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T-45C Replacement

Swanee said:
Pretty soon it will be a product of the last company standing.

I'm not sure that's how you get a quality airplane.
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I take both large aviation Defense companies pulling out as a very bad sign, indicating one of two things:
1.) The requirements are so stringent that they will be extremely hard to meet and
2.) The state of our defense industry is such that making money on a jet trainer will be extremely difficult, leading businesses to seek opportunity elsewhere.

I think Textron Aviation Defense and Leonardo have a viable product plan in and of itself, but the question also remains how difficult the USN is going to make life for the winner. As Kelly Johnson famously stated, "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."
 
Let’s not pretend the T-7 has been a model of program management.

Also the T-50 was always the best option and the Navy punted this one into the stands.
 
SynixMan said:
Let’s not pretend the T-7 has been a model of program management.

Also the T-50 was always the best option and the Navy punted this one into the stands.
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Lockheed made the decision to pull out. Not the Navy. So, I’m not sure I understand where you’re coming from.
 
I'm calling it now. T-45 replacement will fail entirely from a procurement standpoint. The airframes will simply time out. SNAs will then go through Intermediate/Advanced in the T-6 for everything except Carrier Qualification and Strike stages, which they will do in the T-45 simulator. They'll be told, "You're basically flying a jet, anyway. Just imagine you're doing this with 100 extra knots."

It's working super well for the Air Force with Mobility track students doing T-6, then T-1 sims, then going straight to their mission aircraft, isn't it?
 
Roger_Waveoff said:
It's working super well for the Air Force with Mobility track students doing T-6, then T-1 sims, then going straight to their mission aircraft, isn't it?
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From what little I have gleaned, no- I don’t gather that it is going well.

The training commands are indeed in for a rough time.
 
sevenhelmet said:
From what little I have gleaned, no- I don’t gather that it is going well.

The training commands are indeed in for a rough time.
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My younger brother is an E-3 IP. He says the closest he's been to being killed in an airplane is on every students first flight on the tanker. The 707 doesn't fly formation with another 707 like a T-6 does.
 
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GroundPounder said:
Stupid question time:

If they found a warehouse with 100 0 time T45Cs, are they still and adequate training platform, or are they outdated for the purpose?
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Outdated. Avionics and performance-wise, there are better options. The only thing that made the T-45 worthwhile was it's a carrier-capable aircraft. Now that's going away...

Trainers should represent the platforms for which they're preparing you. The T-45 really doesn't very much, aside from technically being jet-powered and faster than a T-6.
 
Roger_Waveoff said:
It's working super well for the Air Force with Mobility track students doing T-6, then T-1 sims, then going straight to their mission aircraft, isn't it?
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I think they should take the mobility students and have them rent some civilian multi-engine thing and just crisscross the country, visiting all of the military bases with airfields. We might lose a few, but what an experience. The sort of thing that makes aviators, as opposed to just pilots.
 
sevenhelmet said:
Outdated. Avionics and performance-wise, there are better options. The only thing that made the T-45 worthwhile was it's a carrier-capable aircraft. Now that's going away...

Trainers should represent the platforms for which they're preparing you. The T-45 really doesn't very much, aside from technically being jet-powered and faster than a T-6.
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The T-45C cockpit sort of transitioned well to the legacy Hornet. I imagine the transition from the T-45C to the super Hornet and F-35 (both with JHMCS) is probably a lot like going from the T-34C to the T-45C. There was a lot of negative training there.
 
taxi1 said:
I think they should take the mobility students and have them rent some civilian multi-engine thing and just crisscross the country, visiting all of the military bases with airfields. We might lose a few, but what an experience. The sort of thing that makes aviators, as opposed to just pilots.
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Leadership is risk-averse to the extreme. They'd probably just argue for putting you in the simulator for a "cross country". I don't think the human side of the argument has won a battle in quite a while- think about the psychological value and human learning of going to the Boat for the first time. Nope, not good enough to keep it in the training command syllabus any more. I made that argument years ago, and got accused of "legacy thinking". God, I'm glad I went through in the early 2000s, when we still valued human talent.

We aren't making aviators- we're making happy program managers. Stop whining and take your PMP course like a man, nobody needs to know how to fly an airplane since they all have autopilot anyway, right?

Flight school of the future will range from coffee maker FAMs to advanced administrative roadblocking. ;)
 
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