The marine corps has modified an existing aircraft and are using it in Afghanistan as a close air support craft. A close air support fighter is used for the purpose of assisting ground troops in battle. CAS aircraft are not necessarily as fast as fighter and bomber aircraft. They need to be slower so that they can loiter over an area and pick off ground targets relatively easily.
In this case the our custom marine corps rings customers have retrofitted a KC-130J Hercules Tanker with various weapons to include Hellfire missiles, Griffin Precision Guided missiles, and a variety of sensors. I don’t know exactly what the intelligence capabilities of the craft are but I do know that it has been used to detect IED’s so whatever it has is pretty sophisticated. They will probably add a 30mm cannon to future renditions of this aircraft. The KC-130J was formerly used as a fuel tanker. The idea to make it a close support vehicle to support our USMC ring customers probably came from the fact that the Air Force uses a similar aircraft for the same role which they have done for many years (the AC-130) which has proven itself to be deadly effective. The KC-130J has been getting excellent reviews from the field so the marines plan to outfit more of them.
This aircraft can locate and track ground targets also and shares video feed with ground units. It is not suited or intended for air to air combat, and the fact that it can loiter at slow speeds over ground targets makes it superior for it’s intended role.
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