July 23, 2009 -- Pentagon officials are taking a hard look at how the creation of irregular warfare air units could enhance current and future IW-based operations and overall strategy, as part of the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, a senior DOD official said today.
“Do [we] have light air capabilities . . . that you can use, that are particularly useful in a counterinsurgency environment?” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low-Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities Michael Vickers asked. “That is one of the issues that this QDR is looking at, how to create these irregular warfare air units.”
The notion of standing up irregular warfare air units is one of many “enabling” capabilities DOD officials are exploring in the QDR to enhance IW capabilities, among special operations and conventional forces, according to Vickers.
“Further improving our irregular warfare -- across the force and not just [in] special operations forces -- capabilities and capacities is job one for the QDR,” he told reporters today during a breakfast in Washington. “So we will look principally where we still have gaps.”
Those enabling capabilities, he added, will harness the personnel increases made to the special operations force, allowing them “to operate more effectively, rather than expanding the operating units.”
The 2006 QDR called for an expansion of all special operations units by one-third. “Each part of the force took a different approach, but they all grew essentially at the same rate,” Vickers said. “Some of that growth is completed, some of it is still underway . . . that sort of takes us to where we are now.”
The Navy and the Air Force have been busy developing their own IW aircraft, the Super Tucano-based “Imminent Fury” plane and the MC-12W Project Liberty aircraft respectively, but a number of questions still remain regarding their role on the battlefield, Vickers explained.
“Should we do this, number one [because] nothing has been decided, and then what that mix might be?” he asked. “But then it might not reside in the special operations forces, it might reside in the general purpose forces. It is more of a counterinsurgency capability, and that is something that has to be looked at” in the QDR, he said.
The Navy's “Imminent Fury” aircraft had been set to undergo operational testing in Southwest Asia, but Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead scrapped those plans due to budget concerns.
The Air Force's MC-12W Project Liberty aircraft is already in production with one platform deployed to Iraq. Air Force officials are also working an analysis of alternatives on a new light-strike, light-mobility platform dubbed “OA-X.”
Vickers said he believes there is a need for an IW-based aircraft capability and that it is reflected clearly in the ongoing QDR deliberations. “But the question is how much and . . . exactly [what] is the mix,” he added. “I am fairly confident that we will come up with something.”
The great advantage of these aircraft, he added, is their adaptability to the “counterinsurgency battlefield” and their relatively low cost, making them affordable to a large number of partner nation forces, who cannot afford C-17s or F-16s.
“When you look at what a partner [nation] air capability might be . . . these kinds of aircraft would seem to be quite useful around the world, [and] they are getting a look” in the QDR, Vickers said, adding the air units are “an idea whose time has come.” -- Carlo Muñoz