A Case for Insertion

A Case for Insertion: There is a compelling need for Congress to fund the installation of a sophisticated new overhead monitoring radar on the Air Force’s fleet of E-8C Joint STARS aircraft, argues Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute. “Warfighters in Iraq have identified an urgent operational need for the new capability,” he writes in an April 8 issue brief. “The technology works, and it could greatly improve the ability of US forces to track ground vehicles, whether they are fast-moving tanks or aged Toyotas getting into position for a suicide attack.” But because of funding shortages, the Air Force does not have funds to install a larger variant of the Northrop Grumman-Raytheon multi-platform radar technology insertion program on its fleet of 17 Joint STARS platforms. MP-RTIP is a sophisticated active electronically scanned array radar for peering down on ground targets in all weather and tracking elusive moving targets with much greater precision than is currently possible with the Joint STARS’s existing radar. Instead the Air Force can only afford to install a smaller variant of MP-RTIP on 15 of its RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles. “The bigger, more capable version of MP-RTIP will disappear this summer unless money is included in the 2008 supplemental appropriation for the Iraq war,” Thompson writes.

4/9/2008

Verbatim

Gotta Be Lots
"Our airmen are flying missions 24 hours a day, seven days a week and doing it so well that our combatant commanders are constantly asking for more. And, they're getting it. … There is no telling in the space of 400,000 hours, how many service members' lives have been saved, how many insurgents have been taken out, and how many attacks against coalition forces have been stopped before they began."
—Gen. John Corley, Air Combat Command commander, speaking after the MQ-1 Predator force surpassed 400,000 flight hours on Aug. 18, 2008, ACC release, Aug. 19, 2008.

Verbatim

Most Qualified
"It takes great skill to operate the most persistent, strike, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platform in the world. The men and women of the 432nd [Air Expeditionary] Wing have proved time and again that they are the most qualified for the job, which is why the Predator remains one of the most sought-after assets in the war on terrorism."
—Lt. Gen. Norman Seip, 12th Air Force commander, commenting on the airmen who operate the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, which on Aug. 18 surpassed 400,000 flight hours, Air Combat Command release, Aug. 19, 2008.