Dude, who even knows.

24th August 2022

Post reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 36 notes

kontextmaschine:

rustingbridges:

SOCCOM apparently buying 75 Air Tractors for ??? reasons

to be clear, we’re talking about this bad boy:

image

described as “an American agricultural aircraft that may also be adapted into fire-fighting or armed versions“.

lots of militaries apparently fly them, but mostly in firefighting and other noncombat roles. unless SOCCOM is planning to get into wildfire management, tho, I have got to wonder what exactly they are planning to do here

Short take-off and landing from unpaved fields, built for terrain-following and low-altitude maneuvers, sturdy and can survive low-speed crashes, they’ll be easily adapted as counterinsurgency attack planes for use in Third World theaters where the bad guys don’t have anti-air capabilities.

Of course the American understanding is that the Army has helicopters but attack planes are an Air Force thing (that supports Army operations so the regular brass doesn’t care about), they’ll go to AFSOC at Hurlbut. The Marines, in turn, will understand this as SOCOM muscling in on their expeditionary combined-arms turf.

  1. finest-quality reblogged this from nuclearspaceheater and added:
    They’re being purchased under this program
  2. shieldfoss said: lmoa
  3. nuclearspaceheater reblogged this from kontextmaschine and added:
    Clearly they’re for towing abandoned or disabled Russian planes down from the sky.
  4. youzicha said: The war in Ukraine has shown how important satellite communications are, and particularly the fact that they have Starlink is supposedly game-changing because it’s high-bandwidth, always available, and goes straight upwards with small side lobes so it’s hard to trace. So I’d expect it to be about maintaining that kind of thing for special forces units and allies.
  5. kontextmaschine reblogged this from baconmancr and added:
    “What are Space Force’s SOCOM elites supposed to be?” is still a good question. The Air Force’s pararescuremen and...
  6. theresponseblog reblogged this from kontextmaschine and added:
    Or supply delivery, faster than a helicopter but able to go slow and low enough to accurately drop the canisters.Or even...
  7. bubobubosibericus reblogged this from kontextmaschine
  8. evilsoup reblogged this from kontextmaschine and added:
    The US armed forces have generally been pretty clear-eyed about climate change. These may well be for fire fighting...
  9. baconmancr reblogged this from kontextmaschine
  10. space-wizards reblogged this from kontextmaschine and added:
    Maybe they’re training vehicles? like, “special forces guys need to know how to fly whatever dinky plane they find in...
  11. rustingbridges posted this