Updated 6/22/23 at 5:28 pm ET: After publication, Embraer contacted Breaking Defense to clarify previous remarks about the A-29 made to another publication, as well as da Costa’s stance on Poland as a potential customer. This story has been updated to reflect the new information.
PARIS AIR SHOW — Even as it seeks to market its A-29 Super Tucano to nations across Europe, Brazilian defense giant Embraer has no ongoing discussions with Ukraine about selling the light attack plane to Kyiv, according to the CEO of Embraer’s defense arm.
“They were very interested in our plane in the past, but to be honest with you, we are not in touch with them anymore,” Bosco da Costa Junior told Breaking Defense during the Paris Air Show. “I don’t have any kind of open conversation with them.”
Ukraine has been searching everywhere for someone to supply them air power, and on paper at least, the A-29, a prop-plane that can do both ISR and attack missions, could be a fit. (US and Ukrainian officials criticized the Brazilian government’s stance towards Ukraine after its leader, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said in April that the West was “encouraging” the war by supplying weapons to Kyiv.)
Certainly, however, da Costa said the European region is one where Embraer hopes to see growth.
“We have been studying a lot this market. We have discussed this NATO configuration in the open line with our engineering workforce, our market intelligence guy, and listened to the customers. And that’s the reason we launched” the A-29N, which is specifically marketed at alliance members.
Elsewhere in Europe, da Costa said he is bullish on the chances of the C-390 Millennium transport plane. Portugal, Hungary and the Netherlands have all committed to purchasing the Millennium, while Embraer and Swedish giant Saab have an agreement in place for the latter to help market the plane to European nations.
“We are seeing a very good momentum for this airplane here in Europe. We do believe this airplane could add value and bring additional capabilities to the air forces, especially from a lifecycle costs and operational rates, like availability and dispatch ability,” he said. “I do believe that’s the reason the airplane is calling the attention here in Europe, but not only in Europe, we have very serious conversations in Asia, Middle East, in South America as well.”
The Embraer executive identified Poland as a “potential” future customer, though not one they are actively pursuing, and expressed confidence the Czech Republic would decide to procure the C-390.
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The Brazilian firm has partnered with L3Harris to market the Millennium as the KC-390 in the US, as a “tactical tanker” with hopes of breaking through to the US Air Force. Da Costa said L3 received and responded to an RFI from the US government in March, and that the companies are “expecting new phases in the end of this year.”
He declined to go into detail about what those “new phases” might mean, but emphasized that they want to make the plane available to the US Air Force to “experiment” with as the service seeks more information about the offering.
The executive also noted that while the company currently delivers three to four C-390s per year, they have production capacity in place to be able to ramp to 18 a year fairly quickly.