That mentality drove production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the world's first $1 trillion weapons system. Development of the F-35 was going on in the background throughout the Afghan War despite mountains of evidence that the stealthy jet would never be able to attack ground targets like the A-10 could. Far away from the fighting, the generals in Washington, DC supported the F-35 because they believed "more technology is always better."This same thinking drove the push for armed drones over Afghanistan too. But no matter their technological wizardry, remote-piloted hunter-killer aircraft like the Predator and Reaper were arguably even worse at helping ground troops than even the highest-tech manned jets.So if the A-10 was never going to be around in enough numbers, what could be done? Only one group had enough distance from the Air Force and enough independent money to consider a viable alternative: buying a cheap, lightweight attack plane on their own. That was the Navy SEALs. A group of them met with the Secretary of the Navy in 2006 to tell him about the problems they faced with getting good enough air support.Like other American combat troops in Afghanistan, the SEALs sometimes found that high-tech gear couldn't reliably get the job done, or that cheaper, lower-tech solutions worked better. This is how the US military almost adopted the A-29 Super Tucano, a $4 million turboprop airplane reminiscent of WWII-era designs that troops wanted, commanders said was "urgently needed," but Congress refused to buy.They wanted something with more punch. More lethality. They soon found a plane built for exactly this purpose.
An A-29 Super Tucano spinning up. Photo: Senior Airman Ryan Callaghan/USAF
In response to the SEALs' request, the Navy committed Pentagon heresy by going backwards in airplane technology. Instead of jet engines, they found a propellor-driven plane worked better.Years before, a Brazilian company called Embraer had built a plane specially made for the close-in aerial fighting that the dirty wars South American and African insurgencies required. The Navy immediately leased one of them for testing. (A later phase would have raised the number to four.) This is how Embraer's EMB-314 Tucano became reborn as the A-29B Super Tucano.The plane was refitted at the Navy's test facility in Patuxent River, Maryland, and flown to an out-of-the-way airbase in Nevada so it could be seen how well this "Super T" could fight."At least the A-29 can get close enough to see where the friendlies are, and not bomb them"
A-29 Super Tucano, rear cockpit. Photo: Senior Airman Ryan Callaghan/USAF
Jets could race to a fight on afterburners, but be so low on gas by the time they arrived that they'd immediately have to refuel from an airborne tanker."Whenever air showed up, the Taliban would hunker down for a half hour or an hour, and after the aircraft left, they'd come right back and start shooting again," says former US Army infantry captain Justin Quisenberry.Quisenberry spent more than 30 months in Afghanistan during three combat tours, leading soldiers in numerous firefights. For him, air power was an indispensable component of Americans emerging on top from firefights with the Taliban, and to him loiter time was the decisive factor, not reaction speed.The Super Tucano's turboprop engine enabled it to fly as much as 12 times longer than jets like the F-16, which could've given Quisenberry almost non-stop air cover during his patrols. By 2006 that air power Quisenberry could draw from mainly came from just three airbases—at Kandahar, Bagram, and Camp Bastion—each with asphalt runways over 10,000 feet long.Unlike the fast movers at those major bases, A-29s needed less than 4,000 feet of runway, which could be flattened dirt, gravel, or grass. This meant that Super Ts could be securely based at dozens of pre-existing small airfields all over Afghanistan—making up for their relatively slower top speed by being closer to where the troops needed them for greater stretches of time."Getting there in 8 minutes sounds accurate, but what you do then is a completely fucking different thing"
An A-29 Super Tucano flying (although not part of Imminent Fury). Photo: Senior Airman Ryan Callaghan/USAF
Dominican Republic air force pilot and maintenance airman inspect an A-29 Super Tucano before a nighttime flight. Photo: Capt. Justin Brockhoff/USAF
