Not quite one year into his job overseeing special operations for the US Air Force (USAF), Lieutenant General Michael Conley faces what he calls an uncertain operating environment.
In addition to maintaining its traditional support for counterinsurgency operations in the Middle East and Africa, Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) is seeing increased demand for its services in Europe and the Indo-Pacific as a new era of great power competition takes shape.
All the while new learnings from multiple global conflicts, budgetary uncertainty, and a new administration in Washington are upending the long-term modernisation plans for many service leaders.
However, Conley says his command is well positioned for this new reality.
“We are a force that’s kind of built for this time,” he says. “We’re small, we’re agile, we’re adaptable.”
Conley sat with FlightGlobal for a wide-ranging interview at the annual SOF Week conference in Tampa, Florida on 7 May.
Special mission aviators from AFSOC provide a range of support to the Pentagon’s elite commando units. These include long-range insertion and exfiltration, airborne intelligence collection, close air support and aerial refuelling. Other AFSOC personnel retrieve downed pilots and coordinate air-to-ground strikes.
Tackling that diverse mission set requires fielding a complex fleet of speciality aircraft, including tiltrotors, cargo transports modified as gunships, and most recently a new heavily modified crop duster kitted out with precision munitions and sensors.
That aircraft, the L3Harris OA-1K Skyraider II, officially entered the inventory in April, with deliveries continuing. AFSOC plans to eventually field 75 of the miltiarised Air Tractor AT-802 turboprops to provide close air support to special operations teams operating in far-flung locales.
Conley says the current priority is to train the first generation of OA-1K aviators in basic airmanship competencies, rather than jumping right into developing operational frameworks for the new type.
“My priority with OA-1K is to develop competent air crews, not get distracted by all the things that it could do, or should do, or might do,” he notes.
Prime contractor L3Harris expects to complete deliveries to AFSOC by 2029. The company is also aggressively pursuing export sales, with a particular focus on emerging markets in the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific where a low-cost reconnaissance and attack platform could be appealing.
“Once we field operational crews in the next few years, I think we will find ways to employ it,” Conley says. “Maybe ways we’re not even thinking about yet.”
While the Skyraider II is positioned as a relatively affordable new aircraft for the low-end of the conflict spectrum, modernising fleets to fight against a so-called “near-peer” threat is anything but cheap.
“There’s a reality that aviation is incredibly expensive,” Conley notes.
Unlike the broader USAF, which faces the challenge of operating bombers, tankers and fighters that are in many cases already decades old, AFSOC is in a relatively enviable position. Its fleet is younger and none of its aircraft are expected to be flying at their 100-year mark, as are the air force’s Boeing B-52 bombers and KC-135 tankers.
Conley notes AFSOC’s oldest platform is a Pilatus U-28 surveillance turboprop delivered in 2005.
“That’s a good problem to have when you look at the rest of the air force,” he says.
Rather than an expensive recapitalisation effort, the rotary-wing aviator says he has challenged his team to fill its operational needs with assets AFSOC already has in the inventory, in part by developing new tactics and procedures.
With that philosophy in mind, Conley says there are currently no plans for the air force to field the next-generation Bell tiltrotor being developed by the US Army.
Still known only as the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA), the new design is intended to provide a generational improvement in speed and range compared to conventional rotorcraft, while also being simpler and more reliable than the mechanically complex Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey.
“We’re not looking at FLRAA right now,” the AFSOC commander says.
Instead, Conley says AFSOC will continue to invest in its fleet of 56 CV-22-variant Osprey tiltrotors, which is expected to reach full operational capability in the coming months, with the ultimate example now undergoing final assembly.
The oldest CV-22s are now approaching 20 years old, according to fleets data from aviation analytics company Cirium. The average age is only 12 years.
With that fleet still relatively young, Conley says it does not necessarily make sense for AFSOC to make a significant investment in a new tiltrotor platform, especially when the army is already footing the bill to develop FLRAA and plans to field it in large numbers.
The US Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment also plans to field a FLRAA variant tailored for supporting commando missions.
“My job is to look for capabilities that others can’t do,” Conley says.
An Osprey pilot himself, Conley argues that while the complex tiltrotor was challenged by the dusty environs of the Middle East and Central Asia, the CV-22 is particularly well suited for the long-range missions required in the Indo-Pacific and Northern Europe.
“I believe the best years of the CV-22 are still ahead of it,” he says, noting the type’s aerial refuelling capability and advanced terrain following and avoidance radar.
