If the Air Force chief of staff had his way, his next dollar would “probably” go to the T-X advanced jet trainer program.
“As we rack and stack our priorities, we just don’t have enough space (in the budget),” Gen. Norton Schwartz told an audience yesterday at a Credit Suisse conference in Arlington, Va. “If you asked me where my next dollar would go, it probably would go there.
“We need to do it, the problem is there is no space,” he added.
The T-X program is designed to replace Northrop Grumman’s [NOC] aging T-38. The Air Force said in February it was delaying production of the T-X, saying the decision was a function of need over time. The goal was to get the T-X trainers in the fleet by 2017.
Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and L-3 [LLL] are partnering to offer the Hawk Advanced Jet Training System (AJTS), which the team will manufacture and assemble in the United States. Alenia North America, a subsidiary of Finmeccanica, plans to bid with its T-100, which is the American version of the M-346. Lockheed Martin [LMT]/Korea Aerospace and Boeing [BA] also plan to compete for the T-X program (Defense Daily, Feb. 15).