SOCCOM apparently buying 75 Air Tractors for ??? reasons
to be clear, we’re talking about this bad boy:
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.
Oh, repairable in the sticks remote from maintenance centers, too, that’s big
Maybe they’re training vehicles? like, “special forces guys need to know how to fly whatever dinky plane they find in the field to exfil with” training?
Naw, if they were collecting type ratings they’d hook up with a military aviation contractor that has a wide collection in their hangar. They certainly wouldn’t get 75 of them
Oh, also, re: the Air Tractor thing they’re already designed (wing spars strong enough for heavy loading, etc.) to mount external equipment or to carry things in internal bays with doors opening to suddenly release on target (and thus significantly change total weight suddenly), that’s big too.
Now this might just be political maneuvering with the Air Force grabbing a bigger chunk of the SOCOM pie and… wait a second, what are Space Force elites in SOCOM gonna be? Is there a Coast Guard unit running riverine gunboats or did they manage to freeze them out?