The US Marine Corps has striking plans!

Late November 2020, the US Department of Defense requested for an optional fixed-wing propeller-driven adversary support aircraft that will be assigned to the Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron (MAWTS) ONE, located at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (AZ).

The USMC primary advanced aviation training school is requesting the An-2 (NATO reporting name Colt), which is capable of using tracking pods compatible with the Tactical Air Combat Systems range. The Warschau Pact-era An-2, a type that made its first flight back in 1947 and is reported to be the most-built bi-plane in the world, will be used to provide familiarisation of flight characteristics, capabilities and limitations of the foreign adversary rotary-wing and propeller-driven aircraft to MAWTS-1 instructors and prospective Weapons and Tactics instructors, as the request said.

The MAWTS-1 is also requesting a Mi-24 Hind and/or a Mi-8/-17/-171 Hip helicopter for the same kind of tasking, so the trio can participate in the flight phases of the Weapons and Tactics Courses as part of a realistic opposing force during specified flight evolutions, as required by the Commanding Officer of MAWTS-1.

It is not known yet were the Colt, Hind and/or Hip will be purchased, but we are sure this should be no problem as a lot of Soviet hardware users, and now US allies, in Europe could provide such aircraft without any problem. Besides that, the US Army is known to have operated some of these legacy aircraft too. These aircraft were assigned to, among others, the US Army Threat System Management Office (TSMO) and the 1-223rd AVN at Fort Rucker (AL). When these aircraft are still in flyable condition, an inter department sale can not be excluded.

Photo: Berry Vissers (kindly provided via AirHistory.net)