Lockheed Martin has abandoned the tender of the US Navy to replace the T-45 Goshawk trainer fleet, leaving three contenders for the future naval trainers.
Breaking Defense reported that the Lockheed Martin-KAI partnership offering the TF-50N trainer to succeed the carrier-capable T-45 Goshawk trainer aircraft has dropped out of the tender.
This leaves out M-346N (Textron/Leonardo), T-7 (Boeing/Saab), and SNC Freedom as the remaining competitors.
Despite succeeding T-45, the new trainer does not have to be carrier-capable like its predecessor. Instead of putting time and resources into carrier-borne use, the US Navy has taken the route of simulators to replicate carrier takeoff/landing scenarios. While this takes away one workload off the contenders, it also gives a new task, which would be the skills in making accurate simulators.
The US Navy plans to start replacing its T-45 fleet starting from the early 2030s.
Author: Kaan Azman
Editor:Özgür Ekşi
