WASHINGTON — Just weeks or perhaps days before the final T-X request for proposals drops, defense contractors are pulling out all the stops to ramp up enthusiasm for their offerings.

With the US Air Force’s top three aircraft priorities — the F-35 joint strike fighter, B-21 bomber and KC-46 refueling tanker — all under contract, the T-X trainer is the service’s last big aircraft competition on the horizon. Unless a new contender enters the ring, the battle will boil down to two clean-sheet designs — from Northrop Grumman and a Boeing-Saab team — versus two existing airframes put forward by prime contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

The message from the defense firms offering existing designs: "We’re ready."

During a Dec. 12 ceremony in Meridian, Mississippi, Raytheon unveiled the first renderings of a modern-looking building that will become its Final Assembly and Checkout (FACO) facility if its T-100 wins the T-X contract.

Leonardo will conduct most of the structural assembly of the T-100 — a version of the Italian firm’s M-346 — in Italy before shipping sections of the aircraft to Meridian for final assembly. Raytheon has said the program would create about 450 jobs in Mississippi.

"It’s a great day for manufacturing in Mississippi," Rick Yuse, Raytheon’s vice president of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, said during the ceremony. "The T-100 is not only innovative, it’s innovative and specifically customized for the US Air Force mission. It’s more than an airplane, seamlessly weaving together classroom instruction, ground-based simulators and an operationally proven aircraft, it will deliver a comprehensive training system to the pilots that will defend our nation."

Defense News accepted flight and hotel accommodations from Raytheon.

T-100 FACO rendering

A rendering of Raytheon's T-100 Final Assembly and Checkout facility, which it plans to build in Meridian, Miss., if it wins the T-X contract.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Raytheon

Raytheon has built one T-100, which has been conducting test flights in Italy since this summer, allowing the company to gather data on the jet’s performance ahead of an expected request for proposal release this month, said Roy Azevedo, president of Raytheon’s Space and Airborne Systems division. It has also produced a mock-up used to show the physical upgrades to the M-346, including a glass cockpit, new ejection seat and provisions for aerial refueling.

For now, the only T-100 is located in Italy, and the company has not decided on when it would relocate it to the United States.

"Our emphasis so far has been on the trailer," Azevedo said, referencing a trailer exhibited at the ceremony that houses T-100 simulators and other training materials. Raytheon has brought the T-100 trailer to air shows and conferences in an effort to get customers familiar with the product.

While Raytheon celebrated its ties to the Meridian manufacturing community with cookies and mason jars emblazoned with the T-100 logo, it also cheered the company's links to the Mississippi politicians attending the ceremony, including Republicans Sen. Roger Wicker, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Gregg Harper. The powerful head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Mississippi Republican Thad Cochran couldn’t make it, but sent his chief of staff instead.

"The last thing Thad and I talked about on the floor of the Senate at about 2 a.m. Saturday morning was the fact that he wished he could be here for this occasion," Wicker said. "We think Raytheon has got the best bid. We think they’re going to do what’s necessary so that the Air Force … is going to choose Raytheon. Once that happens, we’ve got a team in Washington, DC, that is going to make sure the program prospers."

Azevedo said congressional support was one of many elements that were used to choose the final FACO site.

"We’re extremely happy about the support that we’re seeing out of the Mississippi delegation," he said. "I can’t predict politically what this new administration is going to be a supporter of or not. I would think that this, being as high as it is on the Air Force’s priority [list], that it would be a program that survives. We’re not going to let it distract ourselves."

Just a week earlier, Lockheed Martin opened its own FACO facility in Greenville, South Carolina, to reporters. Unlike Raytheon, Lockheed upgraded one of its existing sites to conduct final assembly of the the T-50A, a version of the T-50 trainer built by Korea Aerospace Industries.

Mark Ward, Lockheed’s chief T-50A test pilot, stressed the company’s low-risk approach.

"There’s already a Lockheed group there, they’ve been here since the mid-80s. They’re already very proficient in maintenance-type operations and acceptance flight-type flying operations, so all we’re doing is adding on to a capability already existing there. We’re not having to stand up anything brand new," he said in a Dec. 13 interview.

"As far as the hangar that we’re using, it’s already been totally refurbished and ready to go," he explained. "We have our production facility already setup, we have already put in place our flight operations procedures, and we really are ready to go. So if the Air Force gives us a go ahead, it is very easy for us to just take it to the next step."

During the media visit last week, journalists toured the assembly line, took a ride in ground-based simulators and watched a live T-50A flight. Lockheed has one test asset, called T-X2, located in Greenville, which took off from the FACO for the first time on Nov. 19 and conducted test flights through Dec. 8.

No more flight operations are planned until early next year, but Lockheed continues to do ground-based testing, Ward said. In January, the company will also link its T-50A aircraft with the ground-based simulator, allowing pilots in both assets to practice accomplishing missions together.

"We’re just waiting on some hardware right now," he said.

Meanwhile, Boeing is hurtling toward the first flight of its purpose-built T-X design. Officials told Defense News in November that its T-X demonstrator will take off sometime in December, but have not released any further details.

The company’s first T-X jet recently wrapped up afterburner engine runs. The second demonstrator aircraft is also moving quickly through ground tests and will fly in early 2017.

Northrop Grumman, which has teamed with BAE Systems and L-3, has taken a very guarded approach to the T-X competition. So far the company hasn't released any photos of its design or information about how far along the jet is in testing, although photos of the aircraft during taxi tests emerged on Twitter this summer. Aviation Week later reported that the jet made its first flight in August.

Valerie Insinna is Defense News' air warfare reporter. She previously worked the Navy/congressional beats for Defense Daily, which followed almost three years as a staff writer for National Defense Magazine. Prior to that, she worked as an editorial assistant for the Tokyo Shimbun’s Washington bureau.

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