US Military Completes OV-10 Tests, Keeps Aircraft For Now
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What happens to the aircraft afterwards depends on the Department of Defense. “If DoD has no further interest in the OV-10s, then the aircraft will be de-militarised and given back to NASA,” says US Navy Lt Cmdr Li Cohen, a SOCOM spokesperson.
Cohen declines to say what other military uses the turboprops might have.
NASA loaned both aircraft to SOCOM to be modified for a light air support experiment, raising the possibility of reviving the venerable Vietnam-era platform for modern battlefields.
Drawing to a close on 30 September, the Combat Dragon II experiment tested whether the OV-10 could be used in counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan. The idea was to have kitted-up light aircraft support ground troops from quickly prepared airfields.
Naval Air Systems Command, backing the SOCOM effort, gave the OV-10s a digital cockpit, a variety of rockets, including the laser-guided advanced precision kill weapon system, and an ALE-47 airborne countermeasures dispenser system.
Citing the lack of a legal justification called a “joint urgent operational need” and the US Air Force’s ongoing upgrades of the Fairchild Republic A-10, Senator John McCain called Combat Dragon II a “duplicative close air support programme without any clear, defined requirement.”
The USAF and US Marine Corps acquired 157 OV-10A Broncos between 1966 and 1969 to perform light observation and forward air controller duties in Vietnam, according to a military fact sheet. The USMC deactivated the last OV-10 unit in 1994, leaving the only operational aircraft in the hands of NASA, the State Department and the air forces of Colombia, the Philippines Venezuela.
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