Super Tucanos Ride Sales Success on Demand for Light Attack Aircraft

Embraer has sold more than 250 Super Tucano light attack and surveillance aircraft on the back of growing demand for inexpensive, low maintenance fighter aircraft operating in a low threat environment.

Several variants of the Super Tucano aircraft are in service with air forces in Angola, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Indonesia.

Latest orders for the propeller driven aircraft, reminiscent of World War II fighters, are from Lebanon for six counter-insurgency aircraft costing $462 million. Besides there are orders to be fulfilled to Senegal, Hondurus and the United States Air Force.

In August 2001, the Brazilian Air Force awarded Embraer a contract for 76 Super Tucano ALX aircraft with options for a further 23. A total of 99 aircraft were acquired from a contract estimated to be worth around US$214 million. In August 2008 the Chilean Air Force signed a contract valued at $120 million for 12 Super Tucano A-29B models.

The Afghan military will receive 20 A-29s with the first batch being delivered in 2015 under a contract that was signed in 2013 after Embraer won the US Light Air Support (LAS) contract competition over the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6B Texan II.

Jackson Schneider, chief executive of Embraer Defense & Security was quoted as saying by Flightglobal in May that it is in discussions "with about 10 countries in different stages of sales campaigns" and expects to announce "something this year". "It is the only product for counter-insurgency applications that is designed for this purpose."

The A-29 has surpassed 30,000h of combat operations across a number of different regions.