Inside T-7 Red Hawk Test Operations At Edwards AFB
The U.S. Air Force’s new advanced jet trainer aircraft, the Boeing T-7A Red Hawk, is deeply engaged in an accelerating and expanding flight test program at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The USAF’s need for the Red Hawk is acute, with aged T-38 Talons bearing a heavy pilot training burden as Air Education And Training Command (AETC) struggles to meet pilot output targets.
The T-7 is designed to improve aircraft availability and it incorporates technology meant to accelerate training. “The T-7A is a generational change over the T-38 that’s going to open up a lot of options for AETC,” says Lt. Col. Jonathan “Gremlin” Aronoff, T-7A Integrated Test Force director.
A team of Air Force and Boeing pilots and engineers are working with the new trainer to generate sufficient data and confidence to endorse that the aircraft is ready for students and instructors to fly, and that the Red Hawk meets contractual requirements that would green-light Boeing to commence low-rate initial production.
Delays in the T-7 program have compounded USAF pilot training struggles, as detailed in May 2023 by Andrew Hunter, assistant secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. “Due to issues discovered in the early development and test phase of the program, the Air Force is delaying its Milestone C decision to initiate the buy of T-7A production aircraft. This will shift the T-7A program’s initial operational capability [IOC] into the Spring of 2027. We are pursuing risk reduction activities to mitigate some of these schedule challenges,” Hunter said in 2023.
However, significant progress is being made, with Red Hawks now flying with the Integrated Test Force at Edwards AFB, which is breeding confidence that the program is making good progress. “Everyone here is eager for the test work so we can get the airplane to AETC as fast as possible. They need the T-7A and we want to give it to them as quickly and as safely as we can,” adds Aronoff. “We definitely don’t have any excessive pressure on us, it’s very much about working methodically to get the Air Force something it needs, and everyone’s being incredibly respectful of how we do that.”
T-7A Red Hawk origin
The Boeing T-7A advanced jet trainer was selected in 2018 to replace the USAF’s geriatric T-38C Talons, but the Red Hawk is already three years behind its original schedule, and is now planned to enter service in 2027. The original timeline called for Boeing to start delivering the first T-7As to the USAF at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, from 2023 to commence initial instructor pilot training, ahead of IOC in 2024, which is defined as being a “fully fitted-out squadron of aircraft and training devices.”
Boeing was awarded a $9.2-billion contract by the USAF in September 2018 to supply 351 T-7As and 46 associated ground-based training simulators when it won the T-X trainer competition. Initial flight-test work was conducted out of Boeing’s St. Louis, Missouri, facility using a pair of “Production Relevant Jets,” or PRJs, that Boeing built for the T-X competition phase.
Following the contract award, Boeing started T-7A production at St. Louis with a static test article (STA) and the first of five engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) aircraft. Boeing said in early 2021 that the STA would be complete in “a couple of months” and that it featured a “significant amount of instrumentation” that would allow it to be compared against the digital modeling and prove out the service life goal of 8,000 flight hours for each T-7A.
Flight-testing at St. Louis with the two PRJs continued and revealed some widely reported handling issues, such as wing-rock at high angles of attack. Further delays have been incurred by the need to clear a wide tolerance envelope for the aircraft’s escape system, which is based around the Collins Aerospace ACES 5 ejection seat. Specifically, this relates to safe ejection for different aircrew body weights, particularly regarding lighter-weight pilots.
While the T-7A was digitally designed and manufactured from digital models using a methodology called full-size determinant assembly [FSDA], this hasn’t removed the need for rigorous flight testing and certification to verify that the modeling and simulations are accurate. The all-digital approach hasn’t removed all development risk, and test work has required additional time to be allocated for re-visiting problematic items.
Although the low-rate initial production decision date has been delayed beyond February 2025, a decision is still anticipated by February 2026.
Edwards testing
The first of five EMD T-7As arrived at Edwards on Nov. 8, 2023. It was followed by a second EMD jet and one of Boeing’s two PRJs – taking the test fleet at Edwards to three aircraft by the time of TWZ’s visit in October 2024. “Testing will continue until we feel we can give the end user a product that they can use,” said Aronoff. “When the program office and AETC decide to declare Milestone C, that’s when they’ll start building low-rate initial production airplanes.”
“We work for Air Force Materiel Command and the Air Force Test Center. Specifically, the T-7 Integrated Test Force comes under the Air Power Foundation’s Combined Test Force. We have three ITFs under this – the T-7 ITF, the F-16/T-38 ITF, and the Emerging Technologies ITF.”
“Everything we are doing in T-7 flight test is based on proving the contract, proving out all the things that the aircraft is supposed to do, and that starts with safety of flight and building up the flight envelope – how fast, how far, how high. It’s about verifying that the airplane is doing the things it’s supposed to do per the letter of the contract.”
