UK — New Hawk Advanced Trainer Flies Past Major Milestones

RAF Val­ley, Wales – A sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment has been achieved with the first 500 sor­ties, and 500 fly­ing hours, com­plet­ed on the UK Roy­al Air Force’s (RAF) Hawk Advanced Jet Train­er (AJT).

New Hawk Advanced Train­er Flies Past Major Mile­stones Source: BAE Systems

The RAF received the first of their 28 Hawk AJTs, also known as the TMk2, in 2009. Sig­nif­i­cant progress with the air­craft, which is used to train fast jet pilots of the future, has been made to date. 

Wing Com­man­der Bri­an Braid said: “To com­plete over 500 sor­ties and fly­ing hours in the Hawk TMk2 is a great achieve­ment. Since com­ing into ser­vice with 19(Reserve) Squadron last April the air­craft has caused quite a stir at RAF Val­ley as a world lead­ing fast jet trainer. 

“It has all the famil­iar­i­ty of the world renowned and much loved Hawk series of air­craft, but has the added bonus of being packed with the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy and avion­ics. The Hawk TMk2 is set to rev­o­lu­tionise the way the RAF trains its future fast jet pilots under the UK Mil­i­tary Fly­ing Train­ing Sys­tem. All the pilots cur­rent­ly fly­ing the Hawk TMk2 have noth­ing but praise for its abil­i­ty to emu­late our front line air­craft and are look­ing for­ward to being able to teach stu­dents and front line fast jet pilots in the new air­craft in the near future.” 

Mar­tin Rush­ton, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor for BAE Sys­tems’ Train­ing & Hawk UK busi­ness com­ment­ed: “This is great news for both the RAF and BAE Sys­tems. The RAF only received the first of their air­craft last year and have already got to grips with it and achieved this high num­ber of sor­ties and fly­ing hours. As a Com­pa­ny we believe the AJT is the most advanced jet train­er in the world, feed­back from the RAF ser­vice per­son­nel who are now using the air­craft pro­vides the evi­dence of our belief. ” 

BAE Sys­tems has recent­ly been award­ed a con­tract to sup­port the AJT air­craft over the next four years, and is respon­si­ble not only for the num­ber of air­craft made avail­able for train­ing flights but also for ensur­ing that the air­craft are able to car­ry out the train­ing mis­sion effectively. 

To date 23 of the 28 air­craft have been deliv­ered by BAE Sys­tems to the RAF at RAF Val­ley. The final air­craft is due to be deliv­ered this year. 

BAE Sys­tems also cur­rent­ly sup­ports the RAF’s Hawk TMk1 fleet at RAF Val­ley on Angle­sey in Wales. 

Over 900 Hawk air­craft have been sold, or are on order, and the air­craft is cur­rent­ly help­ing pro­duce high­ly trained pilots across 25 coun­tries world­wide. The AJT is the lat­est evo­lu­tion of the Hawk fam­i­ly of Jet Train­ers. It fea­tures the lat­est embed­ded train­ing capa­bil­i­ties, and when com­bined into an Inte­grat­ed Train­ing Sys­tem will deliv­er trained pilots at the low­est cost. 

About BAE Sys­tems
BAE Sys­tems is a glob­al defence, secu­ri­ty and aero­space com­pa­ny with approx­i­mate­ly 107,000 employ­ees world­wide. The Com­pa­ny deliv­ers a full range of prod­ucts and ser­vices for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced elec­tron­ics, secu­ri­ty, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions and cus­tomer sup­port ser­vices. In 2009 BAE Sys­tems report­ed sales of £22.4 bil­lion (US$ 36.2 billion). 

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please contact: 

Dean Tasker, BAE Sys­tems
Tel: +44 (0) 1772 858054 Mob: +44 (0) 7793 420019
Email: dean.tasker@baesystems.com

Andy Bunce, BAE Sys­tems
Tel: +44 (0) 1772 852070 Mob: +44 (0) 7801 716448
Email: andy.bunce@baesystems.com

Issued by:
BAE Sys­tems, Farn­bor­ough, Hamp­shire GU14 6YU, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1252 384719 Fax: +44 (0) 1252 383947

www.baesystems.com

Text- / Bildquelle (source): BAE Sys­tems