Questions about the future of the U.S. Air Force’s new OA-1K Skyraider II continue to swirl amid an ongoing shift toward preparing for potential peer conflicts and away from counter-insurgency and other low-intensity operations for which the special operations light attack aircraft was originally envisioned. Whether or not the program could be axed as part of a Pentagon-wide realignment of priorities under President Donald Trump is now also a topic of great interest.
A high-ranking Air Force official recently talked at length about the OA-1K, including what roles it could play in a future high-end fight in the Pacific, with TWZ‘s Howard Altman, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss planning issues. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) took delivery of the first Skyraider II in April and expects to eventually receive 75 of the aircraft in total. The two-seat, single-engine turboprop’s official nickname, which is a callback to the famed A-1 Skyraider that U.S. forces flew during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, was announced in February.
“The way that the OA-1K will look on day one is not how probably the OA-1K will look on day 1,000,” the Air Force official said. “As we field it, it will continue to iterate based on the requirements that our supported forces articulate to us. We’re intimately involved with all of those forces, even as we speak, on shaping the initial and then also the growing requirements that I’m sure that we will find for that platform going forward.”
The OA-1K “was designed to be very flexible. A big element of the platform is, again, this notion of modularity, [and] open systems architecture,” they continued. “What that does for us is, on a given mission, you might put certain types of capabilities [on the aircraft] – those could be ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] capabilities, … strike capabilities – you may have more of one than the other, depending on the day or the mission requirement of the supported force. But then the next day, that may change, and you can rapidly swap out what the capabilities are of the platform on a given mission.”
The original core vision for the OA-1K was an aircraft capable of performing close air support, armed overwatch, and ISR missions, primarily in support of special operations forces, and while operating in permissive airspace. SOCOM’s Armed Overwatch program, which resulted in the Skyraider II, kicked off in 2020, but leveraged many years of other abortive light attack aircraft programs and related test and evaluation efforts that had been heavily driven by the demands of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) era.
Another key goal for the Armed Overwatch program was to help free up tactical combat jets, bombers, and other aircraft that had been employed in these roles, in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, for more demanding and/or higher-priority missions, while reducing costly wear and tear on those platforms from constant and of short-endurance sorties. A light attack aircraft like the OA-1K would also have the benefit of being able to be pushed forward with a minimal logistics footprint to far-flung locations, even ones with next to no infrastructure. This, in turn, would put them closer to operating areas, reducing travel time and increasing on-station availability, all without the need for already heavily in-demand tanker support.
However, SOCOM selected the OA-1K as the winner of the Armed Overwatch competition in 2022, by which time the U.S. military had withdrawn from Afghanistan and the larger pivot to preparing for high-end operations, with a particular eye toward the Pacific, was in full swing. U.S. forces expect to face increasingly far more capable and longer-ranged air defenses in any large-scale conflict, especially in the region against China. The Air Force has explicitly warned about the potential threat of anti-air missiles able to reach targets up to 1,000 miles away emerging in the coming decades. This, in turn, has already called into question the relevance of the Skyraider II, as well as other special operations aircraft more tailored toward lower-end contingencies.
So “how could we support them [friendly forces] if it’s in the Pacific or anywhere else? The OA-1K certainly has some roles and missions that can [provide] support there. And then in a large-scale combat operation, we are looking at, in partnership with other components of SOCOM [U.S. Special Operations Command], what are some of the things that it could do,” they added. “Can it employ air-launched effects, at range, at standoff, in a flexible way that would provide value?”
‘Launched effect’ is a catch-all that the U.S. military uses to refer broadly to uncrewed aerial systems that can be launched from air, ground, and maritime platforms, and be configured as one-way attackers or to perform other non-kinetic missions, including electronic warfare, ISR, and signal relay. The term reflects increasingly blurry lines between multiple categories of aerial systems, especially traditional cruise missiles and long-range kamikaze drones.
The Air Force official that TWZ spoke to did not elaborate on what kinds of ‘launched effects’ the OA-1K might carry in the future, but there is a growing array of relevant designs already in various stages of development within the U.S. military, as well as by private industry. SOCOM also has a Small Cruise Missile (SCM) program, primarily intended to provide new standoff strike capability for the AC-130J Ghostrider gunship, but that could be applicable to other platforms like the Skyraider II. The AC-130J is another AFSOC platform facing questions about its relevance in future high-end fights.
In 2023, L3Harris, the prime contractor for the Skyraider II, also said it had modeled potential loadouts for the aircraft that included AGM-84 Harpoons and AGM-158B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Ranges (JASSM-ER), according to National Defense Magazine. The AGM-84 and AGM-158B are traditional air-launched anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles, respectively. L3Harris had also done that modeling work independently of its contracts with SOCOM. The aforementioned SCM program and others like it within the U.S. military are also heavily focused on offering lower-cost alternatives to munitions like the Harpoon and JASSM-ER.
L3Harris has put forward GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bombs (SDB) and GBU-53/B StormBreakers, also known as Small Diameter Bomb IIs (SDB II), as potential future armament options for the OA-1K. The GBU-39/B and GBU-53/B both offer a degree of standoff capability, and the ability to engage static and moving targets over dozens of miles.
