Textron AirLand heads to Chile to market Scorpion jet

More than two years after Textron AirLand’s Scorpion tactical jet took off for its first flight, orders for the Wichita-built military aircraft remain elusive.

It doesn’t help that the U.S. government doesn’t seem interested in the jet.

“That’s a big perceptual factor Textron will come up against in the export market,” Ray Jaworowski, Forecast International senior aerospace analyst, said Tuesday.

Still, the parent company of Cessna and Beechcraft continues to work the world’s military forces in hopes of gaining orders for the jet that the company developed secretly in Wichita over two years.

On Tuesday, Textron AirLand said the twin-engine jet would be at the FIDAE International Air and Space Fair in Santiago, Chile, which runs Sunday.

So far, the Scorpion has accumulated nearly 600 hours and flown to 10 countries. Textron said the jet – which sells for less than $20 million – can be easily configured for different missions, including surveillance, border security, flight training, maritime security and close air support.

“Even the biggest breakthroughs often don’t get noticed for the better part of a decade,” said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based public policy think tank. “I think the Scorpion is a novel idea that will take the traditional market some time to appreciate.

“But this is precisely why Textron has pursued the Scorpion, because it is unique in the marketplace and has the potential to create a whole new cluster of customers who weren’t really in the market before.”

A cluster of customers in countries such as Chile, Nigeria, Angola or Malaysia, he said. Countries that can’t afford to buy a sub-$70 million F-16, much less a fleet of them, Thompson added.

“That’s one of the regions they have to target,” Jaworowski said of Chile and Latin America, which are among the markets that most make sense for the Scorpion, given its low price as a military jet and low operating cost of $3,000 an hour.

“I wouldn’t write it off by any means,” Jaworowski said. “It would certainly be a competitor for sales.

“But they’ve got to get a customer. That’s the big hurdle.”

Thompson thinks it’s only a matter of time before Textron makes that first customer announcement. Just because the U.S. government hasn’t ordered the airplane doesn’t mean Textron won’t succeed in selling the Scorpion to other countries.

“It’s a hurdle,” he said. “But for the dozens of countries that need some form of military power but lack the resources for a high-end fighter, the Scorpion seems to be the best solution.

“Textron didn’t just dream this up on a long weekend,” Thompson added. “They put a lot of research into thinking where the demand might be and how they could meet it.”

Textron AirLand said in a news release Tuesday that it expects the first production Scorpion to make first flight in summer 2016.

This story was originally published March 29, 2016 at 12:43 PM with the headline "Textron AirLand heads to Chile to market Scorpion jet."