re: "Oh, For a New AVG"

Confederate Yankee ("Because liberalism is a persistent vegetative state.") has an interesting idea.

Money quote(s):

"As speculation leaks out this morning that Syria aircraft and ground troops may be fighting Libyan rebels on behalf of Qaddafi's dictatorship, it makes me wonder how many lives might eventually be saved if there was a way for forming something like the American Volunteer Group that fought for the Chinese in world War II. You probably know them better as the Flying Tigers."

Interesting thought. But it occurs to me there's likely not the kind of longish time window available to the original AVG in the Libyan instance.

"(T)here is no reasonable expectation of a volunteer force fighting a direct air-to-air war against modern (or nearly modern) fighters, but even a single squadron of generation's old close-air support and observation aircraft could bring this conflict to a quicker and hopefully less costly end. Modern piston-drive COIN aircraft such as the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 or the EMB-314 Super Tucano could level the playing field for the rebels, as they are more than capable of taking on the improvised gun trucks and tanks of Qaddafi's loyalists and mercenaries, and quite frankly, could probably do so with a bit more accuracy (and collateral damage) than the jet aircraft the dictator's forces have been using.

The AT-6 is even familiar to many pilots; the trainer version of the plane is the primary trainer the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy pilots and the pilots of 19 other nations.

Like the original AVG, the pilots and ground crews of this theoretical group would be made up of men that volunteered to serve, flying planes loaned to the besieged rebels. At or near the end of the conflict, with the tables decisively turned, the aircraft could be returned to their originating nations or "donated" to the new government for oil."