Ground attack aircraft
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A ground attack aircraft is an aircraft that is designed to operate very close to the ground, supporting infantry and tanks directly in battle. They are used essentially as mobile machine guns and anti-tank guns against single targets, as opposed to bombers which typically attack more "strategic" targets. This classification goes by a number of names, including attack aircraft, fighter-bomber, tactical fighter, tank buster and even includes the dive bomber. German forces during the Second World War referred to Allied ground attack aircraft as Jabos, short for Jagdbomber. In US service ground attack aircraft are occasionally identified by the prefix A- followed by a numerical designation.
Very few aircraft have been dedicated to the ground attack role; most that are used in this role are actually fighters or light bombers. While dedicated "trench fighters" such as the Sopwith Camel TF.1 and the Boeing GA-1 have been experimented with since the later part of World War I and the early 1920s, most of the dedicated designs came from early World War II. By this time, engines were powerful enough to compensate for the added weight that armor and weapons needed for ground attack aircraft. Early ground attack aircraft development was closely related to that of dive bombers, due to their common purpose of attacking battlefield targets. The most successful ground attack aircraft would generally be credited to the German Junkers Ju-87 'Stuka' and the Russian Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik, which Stalin credited with winning the war. The Luftwaffe also fielded a successor to the Stuka in the ground-attack role (although not a dive bomber), the Henschel Hs 129, but produced very few of them and they had little effect on the war.
By the end of that war the average day fighter had more than enough capability to carry out the ground attack role, and some of the most successful designs were slight modifications of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 and unmodified Hawker Typhoons.
In the post-war era air forces have been increasingly reluctant to develop combat aircraft specifically for ground attack. Although close air support and interdiction remain crucial to the modern battlefield, attack aircraft are less glamorous than fighters, and both pilots and military planners have a certain well-cultivated contempt for 'mud-movers.' More practically, the extra cost of a dedicate ground attack aircraft is harder to justify as opposed to having multi-role aircraft. Examples of modern ground attack aircraft include the Blackburn Buccaneer, A-6 Intruder, A-7 Corsair II, Panavia Tornado IDS, Sukhoi Su-7, and Sukhoi Su-17. Ground attack has otherwise become the domain of converted trainers like the BAC Strikemaster, BAE Hawk, and Cessna A-37.
Production of new Republic F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bombers ended in 1964. The aircraft was built especially for a supersonic radar evading low altitude attack profile, thereafter lofting a nuclear weapon from an internal bomb bay, thereby allowing escape from the detonation.
The design of this "fighter" was vastly different from that of an air superiority fighter. It was very heavy, with a small air-penetrating wing, fitted with both extant air-to-air refueling systems, exceptional fuel capacity, capable of supersonic flight at tree-top level, possessed of self-contained inertial navigation computers, powerful radar for all weather ground target locating; all-in-all designed to threaten Russian strategic targets, whatever the weather. Since one flight only was planned, it was built "soft" with little resistance to battle damage. For reasons never explained, it possessed a complex radar assisted lead-computing visual gunsight, and a built-in rotary 20mm cannon with a large magazine.
Soon, the US Air Force found that it was the only aircraft capble of long range precision dive bomber attack of heavily defended North Vietnamese targets. The built-in computer and gun sight made all the necessary calculations for 45 degree dive bombing attacks. Dive brakes stabilized 500 knot dive from 20,000 ft, releasing at about 10,000 with a high "G" supersonic pull out at about 5,000 ft (clear of small arms fire). Accuracy with a sequenced "spread" of five one-thousand pound bombs was sufficient to destroy a bridge. (very tough target). In the happenstance melee F-105s shot down 20 MiG fighters by surprise.
In the late 1960s the US Air Force requested a dedicated air support plane that became the Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II. It eventually became primarily an anti-armor weapon with limited capability in the interdiction and tactical bombing role, and even in the anti-tank role it was met with mixed feelings. Current US doctrine increasingly emphasizes the use of US Army helicopters for close air support and anti-tank missions. The Soviets' similar Su-25 Frogfoot found greater success in the flying artillery role, although it, too, shifted to anti-armor use in later versions and has largely been phased out in favor of 'fast mover' fighter-bomber versions of the MiG-29 and Su-27.
Nevertheless, the role remains well-defined and in use, resulting in dual designations like F/A-18 Hornet. More recently, the term strike fighter has been gaining currency as the way to refer to these dual-role aircraft. Ironically, in British parlance "strike" was for some years a euphemism for the nuclear warfare attack role, with "attack" used to denote conventional (non-nuclear) missions.de:Schlachtflugzeug es:Cazabombardero fr:Avion d'attaque au sol ms:Pesawat serang darat ja:攻撃機 ru:Штурмовик sl:Jurišnik zh:攻击机