Hawk Rising

Remember the Marine Corps’ new Harvest Hawk gunship program, which we told you about in March?

Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway said Friday the program remains on track to field aircraft this summer in Afghanistan.

“You know, Marine commanders have lusted for years over the AC-130s that the special ops communities have,” he told an audience assembled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And again, because we consider air to be an asymmetric advantage, we want to take it to the wall in terms of what our capacities are. We know that our KC-130Js have long loiter capability that they can generally stay outside the envelope of air defense fires. And so we've created a roll-on, roll- off package that takes about six or eight hours to transform an aircraft that might be hauling men and equipment to become an aircraft overhead with ISR and with sting.”

The Harvest Hawk is no AC-130, Conway conceded, noting the special operations aircraft is very expensive and has some very sophisticated systems.

“But our ISR we think is sufficient for the battlefield we face,” he added. “We think a 30 millimeter cannon out the side of that aircraft, a Hellfire capability that can be launched from that aircraft, and the other things associated with it then are what we need. And I think you're going to see it in the theater before the end of this calendar year. We're pretty excited about it.”