Uruguay and Portugal want to acquire the Brazilian Super Tucano aircraft

The chief of the General Staff of the Portuguese Armed Forces, Admiral António da Silva Ribeiro, assured, in an interview with a Portuguese media on August 29, that Portugal will acquire “propeller planes” for deployment in peacekeeping missions in Africa.

The Portuguese Air Force’s preferred model is the Embraer A-29 Super Tucano, and, in fact, the planes that interest the Portuguese country could be among those of a batch offered by the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) on the international market and which, as far as is known, would also interest Uruguay.

Brazil and Uruguay have talked on several occasions about the possibility of making donations to Uruguay, such as M-108 shells and Urutu armored vehicles on wheels, a slow bureaucratic and diplomatic process that involves practically no expenses except for the transportation of the donated material.

In these negotiations, the Super Tucano was offered at some point.

However, the real interest of the FAB is to sell the aircraft, so the donation modality was not even considered in the case of Uruguay.

Thus, given Portugal’s need to have these systems in Africa as soon as possible and Uruguay’s financial incapacity to make the purchase, everything indicates that the chances of getting the Super Tucano have changed.

A-29 FOR PORTUGAL

Portugal has already evaluated the performance of the A-29 Super Tucano, including bomb and rocket dropping and machine gun firing, especially in anti-terrorist missions, the most common in African airspace in the service of the UN.

The performance, endurance, digital avionics, life support, and armament load, which includes two 12.7 mm machine guns in the wings, are ideal for the missions, and the conversion of Portuguese pilots can be done quickly and at a low cost.

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