At first: After clarification by Henrik and crazyal611, today I renamed this topic from "New operational dual pod system - HTS and LITENING AT" to "New operational dual pod system - HTS and AN/AAQ-14 LANTIRN". Sorry for my initial error!

Thanks for your reply, Ender_Wiggin! Are you talking about the current AEF 1/2 (Cycle 7) rotation (January – April 2008)? If yes, anybody who can/will tell us why they are equipped with the HTS pod currently in Iraq - without any expected SEAD mission? Only as ballast to consume additional fuel? Inconceivable - at least in my eyes! And according to current shots taken by spotters, some Spang Vipers are flying daily training sorties without any pod on their air intake. And so, it should be no problem to remove the HTS pod before deploying aircraft to Iraq. BTW: Some other Spang Vipers were also spotted during the last weeks with HTS pod still on station 5R.

Hi J.J.,

The "SP" detachment Ender is talking about flew combat missions with GBU-12s and GBU-38s with the Sniper/HTS combo in the first stage of the deplyment - see photo below.

I personally believe that the reason for carrying the HTS pods were to "see" what might have happened radar-wise in Iran!!

Photo by Jeff Stoermer.

Greetings,

Henrik.

More likely if you have them keep them on.
Why leave stuff on the ramp when it's easier not remove it in the first place?

One reason for the ANG to pass along their Snipers from the units in New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma and Iowa was the fact that the Snipers will primarily assigned to Active assets (F-15E, F-16 and A/OA-10 units) and Litenings will be in the ANG and AFRC (A/OA-10, B-52 and F-16) - just as Mark says above.

j.j.

the reason we are saying it looks like and probably is a LANTIRN on the spang aircraft is that the Litening is a guard and reserve program. it was phased into the Active units for the war and a little bit afterwards while problems with reliability, funding, supply were worked out for Sniper. once those issues were overcome, the DoAF started returning the Litening AT back to northrop grumman for modification then on back to guard and reserve a-10, f-16, and b-52 units. some of the Guard and reserve got sniper to spin up with back in 2006 (RMC to korea) while the Litening was the norm in the AOR. but now that the sniper is on track and funded with AD money, AD has Sniper and Guard, Reserve have Litening. Now as far as LANTIRN, since it is was mostly used with AD units, save a few guard units, they have the majority of those pods and it shares a few features with the Sniper. with the number of Litening pods purchased already, the guard and reserve would rather not worry about LANTIRN TGP's anymore. Also, the LANTIRN TGP is longer then the Litening, but not as big around. the ECS intake is also angled on the LANTIRN, but not on the Litening.