Maj. Dan Jackson is an active duty U.S. Air Force officer and is the next speaker in EAA’s Aviation Adventure Speaker Series. In his time in the Air Force, Dan completed 236 combat missions and 125 combat support missions in an experimental attack version of a Cessna 208 Caravan. Dan will share his experiences flying the Combat Caravan, along with stories about the 6th Special Operations Squadron in his presentation at the EAA Aviation Museum on Thursday, August 15, at 7 p.m.
Dan has spent most of his life involved with the U.S Air Force.
“Until now, my whole career has been in Air Force Special Operations,” Dan said. “I went into Air Force Special Operations right out of pilot training at Hurlburt Field, Florida, and I flew U-28s for eight years.”
Now Dan is attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is working on obtaining a PhD in history, and from there he plans to go to the Air Force Academy to teach. The main reason Dan is in school now is because the squadron he was in for many years was dissolved, and he knew that he couldn’t be stuck as a staff member, so he ventured out to find something different, while still sticking to his roots.
In his presentation Dan will be discussing both big picture concepts, and his personal experience in the “combat aviation field.” Some of the topics he plans to go over include: “Why do we do this and what is it exactly? What do we hope to accomplish out of it? And why did they get rid of it?” The squadron that Dan was a member of for so long is a people-focused task force, and he wants to discuss the efforts that went into that job.
“A lot of Air Force generals don’t see these kinds of things as a return on investment because the Air Force tends to… focus on aircraft,” Dan said. “So, they have this technological focus, not a people focus. This [Air Force Special Operations] is an Air Force job that is human-focused, where we’re going places, creating partnerships, and creating capability to basically enable them [other countries] to fight their own wars.”
Dan has been able to travel and see the world, and the experience of flying to those different countries was something he really enjoyed. The Cessna 208 Caravan was not an airplane he typically would choose to go to war in a medium threat-level environment, but it worked for the flights that he did.
“It’s so perfect for these countries that can’t afford something more and don’t need the world’s greatest attack plane. They just need one that’s good enough, that’s cheap enough and easy enough for them to operate. But from my perspective, as somebody that gets to fly it, it was so much fun just going to the range and shooting off missiles and rockets to be proficient, and then going overseas and getting to do live fire exercises in Lebanon.”
Speaker Series presentations are free for all EAA members and youths, and just $5 for nonmembers.
If you’re unable to attend, all Aviation Adventure Speaker Series presentations are recorded and will be available to members to watch here at a later date.