Air Force to deploy turboprop aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan

Air Force leaders on Friday said they would deploy the first of 37 C-12 class aircraft configured with full-motion video and signals intelligence capabilities to U.S. Central Command this spring for use in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The deployment, scheduled for April, will come one year after Defense Secretary Robert Gates established a departmental task force to explore ways to improve intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to support ground troops in those combat zones.

Gates has criticized the military services -- the Air Force in particular -- for not embracing the capabilities provided by unmanned aircraft quickly enough and for not exploring more options for using low-cost piloted aircraft to collect intelligence in places where U.S. air superiority isn't threatened.

The Air Force is adapting King Air 350 aircraft manufactured by Hawker Beechcraft for military needs with specialized electronics to supplement ongoing ISR operations on the battlefield. Many such operations use unmanned aerial vehicles.

"We always need to know more about [the battlefield], especially in the counterinsurgency environment," said Brig. Gen. Blair Hansen, director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities for the Air Force. Hansen is also the service's leader on the Defense Department's ISR Task Force, established by Gates in April 2008.

The aircraft will have four-person crews -- two pilots and two sensor operators. During missions, the sensor operators will be in direct contact with ground forces and Air Force personnel involved in analyzing and disseminating information across the battlefield.

The Air Force estimates the overall program, including development and procurement, will cost about $950 million.

"This is a major weapons system, it's not just an add-on," Hansen told reporters during a Pentagon briefing. The Air Force plans to deploy three squadrons, or 37 aircraft, during the next two years. They will be organized under Air Combat Command.

John Pike, a defense expert and director of the Web site www.GlobalSecurity.org, is skeptical that the program will enhance ISR significantly. It is similar to the Army's decades-old Guardrail program, which uses C-12 class aircraft to conduct signals intelligence, he said. The Army is modernizing that program.

"It's puzzling that the Air Force is coming this late to the game," Pike said, noting that the Army and the Marine Corps have been using manned turboprop aircraft for years to gather intelligence to foil roadside bomb attacks in Iraq.

"This is significant in the sense that the Army's going to think that the Air Force is poaching on their turf," Pike said. "[The Air Force is] basically replicating, or would seem to be coming close to replicating, an existing Army capability."

Air Force officials were unable to respond to a request for information about how the program differs from or complements current programs in the Army and Marine Corps by Monday morning.

To signal the effort's urgency, the Air Force is calling it Project Liberty after the World War II Liberty ship program, under which more than 2,700 cargo ships were mass produced to meet wartime needs.

To Pike, the name indicates a level of hubris on the part of the Air Force. "Liberty is a really big name for the Air Force to be using for such a small program," he said. What's more, he added, the name suggests a misreading of history, since the Liberty ships did not have to be modified for military operations -- they simply carried military cargo.

"The Air Force should find another name," Pike said.