The U.S. Department of Defense is evaluating the results of an experiment in which it deployed two Vietnam War-era OV-10 Bronco light-attack aircraft to Iraq to assess their ability to provide low-cost air support for ground troops, according to a U.S. Central Command official.
“The final report on that has been sent to the department, and they’re looking at this as an option for the future on maybe a cheaper way to do things in certain environments,” said Elaine McCusker, the command’s director of resources and analysis.
To conduct the experiment, the command borrowed two OV-10s from NASA and equipped them with weapons, McCusker said. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was a proponent of the idea when he was a Marine Corps general leading Central Command.
McCusker made her comments May 9 at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on her nomination to be the Pentagon’s principal deputy comptroller. She was responding to a question from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who said the experiment showed that using relatively inexpensive aircraft like the OV-10 may make more sense in certain situations, such as against lightly armed adversaries, than using advanced systems like the new Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
It is “great to develop these systems to compete with our near-peer competitors; however, there are times that I think we can use just-as-effective means that have cost us less,” Ernst said. “There are useful things that we already have in our inventory that can be used in the right situation. It doesn’t always have to be the highest technology, the fastest plane, the most expensive plane that can get the job done.”
At a committee hearing in March, Ernst said that as part of the OV-10 experiment, a U.S. Special Operations Command unit achieved a 99 percent sortie completion rate during a three-month deployment. The unit “was able to find, fix and finish highly-sensitive missions by employing 63 precision-guided rockets on 41 different targets,” she added.
Built by North American Aviation, now part of Boeing [BA], the twin-turboprop OV-10 first flew in 1965 and saw service with the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the committee’s chairman, recommended in a white paper in January that the Air Force buy 300 light-attack fighters to “conduct counterterrorism operations, perform close air support and other missions in permissive environments, and help to season pilots to mitigate the Air Force’s fighter pilot shortfall.”
The Air Force has indicated it plans to conduct its own light-attack aircraft experiment this summer at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. In March, the service asked potential participants to submit proposals.