Otherwise, the prospective loadouts that have been put forward for the OA-1K to date align with the original lower-intensity mission focus and center on a mix of non-standoff precision munitions. These include AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) laser-guided 70mm rockets, and 500-pound GBU-12 laser-guided bombs. Pods to allow the Skyraider II to launch stores from Common Launch Tubes (CLT), which could include precision-guided missiles and bombs, as well as air-launched drones, have been put forward, as well. The OA-1K will also be able to carry podded sensor systems.
For the Skyraider II, launched effects with standoff range could open up additional possibilities when it comes to operational employment of the aircraft.
“The next point that I would make there is that’s where we start to get into things like Adaptive Airborne Enterprise. We get into enhanced precision effects,” the Air Force official we talked to said in response to a question regarding the future of the AC-130J that they also said was relevant to the OA-1K. “So this is where we start talking about our platforms. And we are putting capabilities on them that now make them more flexible and enable them to provide support to the joint force and SOF [special operations forces] … in a number of environments.”
Adaptive Airborne Enterprise (A2E) is an overarching term for concepts of operations that AFSOC has been refining for some years now that focus on increasing deployability by reducing personnel and logistics footprints, as well as the collaborative employment of capabilities. A2E work so far has focused heavily on the MQ-9 Reaper drone, but the Air Force has made clear in the past that the concept extends to other aerial platforms, crewed and uncrewed, as well as friendly ground and maritime forces.
Another key element of A2E has been exploring how capabilities can be employed across areas of increasing risk, as highlighted in the graphic below. This is particularly relevant for a platform like the OA-1K, which could deploy launched effects from permissive airspace, but to support operations in adjacent higher-risk areas. Skyraider IIs could potentially be pushed to forward operating locations where they could conduct similar operations from within the bubble of friendly defenses. Related concepts of operations have been put forward by the U.S. Army and other branches of the U.S. military in recent years with a particular eye toward ensuring the relevance of less survivable platforms in higher-end conflicts.
The OA-1K’s deployability and small operational footprint could help make it difficult for enemy forces to target, in general. The aircraft might also be useful for providing more localized force protection and surveillance around forward operating locations like island outposts, which could include counter-drone patrols. In particular, the APKWS II rockets that are expected to be in the Skyraider II’s arsenal are already proving themselves to be valuable air-to-air weapons against drones, with their capabilities in this regard set to expand further.
The high-ranking Air Force official also stressed to TWZ that SOCOM and AFSOC still expect to be tasked with the kinds of lower-intensity missions and crisis response scenarios in environments with more permissive airspace that led to the acquisition of the OA-1K in the first place.
“We still have this requirement on the SOCOM side of the house to do counter-terrorism, crisis response, counter-VEO [violent extremist organization missions]. And really, that was the notion of the OA-1K originally, [it] was a cost-effective platform in the counter-violent extremism environment,” they said. “So that still is a relevant mission set.”
They also highlighted how continuing to engage with allies and partners in the Pacific region on lower-intensity fights where the OA-1K is relevant remains an important way of building military-to-military relationships that could extend into a future major conflict.
“Now you start to think about competition and building relationships with allies and partners. And there’s all the lead-up to something someday, where there’s just this notion of strengthening relationships,” they explained. “How do you train with partner nations? Many of them still have their own counter-VEO concerns, they also have their own counter-terrorism/crisis response concerns. How could we support them if it’s in the Pacific or anywhere else?”
The Air Force has also raised the possibility of utilizing OA-1K’s closer to home, including in support of border security missions. Since January, President Donald Trump’s administration has significantly expanded U.S. military support to civilian law enforcement agencies along the southern border with Mexico, as well as surrounding bodies of water. The Skyraider II would offer a lower-cost alternative to the MQ-9 Reapers that have been supporting those operations, as well as augment higher-end ISR platforms now in use, or even supplant them in more limited ways. They could also supplement U.S. Customs and Border Protection ISR aircraft.
There are additional questions surrounding the OA-1K beyond just AFSOC plans to employ the aircraft. The Air Force’s stated plan is to leverage personnel and other resources from the divestment of U-28A Draco and MC-12 turboprop-powered crewed ISR aircraft to help field the Skyraider II. At the same time, the service, along with SOCOM, insists that the OA-1K is not intended as a direct replacement for those aircraft. SOCOM and AFSOC have faced criticism, including from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog, over how these force structure decisions were made and the potential for resulting gaps in ISR capacity.
“Right now, our focus, really, at this point, is ensuring that the OA-1K is on time,” the Air Force official told us when asked about any plans for a more direct replacement for the U-28As and MC-12s.
The Pentagon’s top leadership under Trump is also promising a major realignment of priorities in the proposed defense budget for the 2026 Fiscal Year. This is already having major impacts on various programs, especially within the U.S. Army, and other efforts across the services could be staring down major cuts, if not outright cancellation.
“I really don’t have any info for you there,” the Air Force official told us when asked about any concerns that the OA-1K could be on the chopping block, especially over questions about its future relevance in high-end conflicts. “I, frankly, don’t know, and I don’t have any indication that the program is going to get canceled. We’ve got our birds that continue to deliver. We’re focused on, how do we get the crews trained? How do we get it outfitted to be able to make its first push down range to meet SOCOM requirements? And, you know, there’s all kinds of speculation about budgets and whatnot out there, but right now, our focus is really not on that. It’s about fielding the combat capability.”
In the meantime, the Air Force is looking at launched effects with standoff range and other new capabilities, as well as concepts of operations to go with them, as potential paths to help keep its new OA-1K light attack aircraft relevant in various contexts going forward.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com