The last MC-12W Liberty turboprop surveillance aircraft under U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command’s (AFSOC) umbrella have been retired. This is part of a plan to free up resources to help with the fielding of the new OA-1K Skyraider II light attack aircraft, which has also been set to involve the retirement of the U-28A Draco, another turboprop surveillance plane. At the same time, AFSOC insists that the OA-1K is not a direct replacement for the MC-12Ws or the U-28As, which has prompted concerns about capability and capacity gaps.
AFSOC confirmed the divestiture of its last MC-12Ws to TWZ last week. The 137th Special Operations Wing, part of the Oklahoma Air National Guard and aligned with AFSOC, conducted a retirement ceremony for the Liberty aircraft last month. The event was held at Will Rogers Air National Guard Base, which is co-located with Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City. The 137th has also been working closely with the active-duty 492nd Special Operations Wing at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona to train the initial cadre of OA-1K pilots.
“During the time it was assigned to 137th Special Operations Wing, the MC-12W logged 50,725 flying hours and 2,501 combat and combat-support sorties across six locations outside the continental U.S.,” according to a brief press release from the wing on August 3.
A modified Beechcraft King Air 350ER twin-engine turboprop, the MC-12W first entered Air Force service back in 2009. The year before, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had directed the service to acquire the aircraft to help meet the massive surge in demand for aerial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) support during the Global War on Terror (GWOT) era, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Liberty name is a reference to the Liberty Ships of World War II fame, and the speed with which those vital logistics vessels were built and put into service. The first of what eventually became a fleet of around 40 Air Force MC-12Ws began flying operational missions eight months after funding for their purchase was approved.
The MC-12W configuration included a sensor turret with electro-optical and infrared video cameras and a signals intelligence (SIGINT) suite. Each aircraft also had satellite and other communications capabilities to share video feeds and other data with friendly forces in near-real time.
Amid the scaling back of U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early to mid-2010s, regular Air Force units stopped flying the MC-12W. At least a portion of the remaining Liberty aircraft fleet was passed to AFSOC, as well as the U.S. Army. The Oklahoma Air National Guard’s 137th Air Refueling Wing transitioned to the 137th Special Operations Wing in 2015, and subsequently received 13 MC-12Ws.
ISR-configured Beechcraft King Air variants with varying sensor suites and other capabilities have been and continue to be very popular globally, including with the U.S. military and other branches of the U.S. government. Contractor-owned and/or operated examples have often been part of the mix supporting U.S. operations, as well. For decades, dating back to the Cold War, the Army has been a particularly prolific operator of these planes, but the service is now set to stop flying turboprop surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft of any type by the end of this year. The U.S. special operations community has also utilized other variations beyond the MC-12W, and what might happen to those planes as part of the fielding of the OA-1K is not entirely clear.
The two-seat OA-1K, which U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) declared the winner of its Armed Overwatch competition in 2022, is based on the Air Tractor AT-802 single-engine turboprop crop duster. AFSOC is expecting to eventually receive 75 Skyraider IIs, though there have been questions in recent years about whether that fleet size might shrink.
As designed, the OA-1K can carry up to 6,000 pounds of ordnance and other stores on up to eight underwing pylons, but the aircraft for AFSOC have typically been shown with no more than six fitted. The planes also have a “robust suite of radios and datalinks providing multiple means for line-of-sight (LOS) and beyond line-of-sight (BLOS) communications,” L3Harris, the prime contractor for the conversion work, has said in the past.
OA-1Ks can carry camera turrets and other sensors in underwing pods, but these provide limited capability compared to the integrated ISR suite found on the MC-12W. As noted, SOCOM and the Air Force have themselves stressed repeatedly that they do not see the Skyraider II as a direct replacement for the Liberty aircraft or the U-28A, the latter of which also has a mix of electro-optical and infrared video cameras and SIGINT capabilities.
“The MC-12W Liberty’s real-time intelligence and surveillance capabilities complement the OA-1K Skyraider II’s precision strike support, making their collaboration a powerful asset to Air Force Special Operations Command’s mission,” the caption to a picture released by AFSOC’s 1st Special Operations Wing of the two types flying together back in June reads, somewhat ironically now given the divestiture of the former.