The flying at Edwards typically sees T-7As being crewed with one Boeing and one Air Force pilot, with all maintenance being conducted under contract by the manufacturer. “We’re very much hand-in-hand and integrated together,” explains Aronoff. “We are the lead developmental test organization [LDTO] and Boeing is our partner, and we stay in lockstep with them. We make sure that when we’re going to test something that they agree it’s something we should be testing, that the conditions are appropriate and that we’re testing it in the correct way. It’s about making sure we are going after the right data in the right way to satisfy the contractual obligations to develop the airplane.”
“Currently, we are engaged in flight envelope expansion. We have one of the PRJ T-7s fitted with a spin-recovery parachute and we’re using it to open up the high angle-of-attack envelope and fly the departure resistance type of flight testing,” Aronoff explained.
“We also have two EMD jets currently, one is instrumented for loads, noise, and vibration testing – opening up the structural envelope and understanding how the structure handles different maneuvers over time. This is about monitoring fatigue. We want to make sure that the engineering models for the T-7 are correct. We do that by measuring discrete test points – altitude, airspeed, and g-force combinations to verify that the model predictions are accurate.”
“The second EMD airplane at Edwards is our flutter test airplane. Think of the interaction between the structure of the airplane and the air around it. Think vibrations and the harmonics of the flight controls, and that’s needed to open up the air speed envelope. We go to different altitudes and run flutter programs in the flight control system, which automatically shakes the airplane at different frequencies and amplitudes to try to excite a response. We can target specific amplitudes and frequencies that we are interested in and we can be very precise in how we gather data.”
Aronoff says the T-7 work is the most precise flying he’s ever done. “You have a control room of about 30 people watching your every move, and sometimes they tell you that what you flew wasn’t good enough. You are trying something multiple times and they tell you that they need a cleaner set of data, but they can’t feel the turbulence, can’t feel the heat of the mission, and they ask you to go do it again. That’s my job, to gather data for the engineers to verify the airplane is doing what it’s supposed to do.”
“Right now, we’re still very much building that safe envelope to operate in and flying with kid gloves. I need to be very precise in how I fly the aircraft. We’re talking plus or minus a couple of knots, plus or minus 50 feet, executing a certain amount of g, plus or minus 0.2g normally. Very tight tolerances, because we need as clean of a data set as possible. We’re streaming that data in real-time to the control room so they can look at the squiggles and make sure it’s the right amplitude, the right frequency, and do real-time analysis. If it’s a good data point, we can move on to the next event.”
“With our high angle-of-attack campaign, when we do a maneuver, and see if the aircraft responds the way we thought it was going to respond? As long as it’s matching our model, we keep marching along. It’s when there’s a slight deviation from the model we have to look at why it deviated to check that it’s within acceptable bounds. Our loads tests are conducted in the same way. When I pull 6g, is the g-distribution around the airplane matching the model? In flight testing we predict, test, validate. We predict results, we then go out and test, and then we validate the model that we use to predict.”
The third EMD T-7 completed a month-long trial of extreme weather inside the McKinley Climatic Laboratory in Florida earlier this year and it’s now back in St. Louis for technical order validation and verification. “They’re verifying that the manuals for maintenance are written properly and accurately. EMD four is being used right now to do some ground testing for a new flight control law that’s coming out, and the fifth jet is still in production,” says Aronoff.
“I really want to stress the partnership. We are together on this every step of the way, and drawing on Boeing’s experience and expertise that they have already built with the T-7. While the two PRJ aircraft did do a lot of really great stuff for the program, ultimately, there are changes between the PRJs and EMD jets, so we have to be very deliberate in our engineering mindset on how we develop the airplane.”
Boeing implemented a number of modifications to the EMD T-7s to address lessons learned from the PRJs, and Aronoff is keen to stress that the current test effort at Edwards has earned a lot of credit for the work that Boeing did with the PRJs early on. “The outer mold line of the airplane is essentially the same, but things like the onboard computers have changed, the software we’re running is a little bit different and there are small changes throughout the airplane that are different enough that we need to verify them.”
“Manufacturing design is a very difficult time in flight testing, especially in developmental work because if you find anything wrong, you’re generally going to have to stop, investigate, then come up with a fix before you continue,” Aronoff explained. “So by nature of where we are in testing, we expect a slower schedule than anyone would really want.”
“No program has ever gone through testing on its original software. We’re going to find things that need attention, and that’s our job. If I’m not finding things, I’m not looking hard enough. In general, there’s always things in the operational flight program software that we can do better. The contract and the requirements are spelled out for us, and so we continue to iterate on things until it meets the contract requirement – that’s the measure of performance.”
“Our duty is to get the airplane fielded as quickly as it makes sense to, so that it’s safe. If you think, for example, of the worst instructor pilot and the worst student pilot combination ever, we have to make it safe enough for them. Yet we also have to make the airplane able to challenge the next Chuck Yeager, so it’s really finely tuned to suit the best of the best as well as those that need a little more help.”
