Originally Posted by
Bob Viking
Martin, back when the decision had to be made (bearing in mind the timeline from contract award to start of student training on Phase IV) there weren’t many options other than new Hawks. Five years later then PC21 or M346 would have been realistic options. Another five years later the T50 might have been in with a shout.
All of these points presume that, if Ascent were responsible for FJ purchase as well as all the other aircraft, they still would have chosen to make Phase IV FJ their first phase to start teaching. More likely, they would have pushed that down the line, let the Hawk T1 soldier on in RAF service and worried about the choice at a later date. There would then have been more options. And that would have made for some very interesting (and unpredicted) conversations regarding requirements versus platform choices.
BV
I do wonder what variances in response you’d get in terms of requirements and informed output standard dependent on end platform destination? How much do you want to download from the OCU into AJT as that appears to be a bottleneck? A competition to replace T2 by the early 2030s would be interesting for sure!