I have an F-86 kit I just don't know what else to do with.
How about an overall green Sabre as an OA-86/A-86 Sabre in U.S. Army service?
Some modifications to consider:
- Reduce the number of guns to four (gives you more rounds for the remaining weapons which means more strafing passes)
- Add inflight refueling probe from an F-100 Super Sabre or the A-4 Skyhawk for hose and drogue refueling. Not sure where the best location would be but it would make perfect sense to have AAR capability for range and loiter purposes over the objective.
- Add a fifth and sixth stores pylon outboard of the existing stations. This would give the aircraft six stores pylons, of which two would almost always be dedicated to fuel stores.
Some weapons to consider for arming your Army OA-86/A-86:
- Three shot 4.5"(115 mm) FFAR rockets that were used on the P-47 and P-51 before the introduction of the 5.0" (127 mm) HVAR
- HVAR 5.0" (127 mm) aircraft rockets on the special rocket mounts that were available on the outboard wing sections (these were spring-loaded so that after the rocket fired it would retract flush into the wing). This same feature was also used on some versions of the F-84F Thunderjet. I believe the normal load of HVAR on the F-86 was eight rockets (four per wing).
- Other stores would include general purpose bombs, fragmentation bombs, fire bombs, cluster bombs, munitions clusters, flares, smoke tanks, chemical weapons dispensers and other stores up to the weight limits of each pylon.
Note there is no suggestion of air-to-air missiles as that would impinge on the responsibilities of the Air Force so the ground attack Sabre would have to rely on machine guns or speed to defend against any air threat. Not sure if the USAF would have accepted it but as a what-if it is almost ideal.
The only other modification I could think of would be to upgrade the ejection seat and give it a new canopy with more room to view things. Maybe the canopy from an A-10 would work?
Later variants of the OA-86/A-86 might be given the capability to carry and launch guided weapons such as the Pave Way series Laser Guided Bombs, AGM-65 Maverick, AGM-114 Hellfire, and other modern air to surface weapons if it were to soldier on for any length of time.