T-45 Goshawk: The 'Trainer' Plane You Have to Master to Fly the F-35 or F/A-18

Summary and Key Points: The United States Navy's T-45 Goshawk, a crucial training aircraft, recently surpassed one million flight hours at Naval Air Station Kingsville, Texas. Despite its significant milestone, the T-45's future remains uncertain due to issues like in-flight engine malfunctions.

The Navy has been exploring replacements under the Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS) program, considering options like the Boeing-Saab T-7 Red Hawk, Lockheed Martin-KAI T-50, and Leonardo-Textron M-345N.

However, none of these options are carrier-capable, which may delay the replacement timeline, ensuring the T-45 continues to serve in training pilots for carrier operations.

T-45 Goshawk: This United States Navy Aircraft Reached Major Milestone – 1 Million Flight Hours

Last year, the Boeing-made AH-64 Apache achieved five million flight hours, a significant milestone that few military aircraft have come close to matching. However, a United States Navy aircraft recently surpassed one million flight hours, yet, its future is also in question.

Earlier this month, the T-45 Goshawks assigned to Training Air Wing (TAW) 2 at Naval Air Station (NAS), Kingsville, Texas, marked the one million hours cumulatively flown by the unit's fleet of training aircraft. Notably, that million-hour milestone doesn't include the flight time for T-45 Goshawks assigned to TAW-1, located in Meridian, Mississippi.

The Unsung Hero of the Navy

The T-45 Goshawk doesn't have the same name recognition as the F/A-18 Super Hornet or F-35C Lightning II, but before U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps aviators earn their chance to sit in the cockpit of those warbirds they'll learn the basics and more in the Goshawk.

According to Naval Air Systems Command (NAVIR), the tandem-seat, naval carrier-capable variant of the British Aerospace Hawk jet trainer is employed in the intermediate and advanced portions of pilot training for jet carrier aviation and tactical strike missions. It first entered service with the U.S. military in April 1988, but there have been calls for it to be retired due to several issues with the aircraft – notably an in-flight engine malfunction that occurred earlier this year. It resulted in the grounding of the training fleet, the second in just two years.

As TheAviationist.com reported, at just 36 years in service, the T-45 is barely older than some of the pilots who try on the platform. By comparison, the United States Air Force's T-38 Talon has been training pilots for 65 years!

The Navy's Goshawk Replace – Coming Soon?

For nearly six years, the United States Navy has been exploring the replacement for the T-45 Goshawk as part of its Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS) aircraft program, which called the procurement of the trainer as early as fiscal year 2026 (FY26).

The sea service had been pitched three options, including the Boeing-Saab T-7 Red Hawk, which was also selected by the U.S. Air Force to replace the aforementioned T-38 in its T-X program; the Lockheed Martin-KAI T-50, which is based on the Korea Aerospace Industries T-50 and features engineering and design elements from the F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-35 Lightning II; and the Leonardo-Textron M-345N, which is already in service with several U.S. partners including Italy, Poland, Singapore, Israel, Greece, and Qatar.

What is notable about all three options is that none are actually designed for carrier-capable, and NAVAIR hasn't specified if it would retain some of its T-45s for training pilots in carrier launches and landings.

This could explain why last month, the U.S. Navy pushed back the timeline for awarding a new contract by two years. Perhaps the service has understood that even as there is new flight-control technology that aids a pilot during the final approach to a carrier, pilots should still know how to do it correctly!

For those reasons, it is likely the T-45 Goshawk will continue to rack up the flight hours.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

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