Way back (early 1980s) when I was in the NYANG we'd take our A-10s down to Patrick AFB and drop BDU-33s as directed by FAC trainees in OV-10s.

https://www.avgeekery.com/the-...y-tail-for-50-years/

I first saw the OV-10 at an airshow in the late 70s here in WV. Loved it ever since.

Growing up in a military family and being a military history geek since I could read, this has always been one of my favorite planes.

I cannot remember when I first saw one but it had to be at an airshow near Columbus or at Wright Patterson AFB.


I remember reading stories of paratroopers and Marines jumping from the Ov-10 and stated to no one in particular that will be a bucket list item for me. Another thing that did not come to fruition yet!!)

If I were wealthy, one of the aircraft I would try to get is an OV-10 Bronco. Between the performance and the visibility I've got to think that it is an absolute blast to fly one of those.

The Flying Leathernecks Museum here in San Diego has one, along with many other Vietnam-War era aircraft.

quote:

Originally posted by AllenInWV:
I first saw the OV-10 at an airshow in the late 70s here in WV. Loved it ever since.

Yeah, I remember my Dad driving me to Charleston to see the Air Show. Seeing the Blue Angles flying their A4's was my favorite part.....

quote:

Originally posted by Sigmund:
Way back (early 1980s) when I was in the NYANG we'd take our A-10s down to Patrick AFB and drop BDU-33s as directed by FAC trainees in OV-10s.

The Bronco is an underappreciated aircraft, and I really love me some A-10 action!

Did you drive the Hog, Sigmund?

quote:

Originally posted by ronnied316:

...Did you drive the Hog, Sigmund?

No, but I can see how poorly that was written. I was a munitions loader (462).

I DO fly a Cessna 152 and 172 (not at the same time).

I still like ya! LOL!

I've only flown a 172, but the 152 seems like it'd be more fun. I'll stop the thread drift now.

I think we had some OV-10 discussions in the Lounge.

The AF, or, dare I say it, the Army, should commission a seriously updated version, with all the current night vision / all weather equipment, modern, more powerful engines, and maybe some structural upgrades. I think Boeing, which inherited the design through one of it's many, many acquisitions, proposed something like this.

Such an upgraded model could do a lot of what the A-10, and various other fast movers are doing in the various sandboxes, much more cheaply. They could also do a lot of what Apaches do, with more range, endurance, and weapons capacity.

quote:

I think we had some OV-10 discussions in the Lounge.

The AF, or, dare I say it, the Army, should commission a seriously updated version, with all the current night vision / all weather equipment, modern, more powerful engines, and maybe some structural upgrades. I think Boeing, which inherited the design through one of it's many, many acquisitions, proposed something like this.

Such an upgraded model could do a lot of what the A-10, and various other fast movers are doing in the various sandboxes, much more cheaply. They could also do a lot of what Apaches do, with more range, endurance, and weapons capacity.

Hey, this is the Air Farce, what the hell do they care? Not a pound, etc.

Seriously, they toy with acquiring Super Tucano or weaponized Texan IIs, but they won't because they are the Air Force and are only interested in funding the F35, the B21 and the new tankers. Everything else is a distraction.

And with budget woes looming on the horizon, you can bet your boots that they're gearing up for the big fight against their chief enemies....

the other services over the size of their budget pie slices.

https://www.defensenews.com/gl...raft-to-philippines/

US Air Force is giving away retired turboprop light attack aircraft to Philippines

By: Mike Yeo   20 hours ago

MELBOURNE, Australia —The Philippines will receive retired turboprop light attack aircraft from the U.S. Air Force, which has already begun the process of competing a contract to have the planes disassembled before shipping overseas.

Sources in Philippines said the government was offered the North American OV-10 Bronco twin-turboprop light attack aircraft earlier this year, after it had requested the transfer of spare parts for the type being stored by the U.S. government. The Philippines subsequently inspected the aircraft and found them suitable for use.