What plans SOCOM and AFSOC might have now for a more direct replacement for the MC-12Ws and U-28As are unclear. A slide on crewed ISR platforms that SOCOM’s Program Executive Officer for Fixed Wing programs (PEO-FW) presented at the annual SOF Week conference in May, seen below, simply says the current “driving operational needs” are “maintaining platform effectiveness throughout anticipated remaining lifecycle of the individual programs,” and provides some general comments on possible upgrades to existing platforms. The slide notably shows the U-28A, as well as an image reflecting SOCOM’s fleet of ISR-configured twin-engine Dash-8 turboprops, but not the MC-12W. The uncertainty has already prompted concerns about potential ISR capability and capacity gaps.
“SOCOM plans to divest two ISR platforms. Subsequently, some personnel and resources from the platforms will be used to support Armed Overwatch,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog, wrote in a report on the Armed Overwatch program released in September 2024. “However, GAO found that SOCOM has not taken steps to plan for, or add, critical ISR capabilities provided by soon-to-be divested aircraft. Also, SOCOM has not addressed risks associated with the loss of these capabilities if the new aircraft does not provide them.”
Broader questions have been raised about the overall operational utility of the OA-1K given the Pentagon’s current stated focus on preparing for future high-end fights, especially one against China in the Pacific. The stated purpose of the Skyraider II is to provide “a deployable, affordable, and sustainable crewed aircraft systems [sic] capable of executing Close Air Support (CAS), precision strike, and armed reconnaissance requirements in austere and permissive environments for use in Irregular Warfare,” according to the most recent proposed defense budget for the 2026 Fiscal Year.
A key driver behind the Armed Overwatch program in the past was also to help free up tactical combat jets, bombers, and other higher-end aircraft that had been performing CAS and armed reconnaissance in permissive airspace over countries like Afghanistan and Iraq for more demanding and/or higher-priority missions. At the same time, this would reduce wear and tear on those platforms from flying constant and often short-endurance sorties. A light attack aircraft like the OA-1K would have the additional benefit of being able to operate a minimal logistics footprint at far-flung locations closer to actual operating areas. In turn, this would reduce the time it would take them to get on station and increase their ability to loiter in a particular area once they arrived, all without adding to the strain of already heavily in-demand aerial refueling tankers.
Furthermore, the Armed Overwatch program, which formally began in 2020, followed years of abortive light attack aircraft programs and other tangential test and evaluation efforts, all driven heavily by the demands of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) era. By the time the OA-1K was picked as the winner of the Armed Overwatch competition in 2022, the U.S. military had withdrawn from Afghanistan. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has been working to further reduce American commitments in Syria and Iraq, as well as in various parts of Africa.
“The way that the OA-1K will look on day one is not how probably the OA-1K will look on day 1,000,” A high-ranking Air Force official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss planning issues, told TWZ in an interview earlier this year. “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 Skyraider II “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.”
“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 term that the U.S. military currently uses to refer broadly to uncrewed aerial systems that can be launched from air, ground, and maritime platforms. These systems could be configured as one-way attackers or to perform other non-kinetic missions, including electronic warfare, ISR, and signal relay. AFSOC has also been looking into new standoff capabilities of AC-130J Ghostrider gunships, including the integration of new Black Arrow Small Cruise Missiles (SCM) and existing AGM-48 Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles, as a path to ensuring the relevance of those aircraft in future high-end fights.
“From when OA-1K was conceptualized and decided on until now, the world’s changed a little bit,” Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, head of AFSOC, also told TWZ and others at a media roundtable on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Association’s main annual conference last year. “But as we move forward, I think there’s opportunity to look at, again, some novel mission sets. …how quick can we get the wings on and off it so we could use it in some sort of crisis response, if we needed to? Where does the role of SIGINT [signals intelligence], or ELINT [electronic intelligence] or… some sort of ISR collect [factor in] there. I think there’s opportunity for that. Again, not anything we’ve committed to yet.”
Air Force and SOCOM officials have also continued to stress that lower-intensity missions, as well as cooperation with allies and partners facing those types of threats, are not going away despite the focus on China in the Pacific region. The possibility of employing OA-1Ks at least in a surveillance role along the southern U.S. border with Mexico has been raised multiple times, as well.
Much about the OA-1K’s future still looks to be settled, but AFSOC has now gotten rid of its MC-12W Liberty aircraft to help make way for the new light attack aircraft.
Howard Altman contributed to this story.
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