USAF training PAE: T-7A Red Hawk full-rate production delays will not affect LRIP timeline

APT-4 taxis at Vance AFB, Oklahoma, on its way to Edwards AFB. Vance AFB is one of the T-7As eventual operating bases. (71st Flying Training Wing/USAF)

The Boeing T-7A Red Hawk trainer aircraft's full-rate production delays are not anticipated to affect the aircraft's low-rate initial production, Rodney Stevens, program executive officer for training and director of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center's (AFLCMC) Training Directorate, said at the 2026 AFLCMC Life Cycle Industry Day (LCID) in Dayton, Ohio.

Stevens said on 28 July that the US Air Force (USAF) will continue to implement a phased, “active management” approach to spot issues in developmental testing and address them.

“You don't know what you don't know in that respect, but I would say that we have postured for if something was discovered during developmental testing that requires us to have to make a configuration change to aircraft that have already come off the production line,” he told Janes during a media roundtable.

He said his office is “[breaking] away from the traditional, very serialized approach of how we get through acquisitions to a more concurrent approach, so that we're able to deliver an aircraft that we firmly believe in, is what [Air Education and Training Command] AETC needs today, while we can start to focus on potentially the future of divesting the [Northrop] T-38 [Talon].”

He told Janes that even as the T-7A completes engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) his office has structured the programme “in a way that we will go back to the service acquisition executive all the way until we get to a point where we feel confident that EMD is coming to closure before we enter into a full-rate production decision”.