RAF New Jet Trainer Competition

This contest has rather inspired my downbeat conclusion to my forthcoming Hawk book.
For all its success with over 1,000 airframes built here and in the US, the Hawk could not rescue the aviation industry from itself. Screwing together bits of T-7, M-346 or T-50 is rather a come down and quite ironic given that Aermacchi (as Leonardo was) wanted to collaborate with BAC on a new trainer in 1969, that South Korea was a Hawk purchaser and developed the T-50 because Hawk was not advanced enough for its needs, and the US for a large part of the post-war period actually had few marketable training aircraft of its own (T-37 stopped production in the 70s, T-38 never exported, nothing in the Hawk/Alpha Jet class, T-45 is modified Hawk, T-6 is modified Pilatus PC-9).
 
Hood said:
This contest has rather inspired my downbeat conclusion to my forthcoming Hawk book.
For all its success with over 1,000 airframes built here and in the US, the Hawk could not rescue the aviation industry from itself. Screwing together bits of T-7, M-346 or T-50 is rather a come down and quite ironic given that Aermacchi (as Leonardo was) wanted to collaborate with BAC on a new trainer in 1969, that South Korea was a Hawk purchaser and developed the T-50 because Hawk was not advanced enough for its needs, and the US for a large part of the post-war period actually had few marketable training aircraft of its own (T-37 stopped production in the 70s, T-38 never exported, nothing in the Hawk/Alpha Jet class, T-45 is modified Hawk, T-6 is modified Pilatus PC-9).
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At the risk of getting off topic, I think the problem was that BAES just kept producing Hawks and making money from it. They never tried to design a replacement.

BTW, looking forward to the book.
 
GTX said:
At the risk of getting off topic, I think the problem was that BAES just kept producing Hawks and making money from it. They never tried to design a replacement.
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As has been pointed numerous times on here as soon as BAe found it out it could make more money from selling the assets it was gifted on privatisation it pretty much ceased to be interested in aircraft design and production and just milked what they inherited from BAC/HSA... once the merger with GEC/Marconi brought in the shipyards and systems integration businesses the writing was well and truly on the wall, I'm still amazed the Hawk hung on for as long as it did. I remember being told at Warton about 20 years ago the company operated on a Buy/Build philosophy... if it was cheaper to buy it in they did. For BAES its cheaper to buy in an airframe and adapt the training systems around it than design one from scratch when the companies design effort are being directed towards the higher returns of of GCAP...

Zeb
 
Hood said:
For all its success with over 1,000 airframes built here and in the US, the Hawk could not rescue the aviation industry from itself.
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The UK market is now nowhere near big enough to support a new trainer design like with Hawk. Even if Warton could build something competitive to cost and performance then many other countries that were previously export customers are now designing and building their own trainers as easy steps to develop their own industry. The export market is now much smaller, fragmented and competitive.

But loads of the training money is now in simulators anyway, so does it matter?
 
timmymagic said:
It's going to be M-346...

- For Leonardo and UK it would keep Yeovil open, especially with doubts over NMH, BAE have enough work on....
- Italy and UK are both going to use F-35A and B, Typhoon with ECRS.2 and GCAP....so tailoring the training aircraft and environment for those systems becomes a whole lot cheaper....this is a huge advantage over Red Hawk

The dream would be M-346FA with Grifo-E...but thats far too sensible...
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Also , if Yeovil is occupied with building M-346s , it means that MOD could select the Airbus bid for the helicopter replacement . . .

cheers ,
Robin .
 
The M-346 and T-50 are proven platforms, the T-7 less so as its brand-new but there is nothing to suggest that it will not be just as good. Essentially any of them are possibilities, it will boil down to cost and manufacturing offset.

While there may be some top-level preference within the RAF for the T-7, it's worth noting that due to the Hawk T.2's engine issues that pilots were sent to the Italian Air Force’s International Flight Training School at Decimomannu to learn on the M-346 and to the QEAF’s Academy which also has M-346s. So given that a slice of the current RAF fast jet pilots have been trained on the M-346m the RAF should have ample insight into that type's capabilities.
 
Hood said:
The M-346 and T-50 are proven platforms, the T-7 less so as its brand-new but there is nothing to suggest that it will not be just as good. Essentially any of them are possibilities, it will boil down to cost and manufacturing offset.

While there may be some top-level preference within the RAF for the T-7, it's worth noting that due to the Hawk T.2's engine issues that pilots were sent to the Italian Air Force’s International Flight Training School at Decimomannu to learn on the M-346 and to the QEAF’s Academy which also has M-346s. So given that a slice of the current RAF fast jet pilots have been trained on the M-346m the RAF should have ample insight into that type's capabilities.
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There is the possibility that the RAF has looked at their new experience of M346 and decided on T-7 as a direct result...
 
