Scott Nicholas
The U.S. Air Force will perform an airworthiness test on a multimission aircraft built by a Textron and AirLand Enterprises joint venture under a cooperative research and development agreement, Defense News reported Thursday.
Valerie Insinna writes the certification for Textron AirLand‘s Scorpion aircraft could lead to direct commercial sales to foreign militaries and accelerate the domestic purchase process for the jet.
“[We] have not done a CRADA like this before and we have never had a partnership with industry to assess aircraft that are not under a USAF acquisition contract,” said Jorge Gonzalez, the Air Force’s technical airworthiness authority.
The report added Gonzales will lead a team that includes personnel from the Air Force’s Non-DoD Military Aircraft office to conduct the assessment to verify the aircraft’s safety.
Scorpion works to support counter-insurgency, close air support, border security and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.
The aircraft features a retractable sensor mount, tandem cockpit, composite airframe, twin turbofan engines, external carriage for weapons and an internal payload bay with a modular partitioning, loading, alignment and retention system to accommodate sensors, fuel and communications modules.
