The Air Force said Tuesday that it has prematurely ended its experimental fly-off competition between two prospective light attack aircraft following a crash that killed a Navy pilot last month.
Lt. Christopher Carey Short died and a copilot was injured June 22 when the A-29 Super Tucano he was flying crashed at a test range in New Mexico, where the experiment was taking place.
The fly-off between the A-29, made by Sierra Nevada and Embraer, and the Beechcraft AT-6B Wolverine by Textron Aviation, began on May 7 and was slated to run three months before being cut short.
The cause of the fatal crash is still under investigation, but the Air Force believes it has enough flying data on the two aircraft to eventually make a decision on the future of the program, said Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the military deputy in the office of the service’s assistant secretary for acquisition.
The service is using the experiment in the hope of fast-tracking a new light attack aircraft, called OA-X, that would provide a low-cost alternative to using advanced expensive aircraft such as the F-35 joint strike fighter for counterterrorism operations overseas in places such as Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Bunch said he does not expect the crash or the ending of the flying portion of the experiment to change the service’s timeline for OA-X. It could publish a request for proposals from defense contractors by the end of the year.
