Leonardo DRS focuses on increasing efficiencies, reducing risk with T-100 aircraft bid

ARLINGTON, Va. Leonardo DRS, formerly DRS Technologies Inc., in Arlington, Virginia, officials are refining the T-100 team’s bid for the U.S. Air Force Advanced Pilot Training (T-X) program. T-100 Program Manager Marc Lindsley provides an update on the T-100 in the T-X bid and evaluation process, emphasizing increased efficiencies and reducing risk for the U.S. Air Force.

Leonardo DRS is partnered with Leonardo Aircraft, CAE USA, and Honeywell Aerospace to engineer the T-100 advanced jet training system for the U.S. Air Force T-X program.

The T-X program has been established to enable the U.S. Air Force to buy a new two-seat jet trainer for fast-jet training to replace the Northrop T-38 Talon, the average age of which is more than 50 years. Roughly 350 aircraft are expected to be ordered to replace the T-38. The U.S. Air Force T-X program is a $16.3 billion project to replace the Northrop T-38C fleet with 350 new aircraft and training systems.

The Leonardo T-100 Integrated Training System is a military twin-engine trainer aircraft variant of the M-346 Master jet trainer. Leonardo and subsidiary Leonardo DRS intend to build a new plant at Moton Field in Tuskegee, Alabama, to manufacture the aircraft if the T-100 is selected.

Multiple teams are bidding on the program. Boeing and Saab are designing a new aircraft; Lockheed Martin and Korea Aerospace Industries are offering a modified T-50A; Leonardo DRS is submitting the T-100; and Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) are proposing a new design named the Freedom Trainer.

Intelligent Aerospace, the global aerospace technology network, reports on the latest tools, technologies, and trends of vital importance to aerospace professionals throughout the industry and around the globe, including engineers, engineering managers, and other key decision-makers involved in the research & development, design, test, manufacture, maintenance, upgrade and retrofit, management, and acquisition of electronics hardware and software components, tools, and systems for commercial and military fixed-wing, rotor-wing, and unmanned aircraft, air traffic control, airport operations, satellites, and space.