A400 Doomed?

[Modern Elmo]

Release the Gunships! Part Two
Tuesday October 02nd 2007, 9:33 pm
Filed under: Up in the Air, Other Side of the COIN

The Air Force is struggling to adapt its Cold War airplanes and attitudes to new counter-insurgency fights. On Monday I introduced Major Robert Seifert, an AC-130 pilot who, in an excellent article, proposed putting the sensor-laden, heavily-armed gunships at the front of a new COIN strategy.

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Q: So if you were in charge, what would you do to improve Air Force COIN capability?

Seifert: If I were King, I’d have several irregular-warfare wings, but I’d break them down between [Close Air Support] and transport wings. I found no synergy from being part of a wing that had transports and CAS aircraft. For example, I’d have an irregular wing of A-10s, AC-130s, an OV-10-type aircraft — and I think the small gunship is an awesome idea. Not necessarily for operating out of small airstrips, but for the ability to buy enough of them so they’re not hoarded and so they don’t cause the Air Force to only have two dozen like they do the present gunships. A small gunship with one or two 30-mm cannons and a crew of about four would be awesome. I also would put the wings in ACC versus AFSOC, as I found AFSOC deep in their heart only wants to support “special ops” ground forces, whereas I have found ACC wants to kill bad guys for whoever was nice enough to point them out. The transport irregular warfare wing would obviously have some C-130s, CV-22s and a small transport. And both wings though would have a … squadron for training friendly forces on how to operate the various wing aircraft.

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War Is Boring