WASHINGTON — By 2028, the Air Force expects that the T-7 Red Hawk will be flying with new pilots, heralding a modern era of training.
But an internal Air Force presentation, dated August 2025 and viewed by Breaking Defense, says that for the first several years those aircraft will come with a “serious” airworthiness risk, stemming from what the document calls “non-compliance” on the part of contractor Boeing to obtain necessary information on the training jet.
It’s one of several, previously unreported issues Air Force officials have been willing to accept to begin operations for the Red Hawk, an investigation by Breaking Defense found.
This investigation, which included interviews with sources, current and former Air Force officials and analysts, as well as a review of internal documents, provides the most detailed picture yet of the T-7’s programmatic stumbles, tensions with plane-maker Boeing and the Air Force’s plan to right the ship.
Among this investigation’s findings:
Two sources who spoke with Breaking Defense said the Red Hawk shows promise, and believe officials are dedicated to safety. But they raised concern about the aircraft’s speed of development, and argued the government has failed to hold Boeing to the terms it signed up for, pointing to consequences like delays and millions of dollars of added costs that may have to be carried by taxpayers.
“I’m concerned about the government losing capability because of a lack of enforcement of a contract,” a source with direct knowledge of the T-7 program, who like others was granted anonymity for this story, told Breaking Defense.
This is part one of a three-part series looking at the T-7 Red Hawk. Part two and three will be published in the coming days.
Many of the problems ultimately trace back to the initial T-7 contract awarded to Boeing by the Air Force in 2018, a fixed-price agreement that has caused the company to lose billions of dollars and been marked by disputes between the two sides about what the contract requires Boeing to provide. With a pressing need for a new trainer, Air Force officials have sought workarounds and new initiatives to keep the program moving forward.
In an interview and in response to written questions, Air Force officials confirmed issues facing the T-7, but emphasized the Red Hawk will be safe and effective when delivered to pilots.
While the program has been marked by technical challenges and contractual disputes, officials believe even if the T-7 is a work in progress, mitigation measures largely under the aegis of a new “active management” strategy should sufficiently ameliorate concerns and resolve points of contention. And, they argue further, extending operations of the aging T-38 Talon, the legacy trainer the T-7 is designed to replace, poses its own unique challenges.
“The Air Force acknowledges the urgency of replacing the 60-year-old T-38 and is deliberately balancing the schedule risk of the T-7’s development with the significant operational risk of extending the T-38. The goal is to get the capability to the warfighter as quickly and safely as possible, and the program is confident in the safety of the new aircraft,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Matthew Leard, director of plans, programs, requirements and international affairs at Air Education and Training Command (AETC), told Breaking Defense.
In response to a detailed list of questions, Boeing told Breaking Defense, “While we are working to get this capability to the warfighter as quickly as possible, we will not forgo safety or quality. Safety is paramount to Boeing and the T‑7A program.
“Post contract award, the Boeing T‑7A Red Hawk program has safely accumulated over 344 flight test hours across more than 350 test flights,” the company added. “As we continue to collaborate with the U.S. Air Force, the T‑7 program’s active management approach allows us to provide a production‑ready configuration to the Air Force prior to low‑rate initial production, further reducing future risk and accelerating the path to delivering this critical capability.”
‘Going Fast’
The Air Force says it needs to move quickly on the T-7 for many reasons, such as more modern features that can better prepare pilots to fly next-generation aircraft and an ejection system that can accommodate a wider range of body types, particularly for female aviators. But the program to this point has been dogged with delays.
Boeing won the $9.2 billion T-7 contract in 2018, and struggles have set back the trainer’s schedule by over two years. Formal production was approved in May, and prevailing plans call for the Air Force to declare initial operational capability (IOC) — consisting of 14 aircraft ready for pilot training — in fall 2027.
Air Force instructors are slated to begin what’s known as Type 1 training in production-representative planes this year, but the first new pilots are expected to fly in the aircraft beginning in spring 2028.
In the meantime, the Air Force will have to keep operating the T-38, whose obsolete airframe is already compressing the pilot training pipeline, according to Leard.(While the cause of a May 12 T-38 crash remains under investigation, the Air Force was forced to ground the fleet for a week.)
Yet even when new pilots start flying the T-7, there will still be more testing to do. The Red Hawk won’t have a fully expanded envelope — meaning the Air Force will not have completely evaluated the aircraft’s entire spectrum of operations. The jet under current plans will be designed to be safe to fly, but with limits pilots must obey.
It’s not unusual to field aircraft and other weapon systems with high concurrency, or an overlap between a weapon system’s development and production phases. What’s different for the T-7, sources said, is that it is going to be operated by pilots relatively early in training, without the instincts and experience of a seasoned aviator. And while there will be an instructor in the back seat, things happen very quickly up in the air.
The Air Force is “task saturating new pilots without a fully developed envelope,” the source with direct knowledge of the program said. “That scares me.”
