Curtain Goes Up on Project Liberty

Curtain Goes Up on Project Liberty: The Air Force plans to have the first of its newly acquired MC-12W intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance aircraft deployed to Southwest Asia by April, Brig. Gen. Blair Hansen, director of ISR capabilities on the Air Staff, told reporters in the Pentagon Friday. (Hansen's briefing slides) The concept for these manned, medium-altitude platforms—which are known as Liberty Project Aircraft—came out of the Office of the Secretary of Defense ISR task force last year as a means to quickly bolster the overhead ISR assets already in Afghanistan and Iraq and, in particular, to relieve the heavy burden being placed upon on MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles in the war theater. LPA will specifically address the warfighter’s demand for greater full-motion-video and signals intelligence coverage. Planned is a fleet of 37 aircraft. The first seven are based on the King Air 350 model, and the remaining 30 airframes on the King Air 350 Extended Range variant. All 37 aircraft are expected to be in the Air Force's hands by year's end, Hansen said. There will be two operational squadrons of 15 aircraft each and seven assets used stateside for training. The first eight LPA are used airframes undergoing modification. The remainder will be new airframes. (For more on the ISR burden, read High Stress Numbers Game)

—Marc V. Schanz

1/26/2009

Verbatim

No Dog, Just Concern
"You know it concerns me that we keep hearing, 'Well this is something that the military doesn't want. They didn't ask for,' and all that. Then I go over there [Southwest Asia theater], and that's not their attitude at all. They have needs over there. Our lift capacity is in dire straights. … Now on the F-22—just yesterday we read about the T-50 … a fifth generation [fighter] that the Russians have. … I'm concerned about this. And I guess, you know, if we're down to 187 F-22s, and I think out of that only—what 120 are actually combat ready and used for combat. … I look at our committee—the Senate Armed Services Committee—and on these two vehicles I mentioned—the F-22 and the C-17—in Oklahoma. I don't have a dog in that fight. We don't have any parochial interest there. But it's the capability that we're going to need."
—Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), speaking during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Fiscal 2011 defense budget, Feb. 2, 2010.

Verbatim

Taming Expectations
"Every QDR disappoints those who look for radical reallocation of resources. The current fiscal environment is compounding that trend."
—Jim Thomas, vice president for studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, briefing reporters in Washington, D.C., Jan. 26, 2010.