PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - LM to offer T-50A for USAF's T-X requirement...
Old 23rd Feb 2016, 16:57
  #27 (permalink)  
LowObservable
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Far West Wessex
Posts: 2,580
Received 4 Likes on 2 Posts
Back to a four-horse race, the winner being whoever meets (not exceeds) the requirements at lowest life-cycle cost with acceptable risk.

That is, "whoever other than LockMart" for industrial-base reasons, and also because the T-50 is damn nearly the size of an F-16B.

The M346 is a nice solid airplane. It has an operational and maturing LVC capability built-in (from Elbit) which Raytheon appears to be throwing away in favor of a domestic solution. Industrial base? Yep, just what the customer's looking for, a new military airplane production organization.

NorthGrum doubtless has an interesting design, but the customer wants it to focus on LRSB (and other spookier things).

If you want a low-LCC new airplane, nobody does that like Saab. And Boeing's been working very, very hard on the ground-based bit of TX for a few years, grounded on very extensive experience in selling training systems to customers (for helos, particularly). And it's certainly the spread-the-work winner.

Boeing's deal to lose, I think.
LowObservable is offline