APT-2, the first T-7A Red Hawk for the USAF, flies over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. (Air Force photo by Bryce Bennett)
WASHINGTON — The Air Force is changing course for the development of the T-7A Red Hawk training jet, delaying a key milestone by a year while offering new cash opportunities for prime contractor Boeing in exchange for changes to the aircraft, according to service acquisition chief Andrew Hunter.
Under the new plan, the start of the trainer’s production phase, or Milestone C decision, will be pushed back to 2026. To counter that delay, the Air Force will acquire four new production-representative aircraft to provide extra testing capacity, which Hunter said can help accelerate aspects of the program so that initial operational capability (IOC) can be achieved in 2027.
Fielding the T-7A, meant to replace the service’s fleet of T-38 Talons, is “critical,” Hunter said in a Monday interview at the Pentagon. “And the question is, how do we just make sure for AETC [Air Education and Training Command] that we deliver?”
Steve Parker, the interim CEO of Boeing’s defense division, said in a statement to Breaking Defense Tuesday that “we appreciate the partnership with the U.S. Air Force and are committed to providing our warfighters with the safest, most-advanced training system in the world. This innovative approach allows us to provide a production-ready configuration to the Air Force prior to low-rate initial production, further reducing any future risk to production. This will accelerate the path to delivering the critical capability on the timeline the Air Force needs.”
Pressure has been mounting on the Air Force and Boeing amid delays for the Red Hawk program that is already years behind schedule, forcing the service to rely longer on the aging Talon.
Budget documents released last spring indicated plans to halve the jet’s procurement in fiscal 2025 and forecast that IOC would be reached in 2028, a delay of roughly two years compared to the program’s original 2018 baseline. Under the new approach, IOC is instead projected in November 2027, and money previously planned for procurement in FY25 would be put back into R&D to fund the acquisition of the four aircraft — as long as lawmakers sign off. Getting to IOC by that time ensures the program meets AETC’s “need date” for the Red Hawk, according to an Air Force official.
The official said the four aircraft can help the test campaign with tasks like evaluating mission systems and participating in formation flying, but are not planned to be specially instrumented like developmental jets currently being used for flight testing. The new planes will count toward satisfying the program’s IOC criteria, consisting of 14 aircraft that can be used to begin “curriculum development and training” for AETC, with deliveries expected in FY26.
As part of a new “active management” strategy, Hunter said the Air Force would allocate “significant funds” toward incentive agreements with Boeing to address issues that were not originally envisioned when the plane’s fixed-price development contract was negotiated. He did not specify how much money the Air Force is setting aside for the purpose, though the trainer’s overall budget for FY25 would remain the same at $362 million, according to the Air Force official. Hunter additionally indicated the money was not going towards fixes Boeing was supposed to have already done.
“It’s not work scope that Boeing would have to do necessarily anyway in order to deliver the jet,” he explained. Instead, it’s items that “in order for it to be an effective trainer for the Air Force, we need these things.”
For example, Hunter said incentives could be used to boost the jet’s range.
“What we’ve determined as part of our testing process is there’s actually significantly more range available, but it costs money to achieve that, and it’s not required by the contract,” he said. “So one of the things we want to incentivize Boeing is, ‘Hey, if you can make relatively simple changes and give us that additional range, we want it.’”
The trainer’s fixed-price development contract Boeing signed in 2018 has left the aerospace giant on the hook for cost overruns since, leading to over a billion dollars in losses to date and what Hunter described as out of synch priorities between the Air Force and the company.
“The nature of the contract, it’s not a bad contract, but increasingly, over time, as you get further and further from the center point of what the contract was designed to do, the incentives get more and more misaligned,” Hunter said.
Previously, “[Boeing’s] incentive was to stop losing additional money and to reduce the risk of additional losses. And our incentive was, we want the airplane,” he said. Following the new agreement, as well as advancements in the test campaign and progress on Boeing’s end to mitigate supply chain issues, “now we’re aligned, and that gives me a lot of confidence in the relationship [with Boeing] going forward.”
The Air Force official added that the “underlying fixed-price agreement still applies,” but that “future requirements discovered during test not covered by the incentive agreement will be evaluated by the Air Force. While no specific incentive allocations have been made, incentives under consideration largely relate to on-time production” of the four test vehicle aircraft, “EMD [engineering and manufacturing development] completion, and production readiness.”
Despite challenges in the test campaign, Hunter said he is confident the T-7A’s overall design is sound and that the trainer will meet the Air Force’s goals.
Following a visit with the test team at Edwards Air Force Base, “the payoff line in that was, ‘We have a winner here,’” he said. “If we hadn’t had that solid understanding that, in fact, this is the plane that the Air Force needs, we wouldn’t have been nearly as motivated to reach this understanding.”
