by a subsidiary of Blackwater Worldwide, an American private military contractor. The aircraft lacked the machine guns normally mounted in the wings. In 2012, that aircraft was subsequently purchased by Tactical Air Support, Inc., of Reno, Nevada. Military Special operations In 2008, the U.S. Navy began testing the Super Tucano at the behest of the U.S. Special Operations Command for its potential use to support special warfare operations, giving it the official U.S. designation A-29B. Air force Afghanistan In 2009, the Super Tucano was offered in a U.S. Air Force competition for 100 counterinsurgency aircraft. On 12 April 2010, Brazil signed an agreement that opened negotiations for the acquisition of 200 Super Tucanos by the U.S. On 16 November 2011, the AT-6 was excluded from the LAS program, effectively selecting the Super Tucano. According to GAO: "the Air Force concluded that HBDC had not adequately corrected deficiencies in its proposal… that multiple deficiencies and significant weaknesses found in HBDC's proposal make it technically unacceptable and results in unacceptable mission capability risk". Hawker Beechcraft's protest against its exclusion was dismissed. However, the contract award was disputed and a stop-work was issued in January 2012. For this procurement, the avionics were supplied by Elbit Systems of America. Sierra Nevada, the US-based prime contractor built the Super Tucano in Jacksonville, Florida. The 81st Fighter Squadron, based at Moody Air Force Base, was reactivated on 15 January 2015 and received the A-29 aircraft and provided training to pilots and maintainers from the Afghan Air Force. Purchased for the Afghan Air Force, all 20 aircraft were planned for turn over to the Afghans in batches by December 2018. Until all the A-29s were turned over to the Afghan Air Force, Afghan forces lacked a fixed-wing close air support aircraft, however they had attack helicopters. Light attack experiment In August 2017, the Air Force conducted the "Light Attack Experiment" to evaluate potential light attack aircraft. Following this, it decided to continue experimenting with two non-developmental aircraft, the Textron Aviation AT-6B Wolverine derivative of the T-6 Texan II and the Sierra Nevada/Embraer A-29 Super Tucano. Tests were scheduled to be conducted at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona between May and July 2018. The tests are intended "to experiment with maintenance, data networking and sensors… [to] gather the data needed for a rapid procurement", according to Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson. Experimentation will examine logistics requirements,