U.S. Media: The U.S. Navy's New Trainer Aircraft Faces Long-Term Delays

[Global Times Special Correspondent Wu Yan] As the world's number one military power, the United States has encountered a series of setbacks in the development of new weaponry in recent years. The U.S. Navy's new generation of advanced trainer aircraft has repeatedly delayed its service time due to difficulties in selection, evolving into a systemic pilot training crisis, according to a criticism from the U.S. "Breaking Defense" website on June 30.

Reports indicate that Boeing decided to withdraw from the bidding for the U.S. Navy's advanced jet trainer in early June, which surprised many. This is because the current T-45 advanced trainer in service with the U.S. Navy is a Boeing product, and the U.S. Air Force's newly mass-produced next-generation advanced trainer, the T-7A, is also a Boeing product. Therefore, the naval version of the T-7A was originally expected to have a strong chance of winning the bid. However, Boeing stated that to meet the U.S. Navy's specific requirements for engine certification, additional and lengthy research and testing would be necessary, leading to the decision to withdraw from the bidding for the naval version. This also means that the training aircraft systems of the U.S. Navy and Air Force will diverge in the future.

Previously, Lockheed Martin had already exited the bidding for the Navy's advanced trainer, leaving only two proposals still in contention: the M-346N trainer jointly developed by Italy's Leonardo and the U.S. company Draken International, which is based on the M-346 trainer that has been in service for over 10 years and has multiple international customers, thus having a high level of technological maturity; and a brand new model called the "Freedom Trainer" developed by the Nevada-based company in collaboration with Northrop Grumman and General Atomics. Due to the low number of companies participating in the bidding for this trainer project, the U.S. Navy is considering delaying the final decision again. According to the original plan, the final winning proposal for this trainer was supposed to be determined within this year, but it has now been postponed to 2027, with the delivery time for the new trainer also pushed back to 2032.

Reports indicate that since the early 1990s, the T-45 has been the core model for jet aircraft training for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. However, as the model has aged, it has experienced frequent malfunctions in recent years. In the past decade, the T-45 has been grounded multiple times due to safety issues, interrupting training. From October 2022 to March 2025 alone, the T-45 was fully grounded at least four times due to engine problems, primarily involving blade failures, including manufacturing defects in the low-pressure compressor blades.

Additionally, the T-45's onboard oxygen generation system has long faced reliability issues, posing a serious threat to pilot safety. In 2012, the U.S. Navy reported as many as 13 incidents of in-flight oxygen deprivation, which surged to 38 in 2016 and reached 21 in the first five months of 2017. At that time, over 100 U.S. Navy flight instructors refused to fly in protest due to dissatisfaction with the oxygen supply issues of the T-45, resulting in the cancellation of hundreds of training flights. Some pilots candidly stated that flying the T-45 "does not feel safe." In 2020, the head of U.S. Navy aviation training also admitted that due to failures in the oxygen generation system, engine issues, and other preparation shortcomings, the training time for U.S. Navy fighter pilots extended from three years to nearly four years, leading to a shortage of approximately 100 carrier-based fighter pilots in the U.S. Navy.

U.S. media criticized that the development of trainer aircraft should not be a recurring problem for a traditional aviation power like the United States. Due to the prolonged inability to find a replacement for the T-45, the U.S. Navy has been forced to initiate a plan to extend the service life of this trainer, targeting about 145 active T-45 aircraft for life extension improvements, with the aim of keeping them in service until the 2040s. However, the U.S. Navy's own budget documents reveal that this model faces "serious aging issues with the airframe, engines, and components," and "is expected to significantly increase operational costs and begin to significantly affect its availability by the 2030s."     

Critics argue that this situation actually brings more direct risks: the training of U.S. Navy fighter pilots must rely on the aging and frequently malfunctioning T-45 fleet, while also placing a heavy burden of basic training tasks on the already stressed "Super Hornet" and F-35C carrier-based fighter squadrons, severely impacting the normal readiness of U.S. military fighter forces.