We got an up-close look at the new Skyraider II special operations light attack plane that maker L3Harris says can land almost anywhere

• L3Harris showed disconnected its caller airy onslaught airplane that it says tin onshore astir anywhere.

• The Sky Warden, oregon Skyraider II, was connected show astatine SOF Week successful Tampa, Florida.

• BI got up adjacent with the Sky Warden and took photos of this caller aircraft.

US Air Force Special Operations Command got its archetypal mission-ready Skyraider II onslaught level past month, and this week, Business Insider got an up-close look astatine the caller airy onslaught level astatine SOF Week 2025 successful Tampa, Florida.

Air Tractor and L3Harris' AT-802U Sky Warden, designated the OA-1K Skyraider II by AFSOC successful notation to the A-1 Skyraiders of the Korean and Vietnam wars, is an equipped intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, close-air support, and onslaught craft that L3Harris says tin onshore astir anywhere.

The caller airy onslaught craft is simply a militarized variant of the Air Tractor AT-802 agelong utilized for civilian enactment similar agriculture.

Here's what it looks like:

The Air Force describes the Skyraider II arsenic a flexible craft that tin beryllium adjusted for antithetic missions and fights, noting that it has a overmuch much manageable attraction request and a little outgo per formation hr than different AFSOC aircraft.

Like its legendary predecessor, the caller Skyraider was built for equipped overwatch and onslaught successful permissive environments, though the battlespace is not what it erstwhile was, and determination are questions astir its relation successful a high-intensity combat successful the Indo-Pacific.

Jon Rambeau, the president of integrated ngo systems astatine L3Harris, said the Sky Warden is simply a "versatile" level and "costs a fraction of what you mightiness wage for a combatant jet." Just however overmuch the planes outgo is simply a item that isn't publically available.

Rambeau and Clint Logwood, L3Harris' manager of formation tests and formation operations, said 1 of Skyraider II's astir important attributes is its quality to run successful antithetic environments. It tin besides onshore conscionable astir anyplace with a constricted logistics footprint.

"This happening could onshore anywhere," Logwood said, from rugged and distant airfields to highways.

The Air Force has prioritized flexibility, specifically the quality to run successful austere environments and disconnected of unconventional runways similar roadways. Fixed airfields and bases are casual targets, particularly successful the Indo-Pacific wherever US forces person to contend with China's increasing rocket force, but an adversary can't people each portion of factual successful the region.

Logwood, who has enactment galore hours of investigating the aircraft's capabilities, G-force, speed, temperature, and altitude, said: "We person landed this craft connected immoderate fields that would jar your teeth, and this craft conscionable says, 'That's each you got?'"

The Sky Warden has "plug and play technology," helium said. It has a modular design, which means caller systems tin beryllium rapidly integrated into the aircraft. There are 10 hardpoints susceptible of carrying a scope of weapons and different technologies.

While determination are 2 seats successful the Sky Warden, it's a single-pilot craft successful which each of its systems are designed to beryllium accessible by 1 idiosyncratic and casual to learn.

And its cost-per-hour of flight, Rambeau said, is little than $1,000 per hour, 1 of the cheaper outgo estimates of the Air Force's fleet. He added that L3Harris was successful speech with imaginable planetary customers crossed the satellite arsenic well.

Below the wings of the Sky Warden, Logwood noted, were its dummy AGM 114 Hellfire missiles, arsenic good arsenic ISR sensors and arrays. If different ngo pod is needed, it tin beryllium bolted and connected to the plane.

The Sky Warden tin beryllium dissembled successful nether six hours and acceptable wrong a C-17 cargo aircraft.

The programme was primitively contracted for 75 craft successful a $3 cardinal deal; successful 2023 and 2024, the Government Accountability Office issued reports urging the Pentagon to reconsider the fig of craft needed, citing concerns the programme wouldn't beryllium arsenic invaluable arsenic the US shifts from decades of counterterrorism operations featuring aerial superiority to near-peer adversary fights.

Rambeau cited the aircraft's imaginable planetary income arsenic examples "to dispel the thought that this is lone applicable for counterinsurgency," saying that those customers were looking astatine the craft for a assortment of purposes.

While Sky Warden is susceptible of taking disconnected and landing astir anywhere, Rambeau and Logwood said it would request to beryllium modified for carrier-based operations. The craft requires a region of astir 1,200 feet. For fighters and bombers, the required runway magnitude tends to beryllium thousands of feet.

The archetypal Skyraider earned its legendary estimation by protecting downed airmen successful Vietnam. Unlike jets that couldn't enactment successful the area, the Skyraiders could loiter for agelong periods of clip and bring monolithic firepower for continuous suppressing occurrence until helicopters could travel successful for rescue operations.

Skyraider aviator Maj. Bernard Fisher famously landed his level done withering force occurrence astatine a battle-scarred airstrip littered with debris and destroyed aircraft, rescued a downed airman, and flew backmost retired aft taking aggregate hits to his craft during a 1966 combat astatine Ashau. Fisher received the Medal of Honor for his actions.

The Air Force is hoping the caller Skyraiders volition supply the aforesaid benignant of exceptional enactment for troops successful aboriginal fights.

Read the archetypal nonfiction connected Business Insider