"Bronco II" armed overwatch candidate for SOCOM

[yoni]

Does the plane in the photo with 2 props, have 1 or 2 engines?

[Diamondback]

Does the plane in the photo with 2 props, have 1 or 2 engines?

Cessna 337 Skymaster, two engines push-me-pull-you like a WW2 Dornier Do335.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_O-2_Skymaster

[Slater]

When I was stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB in the late 1970's, we would see the O-2A's take off every morning for their training sorties (27th TASS, IIRC). We also imagined what a death trap those things would probably be over a European battlefield.

[AKDoug]

Cessna 337 Skymaster, two engines push-me-pull-you like a WW2 Dornier Do335.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_O-2_Skymaster

My dad was a member of a flying club when I was a little kid that had a 337. Nobody liked it, so it was always available. When we could afford it we'd go fly it. It burned a bunch of fuel compared to other small planes and it was noisy, but my dad loved it.

[PrarieDog]

Got to fly an original bronco. What a great ride and interesting concept.

[SteyrAUG]

But can it Brrrrrrt?

[yoni]

Why haven't push, pull planes been more popular. From a training stand point they make a lot of sense to me.

[Diamondback]

Why haven't push, pull planes been more popular. From a training stand point they make a lot of sense to me.

It may be vestigial from the days of "manual bailout," I suspect a hostility toward pushers in general--the Do335 had two redundant systems, both an ejection seat and a rear-prop jettison, to ensure a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style meatgrinding didn't happen. A surprising number of things in a lot of sectors are more "psychological" than "functional," like how many architects refuse to designate a 13th floor or the Pennsylvania Railroad refused to put a number ending in 13 on any of its locomotives--while I don't *know* it to be the case here, I know pilots tend to be conservative, change-averse sorts who want to "stick with what they know" so I would consider it a plausible theory. (Similarly, it's widely suspected that its more "traditional" layout was why the F-22 was chosen over the YF-23.)

[rjacobs]

Engines are like Playboy models, you really need two of them to keep things purring. Be it this or the Texan or the other one, one engine doesn't seem like the best idea for CAS.

They are running a PT6... that thing has got to be one of the most bullet proof motors on the market today... been out since 1963 with like 500 million hours on them combined and has a shut down rate somewhere around 1 every 700k hours. I think the only motor with a better inflight shut down rate is the GE90 which is touted at 1 shut down in 1 million hours or something dumb like that.

[sundance435]

Everything old is new again. I get the advantages of a "clean sheet" approach for advanced aircraft, but for something like the roles the Bronco served, and now the CAS mission that the air force refuses to accept a prop plane for, there are perfectly good designs out there. You'd be wringing very marginal performance gains out of a completely new design.

Boeing might be so desperate for a win that it could resurrect the OV-10X. It's exactly the kind of aircraft we need in permissive environments and a seemingly low risk project for a company that desperately needs low-risk revenue.