Navy begins inducting T-45 trainer aircraft for service life extensions

WASHINGTON — The Navy has started inducting its legacy trainer aircraft, the T-45 Goshawk, into a service life extension program (SLEP) designed to keep the fleet in service through 2036 while the Navy advances its successor fleet through an industry competition.

“One T-45 will undergo a wing swap, while the other will receive the full scope of SLEP work. The wing swap process allows aircraft to fly into [fleet readiness center] and exchange their wings with ones that have already undergone repair, enabling more efficient turnaround times,” according to a July 22 statement from Naval Air Systems Command.

The T-45 Goshawk, of which the Navy owns 193 aircraft, is a jet trainer fleet used by the Navy and Marine Corps to qualify new pilots. Originally produced by what is now Boeing and derived from an earlier British aircraft made by BAE Systems, its first iterations joined the US Navy’s fleet in the 1990s.

But the aircraft is showing its age. In its annual budget justification documents, the service states the T-45 is facing “significant aircraft, engine, and component obsolescence issues. These issues are projected to dramatically increase operating costs and aircraft availability by 2030,” according to the j-books.

V2X, a Virginia-based defense contractor that supports the operations and maintenance of numerous military aircraft fleets, is managing the T-45’s “organizational-level, intermediate-level and depot-level maintenance” for the Navy, according to the service’s statement.

“The T-45 aircraft encompasses 29 distinct configurations, making the partnership with V2X particularly critical,” said James Bock, a Navy official overseeing the effort. “Organizational-level training is tailored specifically to the type, model and series, so ensuring our artisans are expertly trained on these unique variants is essential. Throughout a full service life extension repair, there are 17 technical directives that must be accurately completed, underscoring the complexity and importance of the collaboration in support of fleet requirements.”

T-45 repairs are scheduled to continue through 2036, according to NAVAIR.

Parallel to the efforts to keep the T-45s in service, the Navy has been conducting market research with industry this year to evaluate possible vendors for its Undergraduate Jet Training System, also colloquially known as T-XX. That program is envisioned to provide the full suite of capabilities the service needs to produce qualified pilots, including the aircraft, associated simulators and ground control systems.

According to documents made public from an industry day earlier this year, the Navy is planning to publish a request for proposals in December and award an initial contract in January 2027. That contract award date was pushed up roughly a year from 2028 to 2027, according to the service’s budget justification documents. The j-books do not provide an explanation for the accelerated schedule.