Scorpion

Textron is marketing a small twin-jet ISR/Strike aircraft with the potential of $3k per flying hour.

It would be interesting to see how this would do in Operation: USELESS DIRT: past, present or future. For example; flying in a permissive air environment doing road ISR with an F-16 is too expensive. At at their height, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were costing over $3B a week.

Also if you loss some of these in a Da Nang, Bien Hoa or Camp Bastion scenario, they won't cost giga-dollars to replace.

It won't be an F-35B from an "austre" base, that requires 7 tons of gas for every sortie. Or require up to 50 hours to change a $27M engine.

And so on.

The Scorpion may see first flight by the end of the year.