What worries me about these types of vehicles is that there are now thousands of former qdaffi manpads,shoulder fired weapons, floating around the mid-east in the hands of who knows whom. My question is how many would it take to shoot down one of these Ospresy by a terror type standing under a tree where he can’t be seen?
“My question is how many would it take to shoot down one of these Ospresy by a terror type standing under a tree where he can’t be seen?”
I know that the Chinooks are many times covered by Apache gunships on missions, but I don’t know operationaly if the Ospreys are.
Although cool looking many military aviators are not a fan of these multi-function aircraft that take a lot of skill to operate in both fixed-wing and rotor modes combined.
That is an excellent question. One of the most oustanding qualities of the A-10 was it's survivability. It can take a tremendous amount of punishment and still keep flying. A simple web search will easily show many pics from Iraq and Afghanistan that show A-10's shot almost to pieces that still brought their pilots home safely. I don't believe the Osprey's have anywhere near that kind of toughness.
One of the good things about manpads is that require frequent maintenance if they aren’t maintained they don’t work.