Defense News learned that the aircraft, which have been retired from U.S. military since the mid-1990s, will be provided free-of-charge to the Philippines, most likely as part of an assistance package to the country’s military. However, the south-east Asian country will be liable for the costs of transporting them from the United States, with the transfer expected to take place later this year and the aircraft expected to be ready for service in early 2019.

In a solicitation posted on the fbo.gov website on July 19, the U.S. Air Force Materiel Command’s Life Cycle Management Center at Hill Air Force Base, Utah said it was seeking bids to disassemble four Rockwell OV-10 Broncos which will then be crated, shipped overseas and reassembled for a Foreign Military Sales case.

The solicitation also noted that the four aircraft are a mixture of two OV-10A and two OV-10G+ aircraft. The aircraft were formerly owned by NASA, with the two OV-10G+ heavily modified in 2015 and used by U.S. Special Operations Command for combat evaluation in the campaign against the Islamic State in the Middle East before being returned again to NASA.

The USAF solicitation hints at these modifications, noting that the two OV-10G+ aircraft had “over 5,000 new wires installed” during their last upgrade, with the bid winner needing to pull back the wiring for storage into the fuselage prior to their being shipped overseas where the wires will be rerouted as part of the reassembly process.

Earlier documents relating to the modifications had indicated that the aircraft were modified with a L3-Wescam MX-15Di Eletro-Optical turret, Link 16 tactical datalinks, full-motion video, a glass cockpit and the ability to fire the BAE Systems Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System GPS-guided rocket.

The OV-10G+ were demilitarized and returned to NASA following the trials, having flown 120 combat sorties in less than three months. However, the Philippines is hoping to re-activate at least some of the modifications upon re-introducing the aircraft into its inventory.

The Philippines is the last operator of the OV-10 Bronco, with its air force currently operating between eight and 10 aircraft. It also possesses several airframes that have been put into storage. The country has previously upgraded its OV-10s to employ laser-guided bombs designated by troops on the ground, although these were not used during its recent operations against Islamic State-affiliated militants in the south of the country where only unguided rockets and bombs were used.

The USAF much like the USN, has mismanaged their projects and mis-allocated their funding for the last 30-years. Congress deserves a chunk of the blame, as their level of oversight has been pathetic given the lack of expertise with the elected seats. The brass is overly enamored with big shiny objects and their ability as a warfighter has been replaced with being a 'corporate operator'. Platforms like the OV-10 are highly useful, they aren't sexy and movies aren't going to be made about them but, they are useful and contribute to the big picture.

Fortunately, there's some attention to his coming to light:
Heritage To DoD: Do War Games, Experiments, Don’t Write Requirements

quote:

The Heritage Foundation, one of the few Washington organizations that the Trump Administration doesn’t sneer at, has published the first in a series of papers designed to help the US military remake itself. Dakota Wood, the author, make the points above and argues convincingly that the Defense Department should do lots of war games, take the lessons from them and experiment, experiment, experiment. Upgrade your weapons. Try new ways of using them. Tie them together in new ways. (Wood is a good source for a report like this. He’s one of those precious commodities we get from the military every now and then, a persistently fresh mind capable of absorbing the enormous history and data warfare generates, not being overwhelmed by it and still able to focus on what really matters.)

The Army did something like what Wood advocates in the mid- to late-1990s in pursuit of Force XXI. The Advanced Warfighting Experiments taught me a great deal about the military, and I know they taught the Army much. Push technology too far too early and expect it to solve big problems and you’re going to be disappointed. (Wood, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, surely knows the Marines are using the exact same terminology today and even have a website dedicated to their Advanced Warfighting Experiment. Doug Macgregor, a member of the Breaking Defense Board of Contributors, wrote an op-ed for us pushing a similar idea.)

I asked Wood, after reading his report, if I read it right, that he was talking about this sort of work. He said I had “the gist though not the whole of it.” Read his full comment and see what he means. The stakes are high, as he says: “I think the first battles of the next ‘real war’ will be a very painful jolt of reality for the US military establishment.”

The OV-10's were just starting to come into the squadron I was assigned to at DaNang AB, Vietnam in May og '69 when I was leaving to go to Laos.