WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman has decided to produce a new, clean-sheet design for the US Air Force's T-X trainer replacement competition, the company tells Defense News.
The move is an about-face after four years of offering an off-the-shelf design in the form of BAE's Hawk training system.
The decision to switch from a well-known system to a new design began germinating two years ago, as the Air Force started making the requirements for T-X more clear to industry, said Marc Lindsley, Northrop's T-X program director.
During that time, the company was still planning to offer the Hawk. In recent months, however, the company decided a new design would best meet the technical and affordability requirements.
Northrop informed the Air Force of its plan "a few" months back, Lindsley said, adding that there was no specific requirement that drove the decision but rather an "aggregate" of inputs from the service
"[After] the open dialogue with industry, the understanding [of what] the requirements and capabilities are, and what the costs are of those requirements, we have an opportunity with this clean-sheet design to give them exactly what they want, and that's what we want to do," Lindsley said.
The new design is in the assembly stage, with a first flight expected sometime this year. Northrop declined to give a more detailed timetable on when that would be, but companies always like to make a splash around either the Paris Air Show in June or the Air Force Association's annual convention in September.
The T-X program is intended to replace the Air Force's fleet of T-38 training aircraft with a more highly advanced jet capable of training pilots for use in fifth-generation fighters like the F-22 and F-35. The service plans on issuing an RFP on the program in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016, with a projected contract award in the fall of 2017.
The service signaled its intention to move ahead with T-X in its fiscal 2016 budget request, which earmarked $11.4 million for research-and-development funding. That number escalates to $12.2 million in fiscal 2017, then jumps up to $107.2 million in 2018, $262.8 million in 2019 and $275.9 million in 2020.
Until Northrop's announcement, the only clean-sheet design expected in the T-X competition was from a team of Boeing and Saab. The new designs will go up against a pair of legacy trainers in the form of Lockheed Martin's offering of Korean Aerospace Industries' T-50, and the T-100, a collaboration between General Dynamics and Italy's Alenia Aermacchi based on the latter's M-346 design. Textron AirLand is also planning to enter a trainer variant of its new Scorpion jet in the competition.