A government source familiar with the T-7 program told Breaking Defense they believe officials are being mindful of safety, but due to previous delays, they noted the program will need to move quickly through remaining development, potentially raising unforeseen consequences.
“It’s the unknown, and they are going fast,” the person said, who was granted anonymity for this story. “When you go fast, things get screwed up.”
Regarding the 2028 timeline, “If all the stars and moons align, 2028 is realistic,” the person said. “I hope so, but I don’t think so. I think it’s going to be close, but not make that mark.”
Leard emphasized the aircraft will be safe when it is declared operational. “Where risk is concerned” regarding the timeline for the jet to enter service, “I would say we’ve shifted to accept more programmatic risk of concurrency to mitigate the operational risk of further delay,” he said.
Rodney Stevens, the Air Force’s program executive officer for training, previously told Breaking Defense the T-7 will initially be held to a standard of being “as good as, if not slightly better, from a flight sciences perspective,” as the T-38 when new pilots begin to fly it. The Red Hawk will then be improved through additional development.
Roughly a year ago, according to Leard, “We pivoted our approach and said, okay, let’s stop delaying the T-7 for capabilities the T-38 doesn’t have. Let’s take the T-38 equivalent airplane today, while testing continues. That way when testing is complete, we have trained [an] initial cadre and are ready for” the program’s initial operational test and evaluation phase.
“I take that very personally as a taxpayer,” the government source said, describing the decision to accept aircraft only as good as the T-38 as “not the next-generation trainer that was sold to Congress to award the contract.”
‘Risk Burndown Plan’
The Air Force evaluates an aircraft’s safety of flight using an “airworthiness” criteria, which includes a matrix measured by three degrees of risk. The T-7 will have to fly with what’s defined as a “serious” risk, the second highest. And in the case of the Red Hawk, officials can’t apply limits that could avoid the underlying issue causing the problem.
That’s because, according to the August 2025 presentation, Boeing is missing crucial data for the aircraft’s critical safety items, or “a part, assembly, or support equipment whose failure could cause loss of life, permanent disability or major injury, loss of a system or significant equipment damage.”
Specifically, the presentation asserts Boeing did not ensure its supplier agreements included data, dubbed “critical characteristics,” on those critical safety items. In layman’s terms, that lack of data means officials can’t be sure whether a critical safety item meets specifications, including why one might fail or when it may need to be inspected. And if any one of those items malfunctions or breaks, by definition the aircraft or even a pilot’s life could be at risk.
The presentation projects the first 82 T-7s, slated to be produced between now and 2031, will be affected as a result.
Stevens confirmed the airworthiness risk associated with the dearth of critical safety item data, but reasoned similar problems are “not uncommon” across weapon systems and are managed “day-in and day-out” by the Air Force. Still, he said no “operational limit” in this case can be applied in lieu of the missing data.
“We’ll have to evaluate individual manufacturers” who supply affected elements “to ensure that components were manufactured to the [critical safety item] criteria level,” Stevens said. “Otherwise, that risk will be carried forward for that aircraft. We’ll work hand-in-hand with AETC on managing that.
“As we learn information and start to eliminate any uncertainties with components that are on the CSI list, we will reevaluate whether the airworthiness risk can be reduced,” he said.
Additionally, he said that collaboration with Boeing on critical safety items “is part of a broader risk burndown plan for the T-7 program, which is designed to reduce system safety risks within the first few years of fielding.”
JJ Gertler, an analyst at the Teal Group, told Breaking Defense that serious airworthiness risks “are not unprecedented,” but that the military services typically have enough information on the underlying problem to impose operational restrictions “so that they don’t impinge on whatever that particular safety area is.”
In the case of the T-7’s critical safety items, the missing data means the Air Force cannot impose similar restrictions. “If this were the commercial world, there’d be a whole lot of liability lawyers lining up, sharpening their knives,” Gertler said.
But Leard, for his part, said the airworthiness problem posed by the lack of critical safety item data is different from other flying risks where data shows a reason to be worried. The aircraft’s ejection system, for example, showed issues in earlier tests, but officials believe design tweaks have ameliorated concerns. Leard contrasted those problems with missing data on critical safety items for the aircraft, which includes systems that have already demonstrated reliability like the GE Aerospace F404 engine that powers the Navy’s F/A-18 Hornet.
“On the Critical Safety Item Issue as it relates to the engine, our perspective is, this is a proven engine. It’s not a new engine,” he said. “For many of these CSI parts, we’re carrying the risk not because of known information that makes it high risk. It’s because we don’t have data on some of the parts, which I think is an important distinction … from an operational risk perspective, we view that much different than the risk we were previously carrying associated with the escape system.”
The “serious” airworthiness risk does technically translate to an elevated chance of an accident. However, the two sources who spoke with Breaking Defense noted that issues stemming from a lack of data, if they arise, would more likely culminate in impacts like the need to ground the aircraft.
