US Naval Aviation

[jemhouston]

The need is still there, so I'm wondering if the Navy will get a new aircraft. Considering some of the new standoff weapons, a S-3 type aircraft would be a nice long range strike craft.

[Matt Wiser]

There was the CSA (Common Support Aircraft) program if memory serves. It was meant to be an S-3/E-2/C-2 replacement. Alas, a victim of the post-Cold War drawdown OTL.... Bell had hopes for the SV-22 taking over the S-3 mission as well.

[James1978]

See the USN Section of the US Military Aircraft fact file

Common Support Aircraft
* Program for a common airframe to replace the E-2, C-2, and S-3. Two teams, Northrop-Grumman/Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas/Lockheed-Martin won a 2003 down select. A Competitive fly-off is planned to begin in late 2006 with the winner entering service from 2010 for the C-2 replacement and 2014 for the E-2 replacement. Development of an ASW variant will depend on how well testing of the SV-22B progresses.


SV-22C
* The ASW variant of the V-22 Osprey that is proposed to replace the S-3 Viking in carrier air wings. Congress funded four test & evaluation aircraft that are representative of production models, but has not authorized procurement over concerns that Naval Aviation spending is headed for a train wreck with the CSA, P-8, F-25B, and F-24C all in production simultaneously by FY-09. The demonstrators are currently in testing at NAS Patuxent River.

[Matt Wiser]

Whups-skipped over that. Thanks for the reminder.

[Kendog52361]

S-3 was a useful asset. It could have done more if more were produced.

Interestingly, in the early @ 1990s, Lockheed proposed new-build KS-3B tankers to the Navy, but the Navy wasn't interested. So Lockheed at least believed an air frame restart was possible as late as the early 1990s.

The aircraft were simply getting too old; to keep them in service would have meant refurbishing the airframes and updating their systems. The Navy did fly two demonstrators for the Viking "Surveillance System Upgrade (SSU)" beginning in 1999, with these aircraft featuring a state-of-the-art AN/AYK-23 processor, an updated JTIDS, and in particular an AN/APS-137(V)5 radar that added a high resolution SAR-MTI mode. In a sense, this resurrected the Gray Wolf Viking, giving the S-3B a high resolution radar capability and a fast datalink to provide information to battle commanders and hand off targets to other platforms.

[/quote]

One idea I had last night, was when everything "fell apart" in the late 1980s (the Cold War heating back up, with East Germany "re-closing", and so on) the US Navy recognized the severe shortage they had, and authorized a small "hybrid production run" of the S-3 Viking. What I mean by "hybrid production run" is, part of it was running old S-3 Vikings through, to refresh them as much as possible, along with building a "small number" of new build Vikings.

This is also when they could/would have built, for example, the dedicated KS-3 Viking Tanker, any new build ES-3s, along with developing/building the ES-3s from other S-3 Vikings. They could also, at least, take a look at upgrading the avionics, similar to what the A-6 was getting, with the A-6F.

To be clear, this isn't intended to be a full on production run of aircraft. It's mostly intended to be refreshing of the S-3 Viking Fleet, with some new builds, to replace previous losses and "make up the aircraft fleet numbers" they had previously identified with the then building and Commissioning of CVN-71. It could also be one of the programs that gets cut short, after the comprehensive aircraft review that was implemented in the early 1990s, to set up the tactical fleets for the Navy, Air Force, and Marines for the next few decades.

[James1978]

Putting an aircraft back into production after ten+ years is a Bernard level decision.

Having said that, the S-3A => S-3B conversion ran from @ 1987-1994. Off the top of my head, I'd guess that occurred as aircraft rotated through the NADEP. As a lot of those demonstration programs used podded systems, so having them in regular service doesn't require a further S-3C upgrade, not when the "New Hotness" is just around the corner.

Now as far as tankers, Matt and I have batted around the idea of reviving the KA-6H idea => tanker based on EA-6B air frame with back seats replaced by fuel tanks. That at least benefits from an in-production air frame in the 1989-91 time frame, and possibly longer in TLWverse. Though I'm not sure either of us ever put the idea to Bernard.

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My two cents: One of the things I like about TLW is that it's not "perfect". Put another way, it's alternate history, but not fantasy.
In the real world, budgets fluctuate, priorities change, risks are taken, industry doesn't always deliver on the new hotness, and programs sometimes get stuck in R&D/testing hell.

World wise, the 1990s were an odd time in TLWverse. The Soviets/WP cracked down internally during the Winter of 1989/90, but they didn't lash out externally. A lot of Soviets surrogates around the world were told to muddle through as best they could while the Soviets dealt with some internal matters - and to not go out of their way to piss off the US in the meantime, i.e. don't be Iraq. The Soviets told NATO to jump in a lake over chemical weapons, Open Skies, and conventional arms reductions - but continued full steam ahead with nuclear arms reductions right up through the Tactical Nuclear Weapons Treaty. Coupled with a distinct lack of foreign adventurism by the USSR and it's surrogates, I think the TLWverse 1990s were likely cooler than the @ 1980s. Things didn't start to heat up again until 1998/99 when Renko became General Secretary, and even then it too a few years for the shifts in policy to really become apparent to the West.

[Kendog52361]

I was referring specifically to the late 1980s, to the early 1990s, around when Clinton was elected, and things were calming down, as the "more heated time". I mean, while things were tense during the 1980s, then things seemed to be getting much better, substantially, up to and including the "opening of the Berlin Wall", only for things to change, basically overnight, and you had "the bad old days", back, in full. I figured there was then a few years of things being tense, with the US taking a renewed look at things, such as possibly restarting a small production run of the S-3 Viking, due to those increased tensions, but by, roughly, 1993, or so, things were calming down with the USSR, with things substantially improving, like you said, with the election of Clinton. I also figured that, even if they initially restarted a production run, that it would be an easy target for cutting, possibly due to the aircraft review that happened, and the proposal of the CSA, for the early to mid-2010s.

[Bernard Woolley]

While I do like the proposal for a KA-6H tanker based on the Prowler, I'm going to say no to new-build S-3s. Why? Well, the SV-22C has just been over the horizon for the USN in TLW for quite some time. Basically ever since the V-22 programme started. New S-2s would put that at risk.
As the SV-22 has moved ever further to the right, there will have been a lot of grumbling in the VS community. There will have been ever more vocal calls for a re-start of Viking production. However, the navy will have held its nerve, knowing every $ spent on new S-3s would be taken from the SV-22C.

The two consortia bidding for the CSA programme will certainly have drawn up ASW variants of their proposals. I would also guess that they will be lobbying Congress that the SV-22 should be binned and that the ASW mission added to the CSA. Course, Bell has probably mentioned that the V-22 could fill a lot of the requirements of the CSA without much modification. In @ the USN is procuring the CMV-22B for the COD mission and there was an EV-22 proposal to replace the E-2.