How AFSOC Plans to Use Its Light Attack Aircraft
11/18/2019
—Brian Everstine​
​Air Force Special Operations Command plans to use its small buy of A-29 Super Tucano aircraft, under the service’s light attack experiment, to bolster its air advisers’ ability to train and, in the long term, improve the armed overwatch capability it can provide to other services.
Brig. Gen. David Harris, AFSOC’s director of strategic plans, programs, and requirements, said the A-29 will improve the command’s ability to continue to address the low-intensity, violent extremist fight in the future by bolstering allied capabilities and better protecting US forces under fire, in a way that current USAF assets cannot.
The service on Oct. 24 released the final request for proposals for the light attack experiment, calling for two to three AT-6s from Textron Aviation for Air Combat Command. These would go to Nellis AFB, Nev., for testing and development of operational tactics, according to a service release. The two to three Sierra Nevada Corp.-Embraer A-29s will go to AFSOC at Hurlburt Field, Fla., to create an instructor pilot program for air advisers to meet an “increase [in] partner nation requests for light-attack assistance,†the service said.
http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2019/November%202019/How-AFSOC-Plans-to-Use-Its-Light-Attack-Aircraft.aspx