While Stevens said the Air Force “is not anticipating” a need to ground the fleet, he acknowledged, “Obviously, we can’t predict the future, and ultimately, a fleet grounding determination would have to be made by the AETC commander.”
Among other requirements the Air Force claims Boeing “did not flow down” to its suppliers include those for configuration status accounting, which “[p]rovides a detailed audit trail of the aircraft configuration and its evolution over time,” the August 2025 presentation says.
The document says “[c]urrent impacts” of the configuration status accounting problem range from an unknown aircraft configuration to errors ordering parts and inefficient maintenance. In the longer term, the problem raises a host of issues like “runaway sustainment costs,” “compromised airworthiness” and “massive operational disruption,” according to the presentation.
Like with critical safety items, Stevens said establishing configuration status accounting is a keen focus of the new active management strategy with Boeing that was initiated last year, which “was specifically designed to mitigate risks by ensuring we have the right processes in place for long-term sustainment, availability, and airworthiness.”
Essentially, data will have to be captured and entered into an Air Force database as aircraft are delivered, “which will ensure a stable and supportable fleet for the warfighter that is currently in place and will continue to improve its fidelity through the first few lots of aircraft delivery,” he said.
‘Inhibitors’ To Flight Testing
Beyond data woes, Boeing’s performance issues on the T-7 program have been publicly documented, where program delays and developmental challenges so far have driven $3.2 billion in losses for the company. Sources who spoke with Breaking Defense detailed the issues as wide-ranging.
The government source described a key issue as Boeing “not knowing what they built” due to insufficient information on the vast web of suppliers and thousands of parts that make up the supply chain of a complex modern aircraft. That lack of knowledge about the Red Hawk, the source said, has turned relatively minor hiccups during development into more substantial setbacks.
“It takes them an enormous amount of time to figure out what to do when there is discovery” of a new problem, the person said.
Staffing has been a concern as well. The company leads what’s known as pre-operational support (POS), providing logistical and engineering resources for the current phase of the program. A March 2026 presentation between Boeing and the Air Force, viewed by Breaking Defense, notes that “POS manning quantity is improved but immature/incomplete documentation” along with “experience level and attention to detail have created challenges.”
Among other key “flight test inhibitors” described in the presentation are a lack of test point availability — itself a result of a backlog of analysis exacerbated by manpower limits — and parts shortages, where spare components need to be cannibalized from some aircraft to keep others flying.
Some tools like digital design also haven’t entirely worked out as planned, with a 2025 Government Accountability Office review finding that Boeing did not provide necessary data.
“The Air Force has no digital anything for the T-7,” the source with direct knowledge of the program said. “They can’t account for data. … It’s not even an enhancement over current processes. T-7 is a legacy acquisition.”
To be sure, the person noted there’s blame to go around. “I think the Air Force is still struggling with digital stuff, it’s a little bit of Boeing and the Air Force,” they said. (Stevens said digital tools accelerated design work and offered predictive value, while also facilitating a modern manufacturing approach known as full-size determinant assembly that speeds up production.)
Other challenges have been more mundane. For example, the aircraft currently cannot fly in the rain because exterior access panels don’t seal properly, potentially allowing water to seep in and damage the aircraft’s subsystems. The underlying problem forced the Air Force to tape up the aircraft during climate testing, the two sources told Breaking Defense.
“I was dumbfounded,” the government source said. “I thought, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’”
Despite the design issue, Air Force officials defended the decision to accept the aircraft and fly it with weather restrictions. Avoiding the rain is “an operational limit that we are willing to accept in the short-term to begin training,” Leard said. He reasoned that waiting for a fix, which is expected to be evaluated this summer, would set back the program’s schedule and delay pilot certification for Type 1 training.
“Would I trade two to four pilots being certified in the airplane for making sure we could fly through rain today? No, I think this was the right decision to make,” he said.
Outside the aircraft itself, the jet’s ground-based training system, or GBTS, has had struggles of its own. The simulator helps new pilots get a feel for the aircraft and learn how to fly it before stepping into an actual cockpit, and helps maintain their currency in between flights.
According to a report from the Air Force’s Operational Test and Evaluation Center dated November 2025 and reviewed by Breaking Defense, the GBTS was deployed even though it only mustered pass rates of under 30 percent for key benchmarks. “Despite these low pass rates,” officials “decided to ship the devices at the insistence of AETC to onboard the APT [Advanced Pilot Training] system as quickly as possible,” the report says.
A separate Air Force presentation dated March 2026 and viewed by Breaking Defense rates the performance of the GBTS as “moderate confidence/moderate risk.” If the simulator isn’t ready, subsequent training could be delayed, sources noted.
Leard, however, defended the ground system’s performance, and was not concerned it would be a schedule risk.
“GBTS is integral in training our initial cadre and I’m confident it not only provides incredible training today, but it will only continue to get better,” he said.
This is part one of a three-part series looking at the T-7 Red Hawk. Part two and three will be published in the coming days.
