The National Interest, July 03, 2017 – The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) has added $1.2 billion to the fiscal year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the U.S. Air Force’s OA-X light attack/observation aircraft effort.
The service will be conducting an experiment this summer to determine if such an aircraft would be useful to perform missions over permissive airspace in place of much more expensive and capable fourth and fifth-generation fighters. The Air Force is expected to test four different aircraft types including Sierra Nevada’s A-29 Super Tucano, the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6, the Textron Scorpion Jet and the Air Tractor AT-802U during its experiment. The Senate—and particularly SASC chairman Sen. John McCain—wants to push the Air Force into buying a fleet of roughly 300 OA-X aircraft to help relieve the ever-increasing burden on the service’s tactical fighter fleet.
About SNC
SNC is a trusted global leader in aerospace and national security. Our innovative solutions enable connected protection through command, control and communications systems, as well as ISR, cyber, electromagnetic spectrum management, and other high capabilities for national security systems across all domains – sea, land, air, space and cyber. As a longstanding leader in defense technology, SNC is at the optimum intersection of commercial, defense and non-traditional contractors. We are one of the only privately owned mid-tier A&D contractors and we pride ourselves on our ability to invest early and often to ensure mission success on or ahead of schedule. It's part of our mission to always stay one step ahead; working on solutions today to solve the problems of tomorrow. Founded in 1963, SNC is owned by Chairwoman Eren Ozmen and CEO Fatih Ozmen.