I haven’t flown any of these planes. From the perspective of the guy on the ground, I would want one of those puppies overhead for as long as possible with as much ordinance as possible. That makes Spooky the Gunship a contender, especially if it has artillery rounds.
My son is on his first enlistment in the AF. He has a rather boring, mundane job (repairing runways) so whether he wants to reenlist goes from "hell ya" to "hell no" twice a day. Though I guess that's true for most :-)
Anyhow, he was on another rant one day when I told him that if he was going to get out he should check with the local Reserve unit and see what they had available for slots. On this particular day that was the last thing he wanted to hear and started off on a tangent about how if he wasn't staying active duty he sure as hell wasn't staying in the Reserves.
Then I said, "I've gotten a couple emails from the recruiter over there and he says they have a couple of Aerial Gunner slots open. You, know, the AC-130". I was just yanking his chain to see what he'd say and after this pregnant pause he says, "Well, that would be pretty cool." LOL!
ping