Off-the-shelf... ok, I'll have a go:
- Long Range Deep Insertion (ie the job at hand)
- Land on a typical light-aircraft strip / beach / frozen lake / jungle clearing / riverbed (the enemy may be less helpful than RAF movers if you arrive at their air terminal)
- Can carry SF vehicles, 'civilian' vehicles, quads, snowmobiles, boats (as SF don't like to walk, swim or ski absolutely everywhere)
- Ruggedised against small-arms, credible MANPAD defence systems, ESM / RF countermeasures (customer actually wants to get there or get back)
- Secure comms, datalinks, IFF, IDM, BFT etc (as the customer has moved-on from pigeons and invasion stripes)
- Pump fuel and provide rearming for helicopters that don't go very far on their own (see aversion to walking and swimming above)
- Provide airdrop from stupidly high to stupidly low (see both getting there and living there above)
- Provide interoperability with and for a select few international allies
- Do it all by day or by night in the most demanding of terrains
I could add a few more but I'd guess that off-the-shelf starts to look like a C-130 very quickly. No doubt a classified list would be considerably larger than the broad strokes above.
Of course, I am just a bloke typing stuff on the internet.
Last edited by Just This Once...; 3rd Mar 2021 at 05:48.