Lockheed to offer T-50A to USAF
Lockheed Martin will offer the T-50A aircraft for the US Air Force’s (USAF) Advanced Pilot Training (APT) competition, it announced on 11 February.
The T-50A was developed in cooperation with Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) as a replacement for the T-38 to train pilots to fly fifth-generation aircraft and eliminate fifth-generation training gaps and inefficiencies. The accompanying T-50A Ground-Based Training System (GBTS) provides an immersive, synchronised ground-based training platform.
Rob Weiss, executive vice president and general manager, advanced development programs, Lockheed Martin, said: ‘The T-50A is production ready now. It is the only offering that meets all of the APT requirements and can deliver those capabilities on schedule.
‘We carefully studied a clean-sheet option for the [advanced pilot training] competition and determined that it posed excessive risk to the APT cost and schedule requirements.’
Lockheed Martin has selected its Greenville Operations facility in South Carolina as the preferred Final Assembly and Checkout (FACO) site to manufacture the T-50A.
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