The CV-22 holds the distinction of supporting the longest-distance hostage rescue flight conducted at night by the US military – a 2020 sortie in Africa involving the USAF’s 58th Special Operations Wing.
“It can do things that nothing else can right now,” Conley says of the tiltrotor.
However, it also has a chequered safety record.
An AFSOC CV-22 crashed off the coast of Japan in late 2023, killing all eight personnel aboard and grounding the entire US military inventory of some 400 Ospreys.
Airworthiness authorities later cleared that fleet for a return to duty without identifying a firm solution to the mechanical flaws identified during post-crash investigations. AFSOC, under Conley, became the first operator to resume combat operations with the Osprey in late 2024.
Subsequent safety incidents led to flight restrictions and new cockpit procedures for Osprey pilots, with the Pentagon now seeking engineering fixes to several V-22 gearbox components.
While AFSOC is not currently pursuing the FLRAA successor to the Osprey, Conley says he is interested in an even more advanced X-plane being developed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Special Operations Command (SOCOM).
Known alternatively as the High Speed Vertical Take-off and Landing (HSVTOL) aircraft or Speed and Runway Independent Technologies project, the competition seeks to deliver a prototype design capable reaching fixed-wing jet speeds while not requiring a runway for taking off.
Bell and Aurora Flight Sciences are finalists in the effort, pursuing wildly different approaches to meet the performance requirements. A single design is expected to advance to the build stage in the coming months.
“We are working on the High Speed VTOL,” Conley reveals, without offering further explanation.
Elsewhere, AFSOC is exploring new ideas that can increase its battlefield capability without expensive new aircraft. These include the development of small cruise missiles that could be launched from the likes of an OA-1K, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-9 uncrewed air vehicle or Lockheed Martin AC-130J gunship.
Conley envisions a swarm of such munitions, each with a range of 400-500nm (740-926km), being air-launched from the ramp of a transport.
“If you could palletise all those, and you could drop two or three pallets worth of small cruise missiles and put 36 to 48 missiles on a series of targetable things all at once, I think that provides game changing capability,” he says.
One area where AFSOC faces a challenge is operating the MQ-9 over the Red Sea area. Reapers have provided critical support for the Trump Administration’s campaign to secure the vital waterway, control of which has been contested by the Yemen-based Houthi militant group.
Armed with a mix of cheap, but effective long-range precision munitions, the Houthis have targeted commercial shipping traffic, naval vessels and military aircraft operating in the area. The USAF has lost several MQ-9s to enemy fire in the past year, each valued at some $30 million.
Conley says the MQ-9 losses over Yemen are an indicator of how available – and effective – precision anti-air capabilities have become, including to a seemingly unsophisticated force like the Houthis.
“For many years that was uncontested, permissive airspace,” he says. “And now it isn’t.”
The three-star general adds that the history of air power is marked by threats evolving faster that countermeasures to detect and defeat those hazards.
“We’ve got to… move a lot quicker on developing our threat recognition and threat avoidance technology,” Conley says.
When it comes to the MQ-9 specifically, the AFSOC commander offers a mixed assessment.
“MQ-9s aren’t cheap, so I wouldn’t say I want to keep feeding MQ-9s into an area that they’re likely to get shot down,” he notes of the uncrewed surveillance and strike craft. “But again, that’s the mission that they’re needed to do right now.”
Demand for the intelligence gathering capability offered by the MQ-9 fleet continues to rise, Conley notes, perhaps because of, rather than in spite of, the current battlefield risks.
“We’re moving fast to try to figure out ways to operate in those spaces,” he says.
That includes both developing new tactics for the air force’s remote pilots and working with industry to find possible technical solutions to the problem of MQ-9 survivability.
The situation typifies much of the challenge facing military leaders at the Pentagon and in allied capitals across the globe.
In the air, on the ground and at sea, most the Western world’s combat hardware and military tactics were developed before the Russia-Ukraine war unleashed the era of cheap, plentiful and deadly drone-based warfare to every corner of the battlefield.
The presence of such weapons, alongside the even more capable munitions produced by industrial powers, is challenging both conventional and special operations forces like never before.
In the face of that imposing threat, Conley and other SOCOM leaders present at SOF Week, including the country’s top operator General Bryan Fenton, affirmed they still stand by what is known as the “First SOF Truth”.
“Humans are more important than hardware,” both generals said throughout the week.
