Nonetheless, the Air Tractor has been widely exported to air forces in the Middle East and Africa, and has been used in combat in the Libyan civil war by American mercenaries employed by Erik Prince.

On the high end of performance, the Air Force will also be testing Textron’s Scorpion twin-engine two-seat attack jet. Textron secretly cobbled together the jet demonstrator with off-the-shelf aircraft parts in just two year’s time, and claims the sleek-looking jet would cost only around $20 million per unit. The Scorpion easily outperforms the propeller planes with its maximum speed of 518 miles per hour and bombload of up to nine thousand pounds, split between six underwing hardpoints and an internal bay that could also be used to carry additional fuel or sensors.

In fact, the Scorpion’s speed and payload put it in a similar league to the Russian Su-25 Frogfoot attack jet, though instead of packing the Frogfoot’s cannons and heavy armor, the Scorpion has more than four times the range—supposedly up to 2,700 miles when ferried—and an endurance of five to six hours, befitting its ISR role. While the Scorpion is significantly more expensive to operate than the AT-29 or AT-6, at $3,000 per flight hour, it is roughly one-seventh the flight-hour cost of the Air Force’s cheapest-to-operate jet fighter, the F-16.

Overall, the higher-performing Scorpion may remain a long shot, as its suitability for forward airstrips is uncertain, and it would require additional time and money to put into production and operate. By contrast, both the AT-6 and AT-29 are largely ready for manufacturing and could be put into service relatively rapidly.

The Light Attack program has been kicking around in one form or another since 2008 without the Air Force seriously committing to it—but it now has important backers in both the Senate and the Air Force brass. Using effective and low-cost attack planes to deal with low-intensity threats would be sensible, given that the United States continues to be involved in never-ending insurgencies in Afghanistan and the Middle East. It would even free up fighter jets to better prepare for the high-intensity conflicts they are designed for. However, it runs contrary to a deep-set institutional bias in favor of shoveling defense dollars into sophisticated fighters such as the F-35.

In the months following the trials, it will become clearer whether the Air Force is willing and able to set a little of its budget aside, for the sake of performing the counterinsurgency mission far more cost efficiently.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring.

Image: An Afghan Air Force A-29 Super Tucano soars over Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 14, 2015. The A-29 is the Afghan Air Force's latest attack airframe in their inventory. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Larry E. Reid Jr., Released​)