Plane spotters-what are these?

I spotted this squadron of planes (there were at least six of them, in the process of taxiing out so maybe more?) at a local airport (Spirit of St Louis, SUS).

two passenger, single prop but all were decked out in USAF livery.

anybody know what these are, what they were doing there, etc?
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Looks like a Pilatus PC-21


Edit

More like a Pilatus PC 9 (Beech Pilatus PC-9 Mk.2 )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilatus_PC-9

and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-6A_Texan_II

 

wow, that was fast! thanks! gotta love Fchat

so are these active USAF planes, or some sort of vintage warbird club?

 

I'm not 100% but I would think that they are advanced trainers for the USAF

 

Wiki says US sold their few to Slovenia.. maybe they defaulted on payments and this is repossessed fleet

 

Those are T-6 Texan IIs and are a current (and fairly new) training aircraft. The are a bunch of them in the inventory and they are based at a bunch of places and it's not unusual to see them flying around the countryside. There is (or at least a couple years was) a USAF demo team that flew them and put on a pretty good show.

 

Mark is correct. The T-6A Texan II is the new basic trainer for the USAF, replacing the Cessna T-37, which is retiring after being the USAF's primary trainer since the mid-1950s. Next to go with be the supersonic Northrop T-38, which first saw service as the USAF's advanced trainer in 1961.

The T-6A is based on the Pilatus PC-9, like Mike said above. You will see them cross-country at airfields with military aircraft all over the US.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

thanks guys.

so most likely this was some form of training mission? or could it have been a recruiting tool?

I'm just curious about them being at this particular airport-there is an AF base (Scott) and an aviation college (Parks) in Southern IL, about 50 miles away, so I was surprised to see them at a random general aviation field.

maybe the Marines filled the tanks and they ran out of gas

 

Navigational training or perhaps just relocating them?

 

And what will replace them? IMO, the best choice is the KAI T-50 Golden Eagle, developed in conjunction with Lockheed Martin.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/products/t50/index.html

 

These guys are from Vance AFB in Enid, OK as referenced by the tail code on the airplane. My guess is they were doing a formation sortie mixed in with a cross country.