BOEING GETS $9.2B DEAL TO BUILD USAF TRAINING JETS
Air Force plans to buy 351 of the jets and 46 simulators, looks to 2023.
Boeing has emerged the winner in the $9.2 billion contest to build new U.S. Air Force training planes.
Boeing will work with Sweden’s Saab AB to develop a new plane for the competition, beating Lockheed Martin Corp. and Leonardo DRS, according to Reuters news service, which was the first to report the news Thursday.
The Air Force plans to buy 351 of the jets and 46 simulators. More purchase options could push that number as high as 475 jets and 120 simulators.
The Air Force expects the first jets to be delivered in 2023 with the program to reach full operation in 2034.
The jet trainer program is managed by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. About 75 people worked on the program in 2017.
“There are many, many folks in industry very, very interested in winning this award,” Kevin Buckley, program executive officer for mobility programs at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, told the Dayton Daily News in late 2016.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that losers in the context will likely appeal the contract decision, given how apparently low the Boeing bid is. The $9.2 billion contract award is lower than the ceiling of $16.3 billion placed on the program by the Air Force, the newspaper noted.
The new jet would replace the decades-old T-38 Talon, a supersonic advanced jet trainer last delivered to the Air Force in 1972. The plane, which first flew in 1959, has had multiple upgrades over the years.
The Air Education and Training Command has about 430 of the T-38s still in the fleet to train future fighter and bomber pilots. Buckley has said the Air Force needs a newer trainer able to sustain high-G conditions to better prepare pilots to fly the latest fifth-generation aircraft, the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II.