Blackwater Air Force Buys Brazilian Bombers

[DemoTex]

Security company Blackwater U.S.A. is buying Super Tucano light combat aircraft from the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer. These five ton, single engine, single seat aircraft are built for pilot training, but also perform quite well for counter-insurgency work. Brazil. The Super Tucano is basically a prop driven trainer that is equipped for combat missions. The aircraft can carry up to 1.5 tons of weapons, including 12.7mm machine-guns, bombs and missiles. The aircraft cruises at about 500 kilometers an hour and can stay in the air for about 6.5 hours per sortie. One of the options is a FLIR (infrared radar that produces a photo realistic video image in any weather) and a fire control system for bombing. Colombia is using the Super Tucanos for counter-insurgency work (there are over 20,000 armed rebels and drug gang gunmen in the country). The aircraft is also used for border patrol. The U.S. Air Force is watching that quite closely. The Super Tucano costs $9 million each, and come in one or two seat versions. The bubble canopy provides excellent visibility. This, coupled with its slow speed (versus jets), makes it an excellent ground attack aircraft.


Blackwater already has a force of armed helicopters in Iraq, and apparently wants something a little faster, and more heavily armed, to fulfill its security contracts overseas. Initially, Blackwater is getting one two-seater, for pilot training in the United States.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/articles/20070827.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano

War Profiteering: All Roads Lead to Cheney
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/26/155757/632



Embraer A-29 (EMB 314 Super Tucano)

[MiniMe]

1. How many is a brazillion?

[Crayson]

2. Single seat...?

The words "pilot training" don't quite fit with that fact... not even mentioning the picture.

However, now they already have an airforce.
I don't dare thinking about outsourced security forces for companies or smaller cities anymore.

I dare say, one of our biggest problem in the near future will be private security forces à la Robocop owned by a corporation and doing their bidding.

Example:
"Hello, 911, I'm being robbed!"
"Oh hello, why, our system tells me you only have our silver contract! Help will be on the way in about an hour. Would you like to upgrade to gold, in which case I could offer you a S.W.A.T team and a helicopter?"

Or another scenario:
Two different security firms throwing obstacles in each others way while pursuing a case until the whole thing escalates. I mean, hello, the have BOMBERS now!!
What's the difference between a city that has its territory split up between gangs or between private security contractors?

[DemoTex]

4. The A-29s will be great for the Missionary Hunter Killer teams (June 2001)

A Plane is Shot Down and the US Proxy War on Drugs Unravels

When a small plane carrying US missionaries was shot down a few weeks ago in Peru, killing a young woman and her seven-month-old baby girl, it first seemed to be a tragic case of trigger-happy policing by the Peruvian air force.

But as more details emerge from the Andean jungle, it is clear this apparently isolated incident has a far greater significance. The deaths have helped yank the covers from the secret side of America's billion-dollar drug war in Latin America.

The missionaries' plane was shot down by a Peruvian military pilot, but it was first spotted and targeted by a US Cessna Citation surveillance plane patrolling the air routes between Peru and Colombia on the look out for cocaine traffickers.

The surveillance plane was piloted not by US military pilots but by private contractors who, according to US congressional officials, were hired by an Alabama-based company called Aviation Development Corporation (ADC). In the words of one outraged official: "There were just businessmen in that plane. They were accountable to no one but their bottom line." (my emphasis)

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0602-02.htm

Put these two stories together and extrapolate out how much more dangerous Cheney's mercenary armies and air forces stand to get.

:scared:

On edit: The Alabama-based Aviation Development Corporation Cessna Citation crew involved in this heinous 2001 murder were CIA employees (New York Times).

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50B12F63B5D0C7B8EDDAD0894D9404482&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fB%2fBowers%2c%20Veronica

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. And we all used to play these games in great

games of oh cyberpunk

When life imitates art...

[soothsayer]

3. Are we all allowed to own bombers?

[DemoTex]

6. Yes and no. Ever see the old "warbirds" at an airshow?

I was landing a Boeing 737 at Burlington, Vermont a number of years ago, and looked up to see a MiG-19 (complete with red star on tail) on downwind leg! I was told that the MiG-19 was owned by a Vermont doctor. Individuals can own combat aircraft, but the ejection seats must be de-activated and the armament systems removed. Now, NGOs' (government contractors) operation of armed aircraft is another story.


A friend of mine owns and flies a Douglas AD (A-1E) Skyraider like this one.

[DFW]

5. No. Only if you have a spare $9 million laying around.

[RainDog]

7. wtf...

thanks, Dick Cheney, for setting up the talibornagains as the new military in the U.S. Schahill's book on Blackwater is more timely than ever.

when all those air force fundies' look to re-up, I wonder how many will go with Blackwater instead? I swear, the first time I heard about Blackwater I thought about the SS. A theocratic SS. Like The Handmaid's Tale.

Honestly, this administration and their goons have screamed their goals and intentions for years now. Even when Cheney is gone, damage is done until someone shuts down this paramilitary force here... we're getting the central american treatment right here. maybe that's what happens when you, as a nation, don't give a damn as your own govt. arms dictators to kill elected officials and innocent citizens.

I feel like we're in the middle of a collective nightmare.

[leftchick]

8. their "Airships" creep me out too

Airships

Blackwater Airships LLC was established in January 2006 as the newest Blackwater venture -- with a mission to build a remotely piloted airship vehicle (RPAV). Although seemingly different from the traditional Blackwater mission, this new venture to provide a persistent surveillance capability is fully consistent with the Blackwater goal of offering solutions which help to protect our forces wherever they are deployed and support our homeland security.

The Blackwater Airships team completed design work at the end of 2006 and is now building the Polar 400 airship. This highly capable RPAV will provide a platform ready to accomodate a wide variety of state-of-the-art surveillance, communications and detection equipment that can record and store events and downlink them in real-time to ground operators. The make-up of the mission payload of up to 400 lbs will be determined by customer requirements -- whether for combat areas, port or border security, or coastal patrol.

The prototype Polar 400 is completing propulsion ground tests and when fully assembled will undergo test flights and then move into production by mid-year 2007. Following successful demonstration flights, Blackwater Airships will begin selling or leasing airships to Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and other government customers. The Polar 400 is designed to operate for 48 to 60 hours at altitudes from 5,000 to 15,000 feet. The unique design of the RPAV propulsion system will give it the capability to loiter over a desired location with excellent low-speed maneuverability, along with an ability to fly at up to 50 knots to move quickly to and from a target area.


http://www.blackwaterusa.com/airship/

:scared:

[soothsayer]

9. omigod, they've got zeppelins?!

[Javaman]

13. Oh the humanity!!!!

sorry couldn't resist.

[fed-up]

11. and what will they use these for if/when the war ever ends?????? nt

[underpants]

12. Milo Minderbinder would be proud

:patriot: