Textron's Scorpion jet during a test flight. (Darin
LaCrone/Textron Airland)
By: Valerie Insinna
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Air Force is considering
whether to press forward with a demonstration of inexpensive, off-the-shelf
light intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft that could
complement a potential light attack plane buy.
The service completed a demonstration of four light
attack planes at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, in August. During the
demonstration, Textron’s Scorpion aircraft caught the attention of Gen. Mike
Holmes, head of Air Combat command, because its modular design allows for a
wide package of sensors.
As a result, Holmes said, some in the service are now
intrigued by the idea of hosting a similar demonstration focused on ISR
capabilities.
“If you look at some of the airplanes we flew, there are
airplanes that have kind of been built with great big internal bays where you
could carry a whole variety of sensors, so it’s an intriguing possibility for
Scorpion,” Holmes told reporters during a Sept. 18 roundtable at the Air Force
Association’s annual conference.
“It’s got extra power and cooling and things. Might we
want to use that airplane to experiment with different payloads that are
proposed by industry, and might that be a follow-on experiment?”
No decisions have been made on whether to start a light
ISR aircraft experiment, but Holmes said Air Force leaders are considering
whether an off-the-shelf plane might be able to take on more of the
surveillance mission in permissive environments at a lower cost than platforms
like the unmanned MQ-9 Reaper.
Should the Air Force decide to move forward with an
experiment, it would open up the process to other potential industry
participants, said Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the service’s top uniformed
acquisition officer.
The opportunity would be a boon to Textron, which has not
been able to land a customer for the Scorpion jet since the aircraft’s debut in
2013. Its future in the later stages of the light attack experiment also seems
uncertain, as Air Force leaders said in August that the two aircraft that met
its requirements — Textron’s AT-6 Wolverine and the A-29 Super Tucano offered
by Sierra Nevada Corp. and Embraer — are most likely to move on to a future
combat demo.
Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, who heads Air Force Materiel
Command, said one of the most intriguing aspects about a light ISR experiment
would be the chance to play with aircraft with open mission systems, where new
sensors can be plugged in within a span of a couple hours, rather than years of
systems engineering.
Operating a common, low-cost ISR platform might also be a
good way for the U.S. Air Force to build on its partnerships with other
militaries, she said.
“Oftentimes, when the United States goes into coalitions,
the first thing that some of the smaller countries can bring to the table is
their air power,” she said Sept. 18. “And if we can have a platform that’s
affordable not just to us but affordable to some of our potential allies,
whether it’s the light attack or it’s a light ISR, that will enable us to build
our networks.”
Instead of fielding a fleet of small jets like Scorpion,
Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst for the Teal Group, told Defense News
that the Air Force could benefit more from restarting the operations of the
MC-12W, a crewed ISR aircraft rapidly fielded by the service under Project
Liberty.
When the war in Iraq wound down, the service passed on
some of those planes — a commercial C-12 modified by L-3 Technologies to
include sophisticated surveillance and signals intelligence equipment — to the
Army and Special Operations Command.
“I would think it would be relatively easy to just bring
them back,” he said, adding that it comes down to a question of “who operates
light ISR? The [Air Force] can now decide whether to try and take back some or
all of the job, or it can duplicate Army capabilities.”
Original post: defensenews.com
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