WASHINGTON — The times of the AC-130J Ghostrider’s hefty 105mm cannon could also be numbered.
U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command confirmed to Defense News it’s considering removing this howitzer-sized weapon, used to perform punishing strikes on ground targets, from the aircraft as early as 2026. The concept comes because the service rethinks how it’s going to use the heavily armed gunship following the tip of the Afghanistan War and amid a greater concentrate on America’s top adversary, China.
The changes could amount to a significant shift in how the Air Force’s famed gunship would support special operations forces and the military writ large in a complicated war against a sophisticated adversary comparable to China.
The command can also be eyeing other changes to the Ghostrider, including the addition of small cruise missiles for standoff strikes; a sophisticated energetic electronically scanned array radar for improved tracking of ground targets; and a series of communications and networking upgrades to higher tie into the joint force’s command-and-control networks.
“To field operational concepts and technologies relevant in the present and future strategic competition environments, AFSOC is currently assessing the capabilities of the AC-130J Ghostrider,” the command said in an announcement to Defense News. “The goal of this review is to reinforce the lethality, versatility and adaptableness of the AC-130J in a big selection of operational scenarios while ensuring it stays a significant asset inside AFSOC.”
The service hasn’t made a final decision on the fate of the 105mm cannon and what — if anything — would replace it, an Air Force official told Defense News on the condition of anonymity as a way to speak candidly. AFSOC is using research and development funding to conduct an evaluation through 2025.
The official noted the command now doesn’t have the procurement funds to remove the cannon and to either patch up the opening or replace the weapon, meaning the gun wouldn’t get pulled off until 2026 on the earliest.
“In a scenario where you’re not in a position to just have free rein and fly over a friendly location for 3 hours, how will we beat our adversaries at that game?” the official said. “In the event that they take away our ability to loiter for prolonged periods of time, what’s our counter-punch?”
A spokesperson for the House Armed Services Committee’s majority staff declined to comment on the potential gunship changes into account.
A source within the gunship community, who spoke to Defense News on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to seek advice from the press, said AFSOC has all but decided to remove the 105mm cannon.
“It’s a fait accompli,” he said.
The source added that removing the huge cannon from the plane’s left side would create an imbalance within the aircraft’s center of gravity, amongst other structural issues. The value tag to remove the weapon and fix the airframe across the fleet would likely be within the hundreds of thousands of dollars, he explained.
“If you cut a hole in that airplane, it’s a significant structural intrusion,” he said. “You may’t just yank the gun out of it and fly around with that hole. You’ve got to revamp the fuselage where it was cut out.”
John Venable, a former F-16 pilot and senior defense fellow on the Heritage Foundation think tank, told Defense News the AC-130J wouldn’t survive a war against China and that the command is true to rethink its mission. Nevertheless, he added, the command should leave the 105mm gun in place on a portion of the fleet to conduct missions in permissive environments just like the Middle East.
“It is a significant move,” Venable said. “In a high-intensity fight where you’ve got air-to-air threats and long-range [surface-to-air missiles], it will be relegated to a position — very like the [E-8] JSTARS, very like the [E-3 Sentry] AWACS — to where it will be almost combat ineffective in its current role. We are going to still need AC-130s to fly top cover in Africa; the identical thing with our troops in Syria.”
But while the Air Force’s efforts to retire the A-10 Warthog aircraft led to years of conflict with lawmakers until recently, Venable doubts the service will run into similar opposition on Capitol Hill over potential AC-130 changes.
AFSOC has ruled out replacing the cannon with a high-energy laser currently undergoing tests and once considered for the AC-130J.
One other Air Force official, speaking on the condition of anonymity as a way to talk freely, explained that placing a laser where the 105mm gun is now yields a lot air turbulence that it will upset the laser’s beam. And that official threw cold water on the thought of an AC-130J someday going into battle armed with a laser.
The laser research has “been quite a lengthy program,” the official noted. “Our intent with [the airborne high-energy laser] without delay is to proceed and finish the demonstration for [the Office of the Secretary of Defense], and we’ll see if we’re in a position to actually pick it up as a weapon system. Straight away, it doesn’t appear to be we would. We just don’t know; the choice has not been made yet. But briefly, the laser can’t go in where the 105[mm cannon] is.”
