{"id":43536,"date":"2018-08-06T19:21:04","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T19:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/08\/06\/the-light-attack-aircraft-competition-will-be-down-to-two-competitors\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T23:40:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T23:40:55","slug":"the-light-attack-aircraft-competition-will-be-down-to-two-competitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/air\/2018\/08\/06\/the-light-attack-aircraft-competition-will-be-down-to-two-competitors\/","title":{"rendered":"The light-attack aircraft competition will be down to two competitors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. Air Force is preparing to begin buying light-attack aircraft next year<\/a> \u2014 and the winner is going to be either Textron\u2019s AT-6 Wolverine or the Sierra Nevada Corp.-Embraer A-29 Super Tucano.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a pre-solicitation posted on FedBizOpps on Aug. 3, the service will put out a final request for proposals to the two competitors in December with the hopes of awarding a contract by the end of September 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told Defense News on Monday that service leaders have not yet made a final decision<\/a> on whether to greenlight a program of record. Should that happen, the pre-solicitation will ensure that the service can move as quickly as it would like to eventually procure new planes, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the new weapons program moves forward, it appears the service will limit the competition to the two aircraft currently involved in the service\u2019s light-attack experiment. The pre-solicitation states that SNC and Textron Aviation \u201care the only firms that appear to possess the capability necessary to meet the requirement within the Air Force\u2019s time frame without causing an unacceptable delay in meeting the needs of the warfighter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Air Force\u2019s decision to only consider the A-29 and AT-6 had been foreshadowed by officials’ rhetoric, like that of Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, its top uniformed acquisition officer, who repeatedly stated that the service would likely limit a competition to those two participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe whole way we got to where we\u2019re at, we put out an invitation to participate, and we only had two that met all of the criteria that we were looking for,\u201d Bunch said in July. \u201cWe experimented with those, and they performed well enough that we did another phase, and those are the only two that we invited in [for phase two]. So at this point right now I\u2019m seeing it as a competition between two airplanes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t