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soldiers, civilians and light cargo for the Army, the Department of Defense and other government agencies. The C-12 Huron is the military designation for the King Air 200, and last year OSA-A coordinated about 22,000 flight hours among 46 dispatched C-12 aircraft.
“The C-12 has been deployed to just about every continent on the planet,” said Chief Warrant Officer 3 John Smith, the C-12 standardization instructor pilot for the OSA-A Flight Detachment. “Be it flying high over the mountains of Afghanistan, moving critical people and equipment into and out of Kuwait, providing timely support to remote villages north of the Arctic Circle or the tropics of Asia, across the challenging mountains of Europe to the continent of Africa or remote jungles of Central and South America, chances are there’s an OSA C-12 near you providing mission-critical support.”
Formation of the OSA-A
The roots of the current day OSA-A formed in the 1990s as a field operating agency of the National Guard Bureau meant to consolidate the myriad of Army King Air aircraft that were executing non-executive fixed- wing travel. The organization enables each state a King Air program through the Air National Guard by a unity of effort in the areas of standardization, budget, maintenance, safety and mission.
OSA-A is an activity within The Army Aviation Brigade (TAAB), which combines the talents, training, equipment and leadership of the Army Reserve, National Guard and the Regular Army into a single aviation brigade. Maj. Ryan Rooks is a King Air pilot, UC-35 Citation instructor pilot and commander of the OSA-A Flight Detachment, or OFD, headquartered at Davison Army Airfield, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Rooks oversees training and missions that are executed under the OFD Aircrew Training Program (ATP). Thirty- two pilots are assigned to the program, including several staff aviators from the activity headquarters and TAAB headquarters.
Other supporting roles within operations are noncommissioned officer operation specialists, who deal with military air passenger/cargo requests from the Joint Operational Support Airlift Command and maintain flight records, flight publications, flight schedules and maintenance coordination.
DynCorp International contractors handle maintenance for the assigned King Air aircraft.
“The units in the States provide a tremendous amount of support to domestic operations requirements through the movement of time-sensitive, mission-critical passengers and cargo,” said Lt. Col. W. Darrell Rasor, the commander of OSA-A who spent 10 years deploying in the C-23 Sherpa and C-12 Huron. “Oftentimes the only means of transport of goods and passengers in and out of natural disaster relief efforts following hurricanes, fires, floods and earthquakes is on Army National Guard C-12s flown by state flight detachment aviators. Many of these state aircrews are also trained and ready to execute contingency operations in the United States in support of domestic operational requirements for homeland defense.”
NOVEMBER 2018
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 3