Textron AirLand has officially announced that it will enter a variant of its reconfigurable Scorpion aircraft into the U.S. Air Force T-X trainer replacement competition.
According to Defense News:
Textron executives have largely danced around the question of whether the Scorpion would enter the T-X competition, hinting it was under consideration but not giving confirmation. The comments from Stephen Burke, regional vice president for military business development at Textron AirLand, were the clearest and most decisive made by an executive about plans to enter the trainer market.
“We will compete for T-X,” Burke told Defense News earlier in August.
Scorpion is designed to be an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance plane (ISR) with strike capabilities. Since the plane’s unveiling in September, Textron officials have highlighted the modular nature of the jet, something Burke said would come into play with a trainer variant.
Textron’s Scorpion has a price tag of less than $20 million.