Boeing Defense, Space & Security will unveil its clean-sheet design for the U.S. Air Force’s T-X advanced pilot trainer competition during a rollout ceremony in St. Louis next month.
The company is partnered with Saab for the program, which aims to replace the 55-year-old Northrop T-38 Talon with a modern jet for training prospective fighter and bomber pilots.
Boeing is the last of the four competing prime contractors to show its hand, having only released pictures of the nose of its proposed aircraft until now. On Aug. 22, just days after Northrop Grumman’s alternative clean-sheet aircraft was spotted performing high-speed taxi tests outside the Scaled Composites plant in Mojave, California, Boeing launched a promotional website containing new teaser images of its T-X.
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Those artist renderings and associated videos reveal a shoulder-mounted, shallow-anhedral wing configuration with a fuselage-mounted landing gear. The wing and tail planforms are similar to those of the T-38, and the aircraft has a flat-bottomed, rounded nose section with box-like pitot inlets on either side of the fuselage.
The distinct chine along the forward fuselage on the Northrop T-X is not evident in the Boeing design. The front profile and inlet/wing grouping indicate a much longer, T-38/Northrop F-20 Tigershark arrangement with an extended forward fuselage, conventionally profiled nose section and single engine.  
Boeing T-X spokeswoman Rachelle Lockhart says the aircraft will be fully revealed during a ceremony at the company’s F/A-18 and F-15 manufacturing plant in St. Louis on Sept. 13. The unveiling comes ahead of the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference planned for National Harbor, Maryland, from Sept. 19-21.
Boeing’s and Northrop’s competing proposals will be the talk of the conference, with a request for proposals for a minimum of 350 next-generation trainers expected in December. The two companies are pitting their clean-sheet proposals against pre-existing designs. Lockheed Martin and KAI are teamed to offer the T-50A, a block upgrade of the T-50 Golden Eagle fighter trainer. A Raytheon/Honeywell/CAE team is proposing the Leonardo-Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master, offered as the T-100. Northrop is partnered with BAE Systems and L-3 for its bid.
The T-50 is currently built by KAI in South Korea and the M-346 by Leonardo in Italy. Final assembly of the T-X versions will be done in the U.S. if Lockheed or Raytheon wins. Lockheed is already mapping out an assembly line at its plant in Greenville, South Carolina, where it currently produces the C-130J.
Boeing has not decided if its T-X will be assembled in St. Louis, but with F-15 and F/A-18 assembly winding down, it’s doubtful the work would go anywhere else. “We’re looking at all options,” Lockhart says.
Having now seen all of the alternative designs, Lockhart said the Boeing team remains confident that a clean-sheet design was the right approach to meeting the Air Force’s T-X requirements.
“We’re investing in the future of the Air Force, and we saw an opportunity to build something better from inception,” she said. “We could give the Air Force exactly what it wanted while meeting its requirements and schedule.”
As a matter of policy, Boeing declined to comment on Northrop’s aircraft, and would not confirm any link between its T-X prototype and the large packages that arrived by air from Saab’s plant in Norrköping, Sweden in June. Images published online at the time show what look like large aerostructures being offloaded from an Ilyushin Il-76 freighter.
Lockhart declined to say if Boeing will assemble one or two prototypes as part of its T-X campaign. Lockheed has brought two T-50As to the U.S. for flight testing and demonstration.
The Air Force released its final draft RFP for T-X in July and is marching toward an RFP release at the turn of the fiscal year, triggering a one-year competitive evaluation phase.
A milestone B decision and vendor downselect for the four-and-a-half-year development phase is expected in early fiscal 2018, with entry into service targeted for 2024. The first five development aircraft and four ground-based training systems are due from 2020-21.
The contract is worth billions of dollars, and a victory for Boeing would go some way toward keeping it in the combat aircraft business after its F-15 and F/A-18 lines expire, having lost the lucrative Long-Range Strike Bomber competition to Northrop’s B-21 last October.