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).

AJTs, also known as the TMk2
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

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →