does indian air force have ac130 gunships

It carried out missions over Bosnia during NATO’s brief 1995 air campaign there.Īlthough it made only minimal contributions in that war, defense officials were impressed and intrigued by the UAV’s power to provide real-time video feeds of ground activity. “It enabled dramatic increases in timing and accuracy.”Īfghanistan wasn’t the Predator’s first combat appearance. “The Predator worked really well,” says a senior Air Force official involved in Operation Enduring Freedom. The Predator appears to have validated some of those beliefs. Slashing that time from hours to minutes-or less-has long been a goal of the Revolution in Military Affairs, a fundamental shift in warfare in which rapid processing of targeting data and other information would supposedly provide dramatic advantages on the battlefield. Now, as airpower analysts pore over the facts of the war, they seem convinced that Predator played a key role in one of the war’s major breakthroughs: the sharp compression of the sensor-to-shooter cycle, the amount of time that elapses between the moment a target is identified and the moment it is attacked.

It even, on occasion, fired its own weapons, a rarity for a UAV. It illuminated targets for precision weapons fired from afar. However, Predator was an instant hit because it could transmit live video footage of enemy actions to commanders on the ground and aircrews above the battlefield.

Does indian air force have ac130 gunships