Air Force Special Operations Command can expect to get four AC-130 Gunships this year and 10 MC-130H Combat Talon IIs by 2010, if Congress approves Air Force budget plans. Air Force leaders Michael Wynne and Gen. Michael Moseley told members of the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday that USAF also supports the AFSOC effort to expand its combat aviation advisory forces to “assess, train, advise, assist, and integrate more nations’ air forces into the [global war on terror.]” And, for the future, they said that USAF is working the “persistent surface attack system of systems as the follow-on to the current AC-130 Gunship.”
The U.S. supports “a stronger and more capable” European defense, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said during an Oct. 22 press conference in Brussels—but that defense should not duplicate the functions and capabilities of the NATO alliance.