Hawker Beechcraft Defense Company said Monday it entered low-rate initial production (LRIP) of its AT-6 light attack and armed reconnaissance aircraft in response to “significant indications of interest around the world.”

Hawker Beechcraft Vice President for Light Attack Programs Derek Hess said in an email he couldn’t specify which countries were interested.

“Our team has been in conversations with entities in several other countries that have expressed an interest in evaluating the aircraft for acquisition, but our negotiations are too preliminary to make public the interested nations at this time,” Hess said.

Hess also said he couldn’t discuss how many AT-6s the company planned to produce this LRIP round, nor when the AT-6s would be delivered to customers, but said capacity on a T-6 trainer aircraft production line for the Navy would impact numbers.

“The same manufacturing line is used to build the T-6 trainer aircraft for the U.S. Navy, so capacity on that production line, as well as our ongoing conversations with interested entities, will impact production levels,” Hess said.

Both the AT-6 and T-6 are built in Wichita, Kan.

The AT-6 is Hawker Beechcraft’s entry into the Air Force’s $355 million Afghanistan Light Air Support (LAS) contract, which is now currently under review in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Hawker Beechcraft offered its AT-6 while competitor Sierra Nevada Defense Corp. teamed with Brazilian manufacturer Embraer to bid Embraer’s A-29 Super Tucano turbo-prop aircraft.

After eliminating Hawker Beechcraft and awarding the contract to Sierra Nevada in December, the Air Force changed course, terminating the contract in March and re-opening bidding to Hawker Beechcraft. Sierra Nevada sued the Air Force to reinstate the LAS contract and to gain access to the Commander Directed Investigation (CDI).

Both companies submitted responses to the Air Force’s new LAS Request For Proposals (RFP) (Defense Daily, June 21).