Argentina resurrects domestic trainer programme

Fábrica Argentina de Aviones (FAdeA) is to produce a protoype IA-100 Malvina trainer aircraft for the Argentine Air Force, using an initial ARS185 million ($2.5 million) of funding via a government pension plan to restart the programme.

The resurrected IA-100 will be the first aircraft to be produced by FAdeA since the IA-63 Pampa III, the company noted in a 24 August statement.

The aircraft  ‘is part of an operational requirement that the Argentine Air Force made’, said Brig Xavier Isaac, Chief of the General Staff of the Argentine Air Force.

The two-seater IA-100 has had a difficult history. It was originally developed in 2014-15 to meet the needs of the Argentine civil and military market.

A technology demonstrator was completed in 2015 but the contract was suspended in 2016.

The relaunch of this programme ‘is a creative and innovative initiative that constitutes a starting point so that later other productive investments can be financed in the same way that we are carrying out this one,’ said Minister of Defence Agustin Rossi.

He added: ‘We launched this initiative at a time when the aeronautical industry is in deep crisis throughout the world, but in Argentina we decided to bet heavily on this industry.’

Rossi stressed that the decision to reactivate the IA-100 programme ‘is a turning point for the [FAdeA] factory [in Cordoba] because it has not manufactured a new aircraft for a long time’.

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