busdriver

Benelli seems to be the 3gun standard. Stoeger is owned by them and uses the same inertia action. Check out the M3K, it comes mostly ready to go.

Something like an 800nm combat range?

An actual RQS? 5 years. I'm old balls, I pre-date the Pedro years.

I've been out of the shiny penny club for awhile now. I only went to staff because I was literally the only person in the Air Force who could fill that billet, at that time. I escaped and I work well over 40 hours a week, and the chance of me commanding a flying squadron is essentially zero. I put in the time I do in the hope that I can make even a small difference to nudge my little corner of the AF in a better direction. Maybe I'm just too stupid to know better, maybe staff made me appreciate the small victories, I don't know. I do know that perspectives change with time and experience, and I'll get to re-qual "soon," life is good.

That others may live. Here's a toast.

Which was my, apparently very poorly made, point. I get the desire/logic of a light attack aircraft for AvFID, but the talk about putting them all over the place to be close to US SOF units seems completely at odds to the way the AvFID mission is currently organized. Not to mention the outright discussion of AFSOC being the right MAJCOM for the aircraft, irrespective of the mission.

Your name fits

I'm way out of the loop, but my impression is there isn't a shortage of requests for the AF to come play. More like fending off the wastes of time is the problem. In any event, you're right about ranges. Proximity to a good backyard range and airspace is far more important than proximity to any Army unit.

You guys realize there's nothing inherently SOF about a plane right?

AGR-20 utility for the AF has nothing to do with Hellfire. If it can slow the KMU-572 expenditure rate, it's a win.

I don't have the actual numbers handy or anything, but all up round cost is similar to a GBU-38. It's a super handy weapon, but it's not a low cost solution.

APKWS isn't low cost. It just a different production line. We're dropping PGMs as fast as they can be made.

Dude, it's a notional requirements list. The idea is to put something inexpensive in the air and use lessons learned to inform any actual buy that goes through. If the experiment is expensive, it's a dead end.

I was referring to taking money planned to by X and diverting half to put towards Y. Repeat that decision when Z is right around the corner. It's not really that simple, but it never is.

Clark, we've been diverting acquisition money from now capabilities to put towards the new hotness that's just around the corner for years. The result is we don't have enough capacity in the now column.