OA-1K Skyraider II

The armed crop-duster that beat the Super Tucano — the OA-1K Skyraider II is what happens when you bolt armor, Hellfires and a surveillance ball onto an Air Tractor agricultural plane and hand it to Air Force special operations. It won the US Armed Overwatch contract in 2022 over the A-29 Super Tucano, and the two aircraft are perfect mirror images: the OA-1K has the American buy and no export customers, while the A-29 it beat has twenty-plus operators and no US order of consequence. Named for the legendary A-1 Skyraider, it is a cheap, austere-strip gunship for the counter-insurgency wars — arriving just as the Pentagon pivots to China and questions whether it still needs one.

Overview

The OA-1K Skyraider II (company name AT-802U Sky Warden) is a US light-attack and armed-ISR turboprop built by L3Harris on an Air Tractor AT-802 agricultural airframe — the militarized crop-duster that won US Special Operations Command's Armed Overwatch program in August 2022, beating the A-29 Super Tucano, the AT-6 Wolverine and the PZL M28. Designated OA-1K and named for the Douglas A-1 Skyraider AFSOC's forebears flew, it is a taildragger with a ballistic-armored "bathtub" cockpit, 10 hardpoints, and a mission kit — Hellfire and APKWS-guided rockets, Paveway bombs, gun pods, and WESCAM MX-15/MX-20 EO/IR turrets — that turns a $2 million farm plane into a special-operations gunship costing about $2,500 per flight hour, a tenth of an F-16. Its pitch is cheap, persistent, austere-strip close air support and armed overwatch for irregular warfare, with rapid disassembly to fit inside a C-17. But the OA-1K arrived at an awkward moment: with the Pentagon pivoting to high-end conflict with China, its buy has been repeatedly cut — from 75 aircraft toward roughly 45–53 — and its survivability against a peer questioned, even as 18 have been delivered by mid-2026 and initial operational capability is targeted for the end of the fiscal year. It has no combat record yet, one hull lost to a training accident, and, unlike the A-29, no export customers — a US program of record hunting for a mission as the wars it was built for recede.

Development

SOCOM selected the L3Harris/Air Tractor Sky Warden for Armed Overwatch on 1 August 2022 — a $3 billion IDIQ ceiling, an initial $170 million award, up to 75 aircraft — to replace AFSOC's unarmed U-28A Draco ISR fleet, per Breaking Defense. It was designated OA-1K late that year. Almost immediately the program drew scrutiny: a December 2023 GAO report urged SOCOM to slow it until the fleet size was justified, and the buy was cut from 75 to 62 in the FY2025 budget. Training AT-802s arrived at Hurlburt Field in mid-2024, and AFSOC accepted its first missionized Block-1 OA-1K on 3 April 2025 (the aircraft had originally been due in 2023 — the program ran late), per The War Zone. AFSOC named it "Skyraider II" in February 2025. The cuts continued — SOCOM halved the FY2026 buy from 12 to 6 in July 2025 (after a FY2025 cut of 15 to 12), citing resource constraints and the pivot to high-end conflict, leaving roughly 45 aircraft on contract by 2028 — even as L3Harris opened a new Waco production hangar to accelerate deliveries, per Air & Space Forces Magazine. By May 2026, 18 had been delivered, the program was transitioning to operational testing, a rapid-deploy (C-17 disassembly) demonstration was planned, and IOC was targeted for the end of FY2026, per TWZ. The type suffered its first hull loss on 23 October 2025 — a trainee inadvertently shut off the main fuel valve on takeoff from Oklahoma, forcing a crash landing (both crew unharmed, the ~$18 million aircraft written off), per the June 2026 accident report. Amid US budget uncertainty, L3Harris ramped an international sales pitch at SOF Week 2026 — the export orders the aircraft still lacks.

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