The changing world of military pilot training
Military pilot training is evolving. Fighter aircraft have become easier to fly in some respects, but they feature increasingly complex mission systems and information flow. Holding airspeed, altitude, and heading is still important for young aviators, but the emphasis in training has evolved to include employing the weapon system effectively to help streamline the path to advanced front-line fighters.
“The T-7 is a very high-performance airplane. It’s very powerful with a lot of thrust, and it will be a great challenge for student pilots. I wouldn’t say that stick and rudder skills aren’t important – they’re extremely important – but they aren’t the most important thing that we need to emphasize in modern pilot training. One of the big elements that separates the T-7A from the T-38 is the ability to download mission system tasks into the cockpit,” Aronoff explains. “Theoretically on day one of pilot training, a student could be logging onto a data link, could be setting up different screens and fighting that information overload. Ultimately, the end user [Air Education and Training Command] will tailor a syllabus to build the product, in this case the student pilot that they need. We are providing a tool that enables that.”
The T-7A cockpit features a side-stick control column and a customizable large area display, or LAD. “You can have up to four different portals up, including mini portals, and you can have a different format for each portal,” Aronoff explains. “It’s extremely customizable, which is going to challenge the students in terms of managing all of the information. They will need to decide what’s important, and what isn’t. What size screen do they want, how will they use the HOTAS [hands-on throttle-and-stick] controls, or are they going to use their fingers, because it’s a touchscreen display. How do they find the information they’re looking for, and what information do they want displayed at any one time?”
“The student can fly, for example, with a moving map on the right screen, a weapons display in the middle screen, and maybe a simulated targeting pod on the left screen. Will the display look like a Raptor display, an F-35, an F-16? No, but all the relevant data is there. That’s not to say the jet isn’t capable of doing that in the future. It just wasn’t a requirement for the T-7A to mirror any specific aircraft’s displays.”
The T-7 ITF is primarily evaluating the T-7A from an Undergraduate Pilot Training, or UPT, perspective. The first step in jet training. However, it also has a keen eye on the future application of the T-7 in the follow-on introduction-to-fighter fundamentals, or IFF, which is being taken into consideration. “Every time we fly the airplane, even now, we’re looking at how an instructor would employ it. Every time I’m in the back seat of the T-7A I’m thinking like a UPT instructor. We have a diverse team here with T-38, F-15, F-16, and F-35 guys, and as we test the T-7A we evaluate it for future profiles that we will tackle later on in the program, such as an introduction-to-fighter fundamentals profile, where a student and instructor will go and fly a BFM [basic fighter maneuvres] sortie, for example.”
The T-7A is not equipped with a radar or targeting pod, and sensor data is synthetically generated in the avionics for training purposes, and can be shared via data link. The aircraft cannot carry any training weapons such as practice bombs and weapons employment in training will all be simulated. In fact, the only external store the T-7A is mandated to carry is a travel cargo pod.
AETC is concurrently working closely with Boeing on development of the T-7A simulator, which will be an important part of the overall syllabus. Aronoff says that right now for every hour of live flying the team undertakes, it spends two or three hours in the simulator honing the different mission profiles. “For all of the data-gathering maneuvers we need to fly on a sortie, we rehearse them in the simulator. At Edwards we currently just have the one simulator and we also make a lot of use of the Boeing simulator that they have in St. Louis.”
“One of the big things I always get asked about as a T-38 instructor is landing from the back seat of the T-7A. In the T-38 this is somewhat of a traumatic experience, with very limited forward visibility. I’m pleased to say that the T-7 tandem cockpit has much better forward visibility thanks to that stadium seating.”
Breaking new ground
Unlike the 1950s and 60s, when new military aircraft types were emerging with regularity, the T-7A program is one of the rare times in modern military aviation where a brand new aircraft type is being flight-tested. “Almost every time we fly the T-7 here at Edwards we’re doing something that’s never been done in the airplane before. That’s exciting because I can say I’m the first person to go this fast or this high in the airplane. Some people look at me strangely when I tell them I’m really excited about putting this airplane out of control and doing departure suitability testing. We’re doing brand new developmental testing on a brand new airplane.”
“I like to emphasize that it can be a straight pilot training aircraft, where you fly and learn how to do aerobatics, learn how to land a jet, things like that. You can also tailor it in a live virtual constructive [LVC] environment where you have three or four actual wingmen with you fighting your classmates who are down on the ground in the simulator. The instructor can ramp up or down the scenarios, whatever the student or the training desires.”
“Fundamentally, the way we’re going to produce pilots will change. They can learn how to turn on the radar on their first flight in the T-7 if they want that. Students that are doing well and flourishing are going to be able to move forward a lot quicker with the T-7.”
“Ultimately, it’s up to AETC to decide how they want to unlock all of these features, but with the T-7 we have all the right tools in place to dramatically advance military pilot training in the USAF.”
Contact the author: jamie.hunter@teamrecurrent.io
