Vigilante - The Practical Kind

[Spino]

A-5D Backstory

The end of the Vietnam conflict left the RA-5C community in a difficult position.  As a very large single-purpose aircraft that was already starting to show its age, the Vigilante was well on its way to becoming the next thing to disappear from US Navy carrier decks.  However, issues with the improved A-6 variants resulted in the need to upgrade existing aircraft to fill the gap.  The Vigilante initially seemed like a less-than-ideal candidate for upgrades, but as a fast aircraft with substantial range and payload capacity that hadn't fully been exploited, someone realized that with the right modifications it could perform a similar mission to the Air Force's failed F-111 – low-level all-weather interdiction.  The Navy therefore commissioned an NAA feasibility study to convert existing RA-5Cs to a suitable interdictor configuration.  NAA's response was the A-5C, which used the basic airframe of the RA-5C with more powerful J79-GE-10 engines, a twin vertical tail configuration to remove the need for a folding tail, targeting equipment for laser guided bombs in the recce canoe, and terrain-following-radar.  The A-5C also featured an extra pair of wing pylons just inboard of the fold; these were wired for AIM-9 Sidewinders to give a limited self-defense capability to an aircraft whose only defense up to that point had been speed.  These aircraft were now able to serve as both recon and strike aircraft, making them more relevant and worthwhile to carry on cruise once again.  But NAA was not quite done with the A-5 yet.  In the mid-1980s, NAA realized that the A-5's performance and range could be substantially improved by swapping its J79s for the new PW1120 engine developed for the IAI Lavi and improved F-4 Phantom variants.  Such a proposal might have come to nothing if it hadn't been for the Navy's interest in putting air-to-air missiles on every jet in the air wing to increase survivability against the dreaded Soviet Naval Aviation bombers and their cruise missiles.  The A-5's speed, range, and payload made it an almost ideal candidate for a secondary AAM platform, so NAA was contracted to re-engine the entire A-5C fleet and upgrade the avionics for compatibility with the AIM-152 AAAM then in development.  These aircraft continued to serve into the mid-1990s as the USN's primary long range strike aircraft, before being replaced by upgraded versions of the F-14 Tomcat.

[McColm]

Well done