by Mike Lydon
Download the Full Article: Right Tech Solutions for USAF SFA
To conduct the SFA mission the USAF needs the ways and means to engage some of the fragile, failed or failing states that can still generate international threats within their ungoverned spaces. Some are key regional states that are proximate to strategic resources and transportation corridors. The USAF effectively mentored many developing nations following WWII using US aircraft. Now even USAF 'surplus' F-16A cost over $30M. When the National Domestic Product of a nation is the same as one aircraft, the rational choice is to do without.
What do Cambodia, Eritrea, Guyana, Mauritania, Mongolia, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia all have in common? These countries bought the Chinese Harbin Y-11 light utility aircraft over the last few years. The aircraft can haul 17 passengers or up to 2 metric tons over a 1000 km. It's in the same class as a Caravan or King Air. The question to ask from these sales is not how to buy the company stock, but who taught those pilots how to fly? Who do the partner nations call when they need advice and whose values and influence was transferred in the process?
For the USAF, Airpower and SFA is a ticket out of constant employment of our US forces, aircraft and tax dollars. The USAF must build the capability to directly engage, teach, and support the smaller, poor nations that need our expertise, helping them to defeat local or global terrorist networks and stabilize their local regions.
Download the Full Article: Right Tech Solutions for USAF SFA
Lt Col Michael Lydon is a staff officer in17AF A5/8 Ramstein, Germany, the USAF force provider that directs the USAF Security Force Assistance program for AFRICOM. Mike is a C-130 Command Pilot with two tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a former USAF liaison officer to the Joint IED Defeat Organization and founding member of the HAF A5R-Q Irregular Warfare Office. The views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Air Force or Defense Department.
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Comments
Top article!! I don't think that it should limit it focus on the Third World: this would be an initiative for those nations that have security roles in their regions...from an AS/NZ POV, such platforms might be ideal for light air support around the South and South-West pacific if such were required. This is probably a bigger concern now than perhaps a decade ago if there is less likelihood of US/European intervention in this region.