Embraer and Hawker Beechcraft have another adversary in their competition to supply a light attack version of their training aircraft to the U.S. military. Both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have rejected a $17 million proposal to deploy four turboprop aircraft outfitted with precision-guided munitions to Afghanistan to see how they worked in a close support role for ground troops. Embraer was offering its militarized Super Tucano trainer and Hawker Beech has an attack version of its Texan II trainer it was hoping to supply for the experiment. Despite high-level support from both the Navy and Air Force, lawmakers apparently aren't interested, according to NavyTimes.com.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/news/light-attack-aircraft-test-rejected