U.S. Air Force fighter and bomber crews are adding a new weapon to their ejection survival packs: a semi-automatic stand-off rifle.<\/p>\n
The service has begun fielding the longer-range weapon, known as the GAU-5A Aircrew Self Defense Weapon, Maj. Docleia Gibson, Air Combat Command spokeswoman, told Military.com on Friday.<\/p>\n
“The ASDW will be given to all combat-coded ejection aircraft,” Gibson said in a statement. “There are continuous evaluations of Air Force programs and policies. The ASDW allows aircrew to have a longer stand-off range.”<\/p>\n
Pilots currently have knives and a sidearm in their survival packs. The goal of the ASDW is to provide better protection if their aircraft is shot down or if they have to eject in enemy territory.<\/p>\n
Combat-coded aircraft include fighters and attack planes such as\u00a0F-15 Eagle<\/a>s and\u00a0Strike Eagle<\/a>s,\u00a0F-16 Fighting Falcon<\/a>s,\u00a0A-10 Thunderbolt II<\/a>s, and\u00a0F-22 Raptor<\/a>s; as well as\u00a0B-1B Lancer<\/a>,\u00a0B-52 Stratofortress<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0B-2 Spirit<\/a>\u00a0bombers.<\/p>\n Gibson said the gun, based on the\u00a0M4<\/a>\u00a0carbine, does not replace any part of the survival pack now.<\/p>\n “This is just an addition to the current capability that they already have,” she said.<\/p>\n The GAU-5A is currently being made at the rate of 100 per week. ACC estimates that 2,137 total will be fielded, she said.<\/p>\n According to\u00a0The Firearm Blog<\/a>, which first reported the news, the new weapon uses a quick release barrel made\u00a0by Cry Havoc Tactical<\/a>. Gibson told the blog that the semi-automatic carbine is capable of firing a three-round burst, and uses a standard\u00a05.56mm round<\/a>\u00a0with a range of more than 200 meters.<\/p>\n The Air Force previously used the GAU-5A designation during the Vietnam War-era in its description of a\u00a0M1<\/a>6<\/a>\u00a0rifle variant,\u00a0as noted by The Drive<\/a>. The service also used GAU-5A\/A to describe its version of the XM177E2 commando carbine.<\/p>\n The Air Force has not found itself in an air-to-air, dogfight combat scenario in more than two-decades. The\u00a0last known such instance<\/a>\u00a0was when a U.S. F-16 shot down a Serbian MiG-29 in 1999 during the Kosovo campaign.<\/p>\n But that same year, then-Lt. Col. David Goldfein\u00a0was shot down by a surface-to-air missile in his\u00a0<\/a>F-16C<\/a>J fighter jet over Serbia<\/a>\u00a0during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Goldfein, now a four-star general, is the Air Force chief of staff.<\/p>\n Officials have said\u00a0they are increasingly worried about crews<\/a>\u00a0potentially entering contested environments in the next large-scale war with a near-peer adversary like Russia or China, and have even taken lessons learned from\u00a0environments like Syria<\/a>.<\/p>\n And it’s what they’re consistently training for.<\/p>\n “We balanced more toward training efficiency to get more repetitions … or trips across the range, if you will,” all while keeping in mind contested environments, said Col. Michael Mathes, commander of the 414th Combat Training Squadron.<\/p>\n Military.com\u00a0spoke with Mathes in March<\/a>\u00a0about two nearly back-to-back Red Flag exercises at\u00a0Nellis Air Force Base<\/a>, Nevada, which were aimed at helping airmen prepare for warfighting scenarios across the globe.<\/p>\n “We do air-to-air, and we do surface-to-air defense suppression, and those are enablers along with command and control, and [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance], [which] are enablers of kinetic and non-kinetic strike ops,” Mathes said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n