I am as confused as the next person about this "innovative" solution. Clearly the trend, in both training and operational flying, is for less and less actual flying with the synthetics picking up the slack.
On that basis the decision to bring back Hawk T1 from the dead kind of defies belief! In Beagle's defence it does kind of feel like the RAF IS rolling back the years with this, and as another poster said, just introducing a legacy hoop in the system.
So why are we doing it? Why cant the 28 Hawk T2s at Valley cover this requirement? I dont think the shortage is airframes, so it must be either teaching staff or maintenance issues, or something else?
Or are the naysayers on here right, is the quality of throughput from the highly synthetic training just not up to scratch and the RAF is effectively running a side by side trial??