Warplanes: U.S. Air Force Adopts Militarized Crop Duster

[Valin]

Strategy Page

Aug. 20 2022

The U.S. Air Force component of SOCOM (Special Operations Command) has selected the AT-802U, the military version of the AT-802 crop duster, to become its Sky Warden Armed Overwatch aircraft. By 2009 SOCOM will have five squadrons of Sky Warden. Each squadron will have fifteen aircraft. One squadron will be for training and have as few as ten aircraft while the other five serve as replacements for those lost. One or two squadrons will serve overseas while two or three are based in the United States for training and preparation for overseas assignments.

Air Tractor, the American firm that makes the popular AT-802 crop duster, introduced a militarized version in 2016, called the AT-802U. This version is modified during construction to carry military sensors (like the Sniper XR targeting pod) as well as a variety of weapons. These include the GAU-19 three-barrel 12.7mm machine-gun, the M260 launcher (for seven 70mm unguided or laser guided rockets), Hellfire laser guided missiles and the Mk 82 227 kg (500 pound) bomb. This comes after the military began modifying AT-802s for military use in 2008, either for reconnaissance or as a ground attack aircraft. The new AT-802U comes equipped with eleven hard points for attaching weapons and sensors as well as wiring for adding fire control systems for machine-guns and laser guided missiles.

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The military version is designed to fly about 500 hours a year at a cost of less than $500 per flight hour. More flight hours can be flown each year but that requires more ground support, and increases ground support requires and flight cost per hour. Normally an AT-802 requires 1.7 man-hours of maintenance per flight hour.

The AT-802 is designed to operate from crude and short air strips, or stretches of dirt road at least 366 meters (1,200 feet) long. The first military version can have one or two seats plus seven hard points for up to four tons of missiles or bombs and a fire control system to handle smart weapons. When used just for surveillance, the two-seat militarized version can stay in the air for up to ten hours while carrying only a ton of sensors.

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