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SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writer
9:54 AM PDT, June 16, 2009
LE BOURGET, France (AP) — Crop-dusters usually have the mundane task of spraying fields of grain with chemical cocktails that kill plant pests and disease-carrying mosquitoes. But a heavily modified version packs a different kind of punch — .50 caliber Gatling guns, rockets and a complement of bombs.
The unconventional plane, designated AT-802U and bearing a name that sounds like an ironic understatement — Air Truck — is part of Air Tractor Inc.'s family of ubiquitous single-engine agricultural and firefighting aircraft.
The steel-gray plane, with its prominent nose-mounted turboprop engine, looks like a sleek World War II fighter plane. It has been drawing crowds of puzzled onlookers at this year's Paris Air Show.
Where pesticide-spraying nozzles would usually be mounted — on the underside of the wings — it sports instead army-green 500 lb.-(225 kilogram) bombs, General Dynamics GAU-19/A triple-barrel heavy machine guns and multiple-rocket launchers.
The 800-gallon pesticide tank is now an auxiliary fuel tank giving it sufficient range to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Lee G. Jackson, design engineer at Air Tractor Inc., says the idea to convert the crop-duster into a light counter-insurgency aircraft stems from a request the Olney, Texas-based company received from the U.S. government in 2002.
"They needed planes with armored engines and cockpits, and with self-sealing fuel tanks for spraying operations in Latin America," Jackson said.
Risky operations spraying jungle plantations producing a variety of illegal drugs in countries such as Colombia and Peru often entail planes dodging small-arms fire from guerrillas or narco-trafficking gangs. A number of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft undertaking these dangerous missions have been downed by ground fire.
But the cost of dedicated turboprop-driven counter-insurgency aircraft — such as the Embraer Tucano or the Beechcraft T-6 — has reached a whopping $10 million each, and many smaller air forces have been left struggling to cope with such operations.
Jackson said he expected the price of the armed version of the crop-duster to be less than half that.
Air Tractor and its main competitor, Thrush Aircraft of Albany, Georgia, are the leading U.S. manufacturers of crop-dusting planes. They also build firefighting versions of their aircraft, with the hopper in the nose section replaced by a water tank.
Alongside its new combat-capable aircraft, Air Tractor also displayed a more traditional yellow, firefighting model equipped with massive pontoons that allow it to scoop up water from a lake or sea while skimming across the surface for a few seconds.
Jackson says that potential customers are particularly interested in the combat version's ability to loiter for up to 10 hours above a potential target area.
The Air Truck is equipped with other fighter plane features, including multiple sensors to detect incoming anti-aircraft missiles and with flare launchers to draw them off.
"One of the characteristics of the basic design (is) that we can custom tailor it to any customer's needs," Jackson said. "That's why we've had interest from some major players," including U.S. Special Operation Command.
9:54 AM PDT, June 16, 2009
LE BOURGET, France (AP) — Crop-dusters usually have the mundane task of spraying fields of grain with chemical cocktails that kill plant pests and disease-carrying mosquitoes. But a heavily modified version packs a different kind of punch — .50 caliber Gatling guns, rockets and a complement of bombs.
The unconventional plane, designated AT-802U and bearing a name that sounds like an ironic understatement — Air Truck — is part of Air Tractor Inc.'s family of ubiquitous single-engine agricultural and firefighting aircraft.
The steel-gray plane, with its prominent nose-mounted turboprop engine, looks like a sleek World War II fighter plane. It has been drawing crowds of puzzled onlookers at this year's Paris Air Show.
Where pesticide-spraying nozzles would usually be mounted — on the underside of the wings — it sports instead army-green 500 lb.-(225 kilogram) bombs, General Dynamics GAU-19/A triple-barrel heavy machine guns and multiple-rocket launchers.
The 800-gallon pesticide tank is now an auxiliary fuel tank giving it sufficient range to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Lee G. Jackson, design engineer at Air Tractor Inc., says the idea to convert the crop-duster into a light counter-insurgency aircraft stems from a request the Olney, Texas-based company received from the U.S. government in 2002.
"They needed planes with armored engines and cockpits, and with self-sealing fuel tanks for spraying operations in Latin America," Jackson said.
Risky operations spraying jungle plantations producing a variety of illegal drugs in countries such as Colombia and Peru often entail planes dodging small-arms fire from guerrillas or narco-trafficking gangs. A number of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft undertaking these dangerous missions have been downed by ground fire.
But the cost of dedicated turboprop-driven counter-insurgency aircraft — such as the Embraer Tucano or the Beechcraft T-6 — has reached a whopping $10 million each, and many smaller air forces have been left struggling to cope with such operations.
Jackson said he expected the price of the armed version of the crop-duster to be less than half that.
Air Tractor and its main competitor, Thrush Aircraft of Albany, Georgia, are the leading U.S. manufacturers of crop-dusting planes. They also build firefighting versions of their aircraft, with the hopper in the nose section replaced by a water tank.
Alongside its new combat-capable aircraft, Air Tractor also displayed a more traditional yellow, firefighting model equipped with massive pontoons that allow it to scoop up water from a lake or sea while skimming across the surface for a few seconds.
Jackson says that potential customers are particularly interested in the combat version's ability to loiter for up to 10 hours above a potential target area.
The Air Truck is equipped with other fighter plane features, including multiple sensors to detect incoming anti-aircraft missiles and with flare launchers to draw them off.
"One of the characteristics of the basic design (is) that we can custom tailor it to any customer's needs," Jackson said. "That's why we've had interest from some major players," including U.S. Special Operation Command.
) in the pix of the recent Gaza ops? Not for CAS, but perhaps as an inexpensive observation platform? After all, the Israelis are no slouches in the improv department.