Surprise plan would transfer MC-12s to Army - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Surprise plan would transfer MC-12s to Army

Army and Air Force officials admitted the proposed transfer of the MC-12 Liberty program surprised each service when it appeared in a bill passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It is rare that Congress surprises U.S. military leaders, but the proposal has left both services scrambling to figure out how to transfer the program from the Air Force to the Army.

Liberty aircraft have collected aerial battlefield surveillance data over Iraq and Afghanistan since 2009.

“I wouldn’t use the word shocked but definitely surprised,” said Army Lt. Col. Kodjo Knox-Limbacker, with the Army Intelligence and Security Command’s Aviation and Air Sensors operations directorate.

He said the Army expects to know for sure in the next two months whether the service is absorbing the Liberty program. No date has been scheduled for the full Senate to vote on the 2012 defense authorization bill. The House Armed Services Committee did not include the proposal in its markup of the authorization bill.

Army officials anticipate the Air Force’s Liberty aircraft will replace the Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance Surveillance Systems aircraft that the Army expected to buy, Knox-Limbacker said.

Funding for EMARSS got slashed in defense authorization markups by the House and Senate Armed Services committees. The House proposed cutting $524 million and the Senate $452 million from the $540 million laid out in the 2012 budget request to buy 18 aircraft.

Army EMARSS aircraft and Air Force Project Liberty MC-12s are both enhanced Hawker Beechcraft Super King Air 350s with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors installed.

“EMARSS and Liberty ships are so similar [that] it makes sense,” Knox-Limbacker said.

It’s unclear when the transfer would occur. The amendment in the Senate markup requires Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to submit a report by 2013 “to develop and implement a plan for the orderly transfer” of the fleet. Panetta’s report also “must estimate the costs” the government would save by canceling the EMARSS program.

Former Pentagon chief Robert Gates launched Project Liberty in April 2008, after telling the Air Force War College that deploying ISR assets was like “pulling teeth.”

The Air Force recently took over the Army’s C-27J Spartan program and retained control of Liberty. When the Air Force took the helm of Project Liberty, it puzzled many Army officials. Army aviation had traditionally taken on the tactical ISR mission while the Air Force has focused on strategic missions. Liberty aircraft fly tactical missions with ground units.

In their first missions, the Air Force processing, exploitation and dissemination teams struggled while sending intelligence collected by the sensors aboard the Liberty aircraft to ground commanders, an Army official said. Many thought in those first few years that the Air Force and Army would form split teams, with Air Force pilots in the front and soldiers controlling the sensors and making radio calls to units in the back of each plane.

The Army has flown RC-12 Guardrails since the 1970s and now flies 136 in different configurations, such as the Medium Altitude Reconnaissance Surveillance System and Aerial Reconnaissance Multi- Sensor.

Knox-Limbacker said the Army is considering different options to train soldiers who will fly and operate the MC-12s if they’re transferred. Either the service will allow soldiers to train on the aircraft at a U.S. base, or it will maintain operations in Afghanistan and provide the training while deployed, he said.

The hardest part of the transfer may be synchronizing the communications equipment onboard the planes with the Army’s networks and “making sure we have those right,” Knox-Limbacker said.