A Large Fleet of Low-Cost Propeller Driven WW-II Fighter Planes for Coastal Defence

The purpose of these P51 Mustang fighter planes would be for low-tech warfare; not for opposing the state-of-the-art airforces of other countries. They are perfect for shooting down Zlins, patrolling the sea coast, taking out gun/ammunition smuggling vessels, and for close air support against troops, trucks and guns, and destroying earthbund fortifications. They served these same purposes during WW-II in addition to protecting bomber formations against German fighters during bombing runs over Nazi Germany.

Pilots were trained in as few as 4-months for flying P51 single-engined fighter planes during WW-II. These planes were superb highly maneuverable long-range planes that were used to escort bombers over Germany and shoot down attacking Me109 and FW-190 German fighters. Training a pilot to fly a P51 at slow speeds is not as difficult as training a jet fighter pilot...reaction time limits are much longer. Training pilots would not be a big problem.

The most serious new type of threat they would face would be from shoulder fired rocket-propelled SAMs (e.g., Russian Sagger-type, and US Stinger-type) travelling at high speed, that are available even to the LTTE only in very limited numbers. The SAMs can be confused by a variety of counter measures that can be deployed from P51s also. The tight turning radius of a P51 can be used to avoid SAMs which cannot turn as fast at their high speeds; this is not possible with jet fighters which largely depend on high-speed to outrun the SAMs, and on countermeasures to divert the SAM homing sensors.

Obviously, it is not the best, safest, state of the art solution. An advanced VTOL aircraft, such as a British/US Harrier, that can fly at both high and low speeds, can hover in one place, can liftoff and land vertically on small field, and has state-of-the-art countermeasures would be the way to go, if we had the funds. My idea is only an affordable solution for a poor country; a solution that would allow us to deploy the hundreds of aircraft needed to maintain a intensive detect-and-destroy coverage everywhere.

The low cost of these planes is a great advantage. Just imagine, 150 planes can be bought for, say $2,000,000, which is much less than the price of one Harrier. We can use 50 of those planes for spare parts, and fly the remaining 100 forever, until Sri Lanka becomes rich enough to afford better weapons. In the post war period, this solution will allow us to tightly protect our coast and territorial waters. We can refurbish and use LTTE's airstrips for this purpose as regional airfields close to the field of action.

Another idea would be to develop a similar low cost fleet of sea-planes with either a boat-like fuselage, or two independent floats in addition to wheels, for landing on water surfaces. These planes can land in the ocean near ports when the sea is calm, or land in lagoons or in our inland tanks/ reservoirs. The sea-planes with floats can be P51 mustangs, with the undercarriage permanently extended and wheels and floats incorporated as a single unit to allow landing on either land or water. Such a modified P51, of course, would not be able to fly at the high speed of one without modification, because of the extra drag of the extended undercarriage. That is the trade off.

These ideas can be combined to provide a low cost mix of planes to meet our security needs, and would complement the more advanced jet fighter force of the SLAF.

December 31, 2008 8:40