The first Project Liberty aircraft landed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan this last weekend (27 January) bringing a dedicated manned ISR platform to the AF AOR. Sorely needed too, I might add. The sky above the AF is populated continuously with unmanned aircraft which is a good thing but when you really need to keep track of high value targets, nothing beats having a human along in the surveillance aircraft.
Project Liberty is the crash program brought on by the Air Force to address the lack of dedicated manned intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. The aircraft are modified C-12 aircraft (formerly Beachcraft/King Air-200's now built by Raytheon) that carry a crew of 4 and an assortment of intel collection equipment that includes an EO/IR ball, SATCOM and numerous raido comm's to share the data collected by the aircraft.
This is the first of an undisclosed number of aircraft to be deployed to the AF. The Air Force has ordered some 38 of these aircraft and many are already deployed to Iraq.
Great Job there Air Force.
BT: Jimmy T sends.
3 comments:
Ya, Project Liberty is a bona fide success story. I've been following along with it, as well.
Buck, they did a good job on getting it not only packaged but fielded too. The Boy's in Blue came through with this one.
BT: Jimmy T sends.
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