The RFP comes two months after the Air Force awarded Boeing a potential $127.3 million contract modification to continue risk reduction efforts for the program.
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Before the plane was revealed in the Boeing warehouse, an audience of employees heard speeches from company executives and testimonies read by teenagers that describe what aspiring fighter pilots want from a training aircraft.
Partnered with the Swedish manufacturer Saab, Boeing sources claim that the twin-tailed aircraft powered by a General Electric engine was built with the latest fifth-generation fighters in mind: reports show that the trainer aircraft mimics the design and airframe of the latest aircraft that pilots would eventually be flying.
Darryl Davis, the President of Boeing Phantom Works, says Boeing’s T-X which has been in the works for almost three years breaks the norm.
T-X will replace the Air Force’s aging T-38 aircraft.
Three teams have already submitted aircraft bids for the T-X program, and the final team to throw its hat in the ring is a partnership between Boing and Saab, which just unveiled a two-seater supersonic jet trainer for the competition.
He says it incorporates all of the modern technology and techniques.
“It’s really easy to upload a training app, verify the jet and you’re ready to fly”, Davis said. That was the breakthrough-it allowed us to bring all the innovation we’ve been working on for decades in the Boeing company together into this design, ‘ said Davis. And it’s a design that outside looks great of course but also the inside of the aircraft with all the systems and the capabilities’.
The Air Force isn’t expected to release final contest criteria until December, picking a victor next year who would begin production in fiscal 2018.
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Davis, whose Phantom Works includes the luridly famous Black Diamond production experiments, said production knowledge gleaned from both companies’ commercial and defense experience meant they would rely on “orders of magnitude less touch labor”.
