America, in the face of small-arms fire?

Yes.  Apparently the Cocoa and Poppy fields in Central-Southern America can be quite hairy places when you're spraying them with defoliant.  Small arms, light AA and even SAMs.

On the COIN battlefield, spraying petrol on a bunch of guerillas advancing to contact is going to seriously sap their will to fight, whether you come around and ignite it with an FFAR or not....

It would also contravene rather a large number of international and more than likely domestic laws.  It also wouldn't work.  The petrol would evaporate too quickly to be of any value (in fact, more than likely even before it hit the guerrillas).

[Mossie]

Pepper spray/bomb.  Take a water bomber, add some chillies/CS or similar.  You've got to get down & dirty so you're at risk from the small arms etc.  I'm pretty sure chemical weapons treaties prevent it's use, but there are plenty of regimes that aren't to worried, or those that (outwardly) are might do it on the sly.

[Maverick]

Simon,

There would also be the issue of whether the 'conflict' is a declared war or not.  I'm not sure about the current status of the various conventions, but chems were only 'illegal' if used in a declared war at one point.  Vietnam was a case in point where the SEALs & other US units routinely used CS gas against Vietnamese bunker complexes.  Technically, although 'non-lethal', it is a chemical weapon and therefore illegal in a conventional, declared war.

Regards,

Mav

[rickshaw]

The use of Chemical weapons in Vietnam was and remains a contentious issue as far as international law is concerned.  The 1925 Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons of which the US is a signatory makes it illegal to use CW in international conflicts (doesn't have to be declared or otherwise).   CS and CN (the two main irritant agents utilised) fall under the classification of "incapacitating agents".  The US argued that as the Vietnam War was a civil war, it was not an "international conflict" and so therefore not covered by the 1925 Protocol.  That argument came around again when Iraq under the Ba'athist Regime utilised CW against the Kurds in Iraq.  While Iraq was condemned for its use, it was not sanctioned as such (amongst all the existing sanctions it would have been pretty pointless IMO).   Of course, the irony of the precedent that the US had set being used against its criticisms of Saddam Hussein were lost on Washington.

What was even more ironic was the fact that Washington was, at the same time, attempting to paint the Vietnam War as exactly what they didn't want it to be for the purposes of chemical weapons - an international conflict, with North Vietnam - considered by the US as a separate nation as the aggressor state.  

Since the end of WWI, CW weapons have been utilised several times.  Off the top of my head, I can think of several episodes such as the Spanish having used them during the Rif War, the Italians during their invasion of Abyssinia, the Japanese in China, the Egyptians in Yemen.  The British threatened to use them against the tribes of Mesopotamia in the 1920s, Churchill urging that they be dropped from aircraft.  However, because of their age and the probably greater danger to the RAF crews loading and dropping them, they weren't utilised. Funny how Iraq keeps weaving in and out of this story...

[Mossie]

Found this on the Seabird Aviation site, the Seabird Stormer.  Looks like something one of us might do, take a light attack helicopter front end & stick it on the rear of a beefed-up Seabird Seeker.
http://www.seabirdaviation.com.au/pages/index.php?page=sb9-stormer

[Rheged]

'Trainers with Teeth'

Ian,

I do believe that you have come up with a title for another group build!

Trainers With Teeth

Would a Tiger Moth  as used on REAL  East Coast Scarecrow patrols in the first few months of WW2   count? They had hand held Cooper Bomblets, I think.

[Jschmus]

Have Seabird actually built one of those Stormers, or is it still vaporware?  Once upon a time they were talking about ordering some of those for the new Iraqi Air Force, but the AF didn't stand up as fast as they thought, and I think they're now planning to supply them with whatever wins the LAAR competition (likely to be the AT-6).

[GTX]

Have Seabird actually built one of those Stormers, or is it still vaporware? 

Pretty certain it is only a proposal at this stage (their website even lists it as a concept).  That said, they have had some success in selling platforms for use in Iraq.  I wonder if they would be interested in a UAV variant?

Regards,

Greg

[Mossie]

Hmmm it's got cogs whirring, I'm imagining a similar mod done to an Edgley Optica....

[Thunderchild]

 :tornado:my pick for civil/coin cnversion hands dow is the viking twin otter .