The American military is a model of high-tech. The new F-47 fighter is purported to be a technological marvel, and there are rumblings that (if it's ever built in squadron strength) it may be accompanied by unmanned drone escorts.
But high tech is expensive. It takes years in development. High-tech aircraft may take hundreds of man-hours of maintenance for every hour of flight time. When properly maintained and deployed, they can be devastating, but as any old A-10 pilot will tell you, there's a place for lower-tech, too. The A-10 was, by the standards of the day, low-tech, but it is deucedly reliable and devastating in close air support. And we also have the grand old B-52, the BUFF - "Big Ugly Fat Fellow" - who, when you need a few square miles of countryside destroyed right now, is just the thing for the job.
Now the Air Force has something new along these lines: The OA-1K Skyraider II, to be assigned to the United States Special Operations Command. And the OA-1K was, we note, developed by L3Harris from their AT-802 Air Tractor - a cropduster. And the new plane, aside from having a storied name in close-air support, has plenty of capability in its own right.
L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) and Air Tractor have delivered the first missionized OA-1K Skyraider II aircraft to support U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command. The Skyraider II will help ensure special operations personnel can meet the needs of the National Defense Strategy and the joint force.
Special Operations Forces (SOF) will fly Skyraider II in various missions and will deliver close air support, precision strike, and armed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The aircraft’s flexibility will allow SOF to counter adversaries across the spectrum of armed conflict. The Skyraider II’s design also enables it to operate from rugged and remote airfields.
“The Skyraider II reflects L3Harris’ commitment to delivering cost-effective, adaptable solutions that meet the evolving needs of the warfighter,” said Jon Rambeau, President, Integrated Mission Systems, L3Harris. “By leveraging our team’s innovation and expertise, we are providing special operations personnel with a versatile, mission-ready capability that supports operational requirements today and into the future.”
Now, granted, the basis of the new attack plan, the AT-802, wasn't just a cropduster. It had other uses, including firefighting. But it's a solid, reliable, and simple airframe, made to be very solid and great at low-altitude maneuvering - just the thing for close air support.
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The original Skyraider had a long and storied history, being a piston-engined, propeller-driven aircraft in the age of jets. But it was the best there was at what it did, which was carrying massive enough loads of ordinance to un-alive legions of bad guys, while being armored like a flying tank.
The new plane, while not quite as heavily armed or armored, has ample assets of its own. It has 10 hardpoints for ordinance, 2 on the centerline and 8 on the wings, and it can carry Hellfire missiles, the AGR-20 rockets in pods, and the Paveway II bombs. It's slow, with a top speed of 245 mph with no load, and a cruising speed of 210 mph. But it was a stall speed of only 105 mph, great for nap-of-the-earth maneuvers, and has a respectable range of almost 1,500 miles. Unlike its predecessor, the OA-1K has some high-tech features, being not only an attack platform, but also a reconnaissance and mission-support aircraft.But hey, who can describe this better than the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command itself?
This is American ingenuity at its finest. Instead of the painstaking process of developing a new airframe from the ground up, someone in the War Department had a sudden rush of brains to the head and decided that, hey, it might be a good idea to take a look at existing aircraft, to see if one could be adopted for the Special Operations Command (SOCOM)'s needs. And when you need a small airplane, easy to maintain, able to operate from rough grass or gravel fields, maneuverable at low speeds and low altitudes, able to loiter over key areas for an extended period - what better than a cropduster?
Our military has a history of this sort of thing. The famous Sherman tank of World War 2 fame was built with a lot of off-the-shelf components. The CUCV (Commercial Utility Cargo Vehicle) tactical light trucks that were ubiquitous in my own years in Uncle Sam's colors were based on the Chevrolet/GMC one-ton pickup chassis. The great Gunny Hathcock of Vietnam fame, one of the nation's greatest snipers, was known to have favored the Winchester Model 70 over the Springfield that was much in use at the time and was instrumental in prompting the Rifleman's Rifle as standard equipment.
Now, American ingenuity wins again - and the new OA-1K may be the last thing many an evil goblin sees before his sudden departure from the ranks of the alive.
