The future for a USAF that has trouble paying the bills is here. Kinda. For short range Air Sovereignty Alert (ASA) missions against slow movers, the Air Guard has been trying out the AT-6 II turbo-prop. Lots of gas and on-station time. Low payments.
“We successfully completed all four of the intercepts, we had been on station for a little more than two hours, the F-16s had departed, the didn’t have a tanker so they had gone back to land and they asked ups, ‘Ok, are you guys ready to land?’ We said, ‘well, we still have an hour and a half of fuel left… We were able to text both ground controllers as well as the F-16. We traded tracks with the F-16s that showed where we were locked to, we could see their radar information piped into the aircraft as well.”
2 comments:
The simple fact of the matter is that turboprops in USAF/ANG colors get the same disdainful sniff that the RFOA-10G did before Desert Stomping Ground in 1991. If it doesn't have a pointy nose, doesn't go Mach Snot and doesn't cost billions of dollars to buy and isn't a hangar queen filled with the latest and greatest (costing) black boxes ... the Boys In Blue don't want it. There's a reason why General Horner used to joke that his son, who was a Hog Driver, had died in a motorcycle accident ... or at least he did until the Warthogs started saving Coalition Keister when the real shooting started.
The simple fact is that the USAF (and some parts of the ANG, but not all of it, thankfully) have no real interest in "moving mud" in the Close Air Support mission. The USAF is far more interested in being a Flying Club that turns and burns in air-to-air combat (because that's glamorous), and very much gives short shift to doing anything else (CAP, Mobility, etc.). The Blue Service is run by fighter jocks, for fighter jocks, so of course they have "no interest" in anything like a turboprop patrol aircraft.
Heretic
As an USAF pilot in training looking at higher ups who want to switch everything to RPA's instead of fighter aircraft or "hangar queens" that cost a lot and look pretty, this seems like a good alternative to me, personally. I'd rather be in the air at all doing something than sitting in a chair or flying circles around a flag pole wondering if I'm doing well enough to make it past the next RIFT. Understand that this is a personal opinion and not the opinion of the Air Force, but I'm pretty sure our Generals are a slightly different breed than they were only a few years back. Budget cuts can make anyone a believer in anything, so long as it has substantial cause and proof that the new investment is worthwhile.
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