The Army Has Axed Its Dash-8 Surveillance Planes
The Army is moving to divest dozens more King Air-based surveillance aircraft as part of a planned shift to converted business jets.
BY
JOSEPH TREVITHICK
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PUBLISHED FEB 9, 2023 6:26 PM
The U.S. Army says it has gotten rid of its entire fleet of Airborne Reconnaissance Low-Enhanced aircraft, or ARL-Es, and is now in the process of divesting dozens of smaller Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System types, or EMARSSs. The service is planning to supplant these and other existing fixed-wing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft with a new fleet of business jet-based designs. However, the intended replacements are still years away from becoming operational in significant numbers.
A spokesperson for the Army's Program Executive Office for Aviation (PEO-A) confirmed to The War Zone today that all ARL-E aircraft, also known as RO-6As, were removed from service by the end of 2022. It's unclear what the exact size of the ARL-E fleet was at its peak last year, with the service having at least six of these aircraft as of 2015 and prior plans to acquire a total of nine.
Whatever the case, all but one of those aircraft are no longer in the service's inventory at all. The remaining example has been repurposed as a "flight test asset," according to PEO-A
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/the-army-has-axed-its-dash-8-surveillance-planes
