The
United States Air Force bought eleven C-26A aircraft based on the SA227-AC, two of these being supplied to the
Venezuelan Air Force. The first three C-26Bs were procured later in the 1980s, two for the
US Army and one for the USAF. These three had been built as SA227-BC models. Later C-26Bs were the military equivalent of the Metro 23 and the USAF took delivery of 37 examples. Some of these were transferred to the
Peruvian Air Force and the US Army, while six were transferred to the
US Navy as
C-26Ds. The US Army also took a second-hand Merlin IVC and operated it as the solitary UC-26C. Several aspects of the MMSA aircraft were incorporated on some USAF C-26s redesignated as the
RC-26B, operated by the
Air National Guard (ANG) in various states. These aircraft have been primarily used for Department of Defense reconnaissance mission support to various agencies of the
Department of Homeland Security such as the
United States Coast Guard (USCG) and
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the
war on drugs, and to USCG and/or the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the wake of natural disasters. The RC-26B aircraft were originally configured with a belly pod containing a sensor turret and a data recorder. Recently, this pod has been removed and a sensor turret has been added to the belly of the aircraft. Some of the RC-26Bs were operated for a time with civil registrations. On 4 February 2019, a contract for
Elbit Systems of America to provide an avionics upgrade to the Air National Guard's RC-26Bs was announced. The U.S. Navy operates several C-26D aircraft, modified for range support, at the
Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands in Hawaii. The C-26A has also been used as a trainer for U.S. Navy test pilots. ==Operational history==