SailorBoy said:
There is the possibility that the RAF has looked at their new experience of M346 and decided on T-7 as a direct result...
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There has been no decision and it is incredibly unlikely that this would be sole sourced without a competition.
 
Ozair said:
There has been no decision and it is incredibly unlikely that this would be sole sourced without a competition.
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Sorry, that should have been future tense.
As in, if the RAF have had a bad experience with M346 it would heavily shift the competition in T-7's favour.
 
SailorBoy said:
As in, if the RAF have had a bad experience with M346 it would heavily shift the competition in T-7's favour.
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Or vice-versa.

As Red Admiral says - so much of the training is done in the simulator or using simulated capabilities within the aircraft that it doesn't really matter. You just need an agile jet that's quick enough, stable enough, updateable and doesn't cost a fortune to run. It's the performance of the overall training system and the simulation software that will probably decide the matter since buying a new trainer will mean buying a whole new ground facility and IT systems. None of that will come cheap.
 
Hood said:
Or vice-versa.

As Red Admiral says - so much of the training is done in the simulator or using simulated capabilities within the aircraft that it doesn't really matter. You just need an agile jet that's quick enough, stable enough, updateable and doesn't cost a fortune to run. It's the performance of the overall training system and the simulation software that will probably decide the matter since buying a new trainer will mean buying a whole new ground facility and IT systems. None of that will come cheap.
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Some of that synthetic training is also done in the jets themselves. And Italy operating Typhoon, F-35A and B....AND GCAP i.e. the same combat jets as the RAF now and in the future makes that a whole lot easier to build in, and share costs/development.
 
But why wouldn´t the trio of partners be able to do the same with the T-7 airframe? Haven´t we opened the the age of non-proprietary systems upgrades?
 
TomcatViP said:
But why wouldn´t the trio of partners be able to do the same with the T-7 airframe? Haven´t we opened the the age of non-proprietary systems upgrades?
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They could...but solely at the UK's expense.

Plus does the UK want to reveal anything to US and Sweden regarding any of the systems for 2 of those platforms? Would the UK under BAE have free reign?
 
GTX said:
That may be true but my point is that the fuel consumption of two engines will be high. More importantly two engines do typically mean more maintenance.

That only counts for the M346 if competing against the T-7. If you include the T-50 in the mix, which I am sure is the case, the story is different as it has been in service for roughly a decade longer than the M346. Both the T-7 and T-50 also arguably offer more capability but it will really come down to what the RAF is looking for.
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I did wonder for a while which would have higher operational costs 1'larger" after burning engine, or two smaller non-after burning engines
 
And the hysteria in the UK press has arrived in the form of a front page on the Sunday Express (08/02/2026)...

Red Arrows Heroes Fly Foreign Jets!

Fury as Red Arrows on brink of having to fly non-British planes for first time ever

Of interest is the wording of the URL:

nonsense uks iconic red arrows aircraft

Given that the url is probably derived by default from the article title in the CMS I do wonder what they are getting at...

Zeb
 
Again? must be slow news, i'm sure this had been front page news last year, Mail maybe?

I'm sure it's on here somewhere
 
Hard to tell if it was a puff-piece to promote Aeralis or a pure ragebait article.
Nice touch quoting ex-BAE Systems execs bemoaning the country doesn't build its own aircraft anymore, being the people who ran a company that decided not to build its own aircraft anymore....

Easy solution. Paint the new forrin' jets black and rebrand the Red Arrows as the reincarnation of the Black Arrows.
 
zebedee said:
nonsense uks iconic red arrows aircraft

Given that the url is probably derived by default from the article title in the CMS I do wonder what they are getting at...
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Surely just an earlier version of the headline using this sentence from the article:

The idea of the Royal Air Force’s iconic display team performing in an aircraft from overseas has been branded “nonsense”.
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Heres an idea... given the engine issues can be ironed out how about transferring the 128s to the reds, with a smaller M346/T7 buy to take over the training duties...?

Saudi Hawks team have just transitioned to the mk165 and given the amount of flying the 128s undertake the airframe hours can't be massive... especially compared to the T.1s...

Flight: Saudi Hawks aerobatic display team returns with replacement jets

Zeb
 
It all depends on what the RAF proposals are zebedee as to what trainer the RAF eventually goes for I am currently going for the Lockheed T-50 or the Boeing T-7 Red Hawk. Though it is a shame that BAE Systems cannot design a trully UK trainer like they did with the Hawk or do they not know how anymore?
 

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