McDonnell Douglas T-45 Goshawk

This competition that's been going on for some time has been restructured a couple of times.

The Navy itself decided that we don't need an airplane that actually goes and lands on an aircraft carrier to replace the T-45 Goshawk.

And this airplane has now been in service about 40 years, right? So the Navy is very cognizant and wants to sunset that capability.

And I think that given what a future generation of naval aircraft are going to be like, that they don't necessarily need an airplane that goes and flies out to the carrier as part of its new pilot training system.

Yeah, it is not the same thing.

One of my first jobs out of school was to work on the T-45 Goshawk, the naval trainer.

And there's a great Netflix series out on the trainers.

And got to train F-14 drivers with it, pilots.

Like took off on fire and it didn't end so well.

Yeah, I remember in the T-45, that was a huge thing.

I think they ended up just taking the fuel caps off.

That's such a marine

But I did want the challenge and I did know some of the mission sets.

And then as I got through flight training and got into the T-45 and we started doing the bombing runs and those kinds of things really piqued my interest.

And so, yeah, I think it just kind of naturally flowed into what I didn't really know I wanted to do at the time.

But I knew I wanted to do something along those lines.

You go in to that pipeline.

Went to Meridian, Mississippi for my jet training.

flying the T-45.

So great experience there.

We have some counter UAS stuff.

We've got the T-45.

but people are obviously concerned that there are, you know, Shaheed drones, but also the kind of ballistic missiles that have been hitting targets in the Gulf, but also Ukraine.

Are we fully protected? There's recent, obviously recent, you know, kind of the skies, the war game podcast and TV series has also highlighted that, this gap in our defenses.

So mover's right.

Our, our, uh, skipper in T-45s, he said at our winging, he said, "You know, the T-45 is the last airplane you're gonna fly.

Everything after this is a weapon system." And that's what the Gripen is.

It's a weapon system.