We Need Light Attack Aircraft

Inside the Air Force published a piece in their latest newsletter that makes sense – at the very least as a matter for serious study – Light-Attack Plane Could Save USAF Billions in O&M, Preserve Fighters (subscription required) by Marcus Weisgerber.

An excerpt:

… The aircraft conducting combat missions over Iraq and Afghanistan drop bombs, strafe targets, or perform a low-level show-of-force only 10 percent of the time. The jets and unmanned drones primarily are used for what the military calls armed reconnaissance, meaning their mission is to pass video and other data gathered through sensors and targeting pods back to an operations center where it can analyzed.

But in a world where irregular warfare is the primary focus — and appears to be for the foreseeable future — a balance of fighter jets and armed prop-driven aircraft could prove beneficial…

“There really has not been a substantial intellectual investment into what I think I would call air-ground integration looks like in the 21st Century,”… “Everyone’s going down this irregular warfare pike, and I think, in some ways, that’s a red herring, because, if you create an irregular warfare unit what do you do if you don’t have irregular warfare?”

As the Army evolves and changes over the next decade, “ultimately the majority of their airborne-firepower integration and intelligence are going to come from… the Air Force,”… “The real challenge is how do we build a system that is highly flexible and adaptable to meet a full range of requirements for air-ground integration and not just irregular warfare.”

Food for thought and kindling for debate…