It’s Been 50 Years Since the Air Force Last Operated a Single Engine Tail-Dragger. How Will It Train New OA-1K Pilots?

Despite an array of shapes and sizes, Air Force airplanes have one commonality. They all have tricycle landing gear. That changed with the Pentagon’s $3 billion purchase of 75 AT-802U Sky Wardens for its Armed Overwatch requirement a few months ago. Now the USAF has to figure out how to train pilots to fly this crop duster-based tail-wheel airplane.

The service recently designated the L3Harris/Air Tractor AT-802U as the OA-1K, reviving a nomenclature (OA) it hasn’t used since WWII. The designation reflects the aircraft’s multi-role utility for close air support, precision strike, and armed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in low intensity environments and special operations missions.

It also harkens back to a time when the USAF and its Army Air Corps forerunner were chock full of tail-dragger configured airplanes. Surprisingly, the Air Force actually has relatively recent experience with one of those WWII-era airplanes. Air Force Special Operations Command’s (AFSOC) 6th Special Operations Squadron (6th SOS) operated a modified version of the legendary C-47 (the Basler BT-67) until 2010.

But the C-47 was a large twin-engine cargo aircraft. The last time the Air Force operated an agile single-engine tailwheel airplane was in 1972 when it turned the last of its Douglas A-1E, A-1H and A-1J Skyraiders over to the South Vietnamese Air Force. (OA-1K might be seen as next-in-series designation following the Skyraider.)

Obviously, the service hasn’t routinely trained its pilots on such airplanes with one possible exception. In their role as military “advisors” abroad, a small number of 6th SOS pilots were trained to fly the Jordanian Longsword-AT-802, an earlier version of the 802 which L3Harris and Air Tractor sold to several Mid-East countries around 2010. A number of these later found their way to Jordan for use in border patrol and other ISR/light strike missions.

But no program to train anything like the 200 OA-1K pilots AFSOC plans to have after 2025 exists. The lack of any such training syllabus for tailwheel aircraft prompted AFSOC commander, Lt. Gen. Jim Slife’s comment to reporters in September that, “We’re going to have to pay a lot of attention to training on this. We haven’t operated, at scale, a tail-dragger aircraft in quite some time.”

The challenges of operating tail-dragger aircraft are well known. Situating the main landing gear in front of a castoring tailwheel makes for comparatively unstable ground handling, in taxi, takeoff and landing. As propeller-driven monoplane aircraft of the 1930s and 40s received progressively more powerful engines and larger props to accommodate them, their forward main gear were raised, creating a rake from nose to tail.

The larger, longer inline and radial engines they used also dictated more distance between the cockpit and the propeller. Along with the rake, that created a configuration which blocks the pilot’s forward view until the aircraft’s tail rotates up to a level position with the nose on takeoff and in flight.

The OA-1K will have the same issues. It will also require landing and takeoff skills (three-point landings, rudder/differential brake control) that modern USAF pilots aren’t taught.

“SOCOM picked a platform that I think we’ll make good use of,” Lt. Gen. Slife said. “But I am paying a lot of attention to what that training pipeline looks like, to make sure that we don’t put people in over their heads with a type of airplane they’re not used to flying.”

The training pipeline is currently being figured out by the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command, AFSOC and L3Harris. A new syllabus for OA-1K pilots and back-seaters (weapons/sensor operators) will teach them the nuances of the tailwheel aircraft operation as well as its weapons/ISR systems. Mastering airplane handling will determine the length of each armed overwatch training class AFSOC spokesperson Lt. Col. Becky Heyse told Air Force Times.

AFSOC is reportedly considering training test pilots and instructors on commercial tail-wheel aircraft before they progress to the OA-1K itself. USAF Test Pilot School students have occasionally had the opportunity to experience high performance tail-draggers with civilian Warbird operators like the Commemorative Air Force having made airplanes like the P-51 Mustang available to students and instructors. Valuable though such experiences are, they’d be difficult to work into a routine training program.

One possibility the Air Force nor L3Harris/Air Tractor specifically mentioned is the use of commercial flight schools or commercial instructors which specialize in Air Tractor and of Ag aircraft training. For example, Turbine Training Center in Manhattan, Kansas teaches both initial and recurrent courses in Air Tractor 802 models (which the QA-1K is based on). The company has a full-motion simulator and is located next door to the Army’s sprawling Fort Riley base.

AFSOC plans call for commencing OA-1K flight training in the fall of 2025. It has yet to announce where the program will be based but Hurlburt Field in the Florda panhandle where AFSOC already operates an eclectic assortment of aircraft would make sense. The nearby Gulf of Mexico training ranges would be useful as would Hurlburt’s existing capacity to accommodate the munitions, munitions storage areas/support personnel that would enable live fire training for the OA-1K.

Four operational squadrons of 15 aircraft, plus one training squadron, would be enough to meet combat needs while giving each unit enough rest, SOCOM commander, Gen. Richard Clarke suggested. Each squadron will have its own simulator and dedicated sim facilities.

Thanks to the dynamic, low-altitude character of the armed overwatch mission and the challenge of flying the airplane, there’s a good chance that OA-1K flight crew billets will be highly sought after. Lt. Gen. Slife observed that AFSOC U-28 and MC-12 units will transition to the armed overwatch platform during this decade. “It will largely be internal unit transitions,” Slife added.

The Air Force expects the OA-1K fleet to be fully operational in 2029. When that’s accomplished the service will have a batch of tailwheel pilots it hasn’t had in over 50 years.