Embraer’s Super Tucano A-29 Turboprop Chosen for Counterinsurgency Role

Vincent J. Curtis


4 Jan 12

***This just in:  The USAF on Feb 28th unexpectedly cancelled the contract mentioned in this post due to political pressure.*** 

In a move that surprised many, the US Air Force chose the Super Tucano A-29 over an American competitor for a light attack aircraft, it was announced on December 30, 2011.  The A-29 is a design of Brazil’s Embraer Defense and Security company.  The initial contract is for twenty of the aircraft, with an ultimate order for one hundred.  The aircraft is capable of air interdiction of prop-driven aircraft often used by drug-runners, and of ground attack with machine guns, missiles, and bombs.  A turboprop, the A-29 is far cheaper to operate for the counterinsurgency missions that presently are assigned to A-10 Thunderbolt II and F-16 fighter jets.

The aircraft for the US Air Force will be built in Jacksonville, Florida, with Sierra Nevada Corporation as the prime contractor and Elbit Systems of America supplying the avionics.

The main competitor to the A-29 was the AT-6 Texan II, made by Hawker Beechcraft, formerly Raytheon Aircraft.  A variant of the AT-6 is used by the RCAF as a trainer aircraft known as the CT-156 Harvard II, and is based at 15 Wing, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

The Super Tucano is a single-engined turboprop with a cockpit configuration for either one or two in tandem.  The powerplant is a single Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-68C, generating 1600 hp.  The A-29 has a top speed of 590 km/hr, a service ceiling of 10,700 m, and a range of 1,330 km.  It can remain aloft for as long as eight hours, forty minutes.

The armament it can carry is modest by jet standards, but is sufficient for the counterinsurgency role.  The A-29 carries two .50 Cal machine guns in the wings, a 20 mm Vulcan-style cannon in a pod below the fuselage, plus five hardpoints for up to 1500 kilograms of rockets, missiles, and bombs.  The missile it would carry for counterinsurgency is the AGM-65 Maverick, but can also carry general purpose, incendiary, cluster, and precision guided bombs.

The Light Air Support program began in 2009 when the U.S. Air Force sought an aircraft that could fill the role once filled by the A1-E Skyraider in Vietnam.  A heavy, single-engined piston  prop plane, the A1-E carried up to 3,600 kg of ordinance on fifteen hardpoints, and was able to linger over the battlefield in Vietnam for hours, providing support for embattled ground troops with napalm, rockets, and strafing fire from the four 20 mm cannons it carried in the wings.  Much slower than a jet, far more powerful than a helicopter, and with more endurance than either, the A1-E proved ideal in the counterinsurgency role fifty years ago.

While the A-29 is not as powerful as the A1-E, like the Skyraider the cost of purchasing an A-29 is low.  Being a turboprop, the A-29 is far cheaper to operate in terms of fuel and maintenance than the modern jets of today, and can it operate from austere airfields.  The fly-away cost of a new A-29 is approximately $10 million.  The USAF contract signed on December 30^th specified a fixed price of $355 million for twenty aircraft, but that includes ground training devices and support for all maintenance and supply requirements and associated support equipment.

The A-29 is presently in service in the Air Forces of Brazil, Dominican Republic, and Columbia, where it has already seen service combating the FARC drug cartel.  Besides the United States, the A-29 is on order from Ecuador and Chile.  The U.S. may also supply the air forces of Lebanon and Afghanistan with the Super Tucano.

The competitor AT-6 Texan II, though similar in performance and also employing the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-68C turboprop powerplant, has no configurations for carrying machine guns, missiles, or bombs, and is used exclusively for training purposes by the RCAF, the Luftwaffe, and the air forces of Greece, Israel, Iraq, Morocco, and the U.S.  It is not used in a counterinsurgency role anywhere at present.

The RCAF could get into the counterinsurgency business, if it wanted to, in an innovative way by working with a highly motived Hawker Beechcraft company.  A portion of the RCAF’s current fleet of 25 Harvard IIs could be retrofitted with hardpoints for weapons and upgraded avionics to fill the light attack role.  The benefit to Hawker Beechcraft to be that by learning how to upgrade the Harvard II platform with the RCAF the company would be able to offer a package to the owners of the current installed fleet of more than 425 airframes that is less expensive than purchasing an all-new platform from the Brazilians.

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