Rethinking the ‘Angel of Death’
The AC-130J is the fourth and latest version of the gunship series sometimes nicknamed the “Angel of Death” for its withering amount of firepower. The aircraft first saw motion in the course of the Vietnam War. And the U.S. military ceaselessly used AC-130s in the course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly on close air support missions and major operations comparable to the battles of Fallujah.
The Ghostrider began to arrive at AFSOC in 2016, and it reached initial operating capability the next 12 months. It’s a heavily modified version of the Lockheed Martin-made C-130J, outfitted with twin cannons — a 30mm cannon that may fan the flames of to 200 rounds per minute alongside the 105mm weapon — and the flexibility to hold precision-guided munitions comparable to the AGM-176 Griffin, AGM-114 Hellfire, GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb and GBU-69 Small Glide Munition.
Former AFSOC head Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold pushed for the AC-130J to have the 105mm cannon alongside the 30mm weapon, telling reporters in a 2015 conversation: “I would like two guns.”
Each cannons are mounted on the left of the AC-130J, and the aircraft is usually meant to fly in counterclockwise loops over the goal area — sometimes for hours — as its gunners pound enemy positions.
However the Pentagon has been slowly dialing back the scope it originally planned for the Ghostrider, each of which cost $165 million. AFSOC originally wants a fleet of 37 Ghostriders to switch the now-retired AC-130H Spectre, AC-130U Spooky and AC-130W Stinger II aircraft, but last 12 months cut off procurement at 30.
AFSOC said it isn’t planning to further reduce the variety of AC-130Js.
Former AFSOC head Lt. Gen. Jim Slife — the nominee to be the service’s next vice chief of staff — ordered the command to take a look at whether the 105mm cannon needs to be faraway from the Ghostrider as a part of the fiscal 2023 program objective memorandum. His successor, Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, has continued this review.
The primary Air Force official said a mixture of things led to a reconsideration of the Ghostrider’s role.
“What does the longer term fight appear to be?” the Air Force official said. “Do we’d like the 105[mm cannon]? … We don’t need to pigeonhole ourselves in strictly special operations. That’s where our expertise lies, [but] we also need to expand capabilities and offer something as much as the joint force as well.”
Tight budgets also played a task, he said, although AFSOC continues to be determining what the potential costs or savings a change to the weapon might yield.
If small cruise missiles are added to the AC-130J, the official said, the crew could eject them from the gunship’s ramp to be launched — potentially as palletized munitions, through which a container of multiple cruise missiles is slid out of a cargo plane after which fired in a barrage. Or, the official added, the missiles could possibly be mounted and launched from the Ghostrider’s wings.
AFSOC said these cruise missiles would allow strikes on each fixed and mobile targets, and permit the AC-130J to interact enemies from a safer distance. AFSOC has not yet decided which specific missiles might fill this role.
The energetic electronically scanned array radar into account for the AC-130J can be more sensitive, scan faster and have greater resistance to jamming, while also allowing the aircraft to higher discriminate between targets, AFSOC said. It will also support multiple missions comparable to air-to-air search, air-to-ground targeting, mapping of the bottom, and weather detection.
And the adaptive mission networking advancements that is perhaps added to the AC-130J would let it higher share critical information with other friendly aircraft or forces, in addition to receive real-time updates on the battlefield.
The potential removal of the 105mm weapon also comes after 17 gunships within the fleet received upgraded cannons. Engineers from the Naval Surface Warfare Center designed and developed that latest version, dubbed GAU-XX, and delivered the weapons in January 2022.
The primary Air Force official said the AC-130J’s focus isn’t entirely shifting to standoff strike capability, and it’s going to still give you the option to supply close air support, even with no 105mm cannon.
“Close air support is what we’ve at all times done since our beginnings, and it’s something that we are going to proceed to do,” he said. “Our guys on the bottom anticipate and expect us to … provide the identical high level of support that we’ve at all times provided them. It’s not shifting focus from one to a different, however it’s expanding capabilities.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.