The Journal Gazette February 07, 2012

New planes to shift 122nd's mission

By Brian Francisco

FORT WAYNE – Locally based airmen would shoot video instead of machine guns and missiles if a U.S. Air Force realignment plan materializes.

A proposal announced last week would retire about 20 A-10 Thunderbolt II jet fighters at Fort Wayne’s Air National Guard base and replace them with half as many CW-12W Liberty twin-engine propeller planes used for surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance.

“I believe the typical fighter pilot would consider it a step down to have to become the pilot of an MC-12W,” aircraft historian Robert F. Dorr said.

That’s what the base commander, Col. David Augustine, hinted at last week when breaking the news of the proposed switch in aircraft. Augustine said he would rather the 122nd Fighter Wing keep the A-10, nicknamed the Warthog for its appearance, and extend its 65-year history as a fighter squadron.

Maj. Gen. R. Martin Umbarger, the adjutant general of the Indiana National Guard, is scheduled to have a news conference this afternoon at the Ferguson Road base to discuss the conversion.

“I don’t think you’re going to see anybody quit because he’s asked to change airplanes,” Dorr said in phone interview from his home in Oakton, Va.

The MC-12 is a four-person craft equipped with a real-time video system, laser illuminator and other intelligence sensors. It has won praise for its work in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including spotting improvised explosive devices and intercepting enemy communications.

The first military planes, introduced in 2009, were retrofitted from a commercial version.

“It does perform an important counterinsurgency mission. It does perform the mission well,” said Dorr, an Air Force veteran and Air Force Times columnist who has authored 70 books about such aircraft as the B-17 and Air Force One.

But the MC-12 might not fit with the Air Force’s long-range plans, he said. While it has thrived on tracking insurgencies on the ground, Dorr said the Pentagon sees future conflicts as probably “a peer war” against “a near-equal, a modern nation-state” that has air power.

Under that scenario, a versatile jet fighter like the F-35 will be in more demand than low-flying surveillance planes or the A-10, which provides support for ground troops.

National security analyst John Pike isn’t so sure.

“Hard to say what the next war will look like,” Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org in Alexandria, Va., wrote in an email. “Can’t guarantee the next enemy will be Red China or Iran. Hard to see us fighting any other modern nation state. So we are left fighting insurgencies, I guess.”

After flying the F-16 fighter for two decades, the 122nd Fighter Wing switched to the A-10 in the past three years.

Base conversions can be disruptive for personnel who must adapt to changes in aircraft, training and deployments, Dorr said. About 1,200 people work at the base, 364 of them full time.

Pike said the MC-12 is smaller and simpler than the A-10, “but it does have a civilian counterpart so there is a bit more career development opportunity than with combat aircraft.”

The conversion will be part of an Air Force budget that will go before Congress. A dozen Air National Guard bases would switch out their squadrons, and five more bases would lose at least four planes, according to the Air Force blueprint.

“You’re going to run into a lot of trouble on Capitol Hill in Washington when you try to do that,” Dorr said. “The National Guard has enormous political clout on Capitol Hill.”