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Defense #defense · USA/USAF February 22, 2026

Air Force green-lights T-7 trainer jet for full production

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Air Force green-lights T-7 trainer jet for full production

The Next Generation of Pilot Training Takes Flight

After more than two years of delays, the U.S. Air Force is poised to declare the Boeing T-7A Red Hawk trainer jet ready for full production within days, marking a critical inflection point for a program that has consumed enormous resources and weathered substantial technical and programmatic headwinds. The decision—formally known as Milestone C—represents the Air Force's confidence that the jet's design is mature enough to move from the experimental phase into sustained manufacturing at rates needed to replace the service's aging T-38 Talon trainers, which have been flying since 1961.

Rodney Stevens, the Air Force's program executive officer for training, framed Milestone C as "monumental," telling Breaking Defense that the service is "confident in the design of the aircraft that we have, and that we're ready to start proving that we can produce the aircraft at rate." The Red Hawk will train the next generation of American fighter and bomber pilots—a mission critical to maintaining air superiority as peer competitors modernize their own pilot development pipelines.

A Long Road to This Moment

The T-7 program has been plagued by the kind of technical and managerial challenges that have become familiar in modern military aviation. Boeing, the prime contractor, faced design complexities involving the trainer's escape system and flight control software that prompted a scathing 2023 assessment from the Government Accountability Office. The program slipped more than two years past its original production timeline, a delay driven by both technical issues at Boeing and the Air Force's decision to shift to an "active management" strategy designed to reduce risk before full-rate production commenced.

That strategy, championed by former Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter and aligned with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's push to accelerate fielding timelines, prioritizes phased production lots and concurrent testing rather than waiting for perfect design maturity. It's a calculated bet: move forward with manufacturing while continuing development work in parallel, accepting some risk of design changes in exchange for getting capability to pilots faster. Stevens emphasized that this approach is being "very closely" managed with Air Education and Training Command (AETC) and Boeing.

The Cost of Ambition

Boeing's fixed-price contract on the T-7 has become the program's defining financial reality. The company has absorbed approximately $3.2 billion in cumulative losses—a staggering sum that underscores both the technical difficulty of the program and Boeing's commitment to seeing it through. Under the terms of the deal, Boeing must fix any "safety-critical items" discovered during testing or defects that prevent the trainer from meeting AETC's requirements at no additional cost. The Air Force has also dangled financial incentives tied to three major milestones: completing engineering and manufacturing development (EMD), achieving production readiness, and fielding the ground-based training system. Boeing has hit 17 of 19 targets to date.

What Comes Next

Two T-7A Red Hawks have already been delivered to Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, where the 99th Flying Training Squadron became the first Air Force unit to receive the aircraft in January. One will be used for instructor familiarization; the other for maintainer training. An update planned for March will allow 99th pilots to begin flying and familiarizing themselves with the aircraft. Type 1 aircrew training will extend into early 2027, followed by initial operational test and evaluation in spring or summer 2027. The Air Force's target is initial operational capability—delivery of 14 training-ready aircraft—no later than November 2027, with the first generation of pilots beginning full training in 2028. Three additional aircraft are slated for delivery this year. Despite acknowledged risks from concurrent development and production, Stevens expressed confidence that the Red Hawk will match or exceed the T-38's performance while providing modern training capabilities that current-generation pilots desperately need.

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Think of it like...

Boeing has absorbed roughly $3.2 billion in losses on the T-7 program—equivalent to the annual budget of a mid-sized U.S. city—to bring this trainer to operational readiness.

Related Entities

United States Air Force·agency
Boeing·company
T-7A Red Hawk·vehicle
Air Education and Training Command·agency
Rodney Stevens·person
Dan Gillian·person
Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph·facility
Edwards Air Force Base·facility
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Space Weather4 days ago

ESA captures 'ring of fire' eclipse from space in ultraviolet light

ESA's Proba-2 Captures Rare Annular Eclipse From Above Atmosphere On February 17, 2026, the European Space Agency's Proba-2 satellite achieved what ground-based observatories cannot: a crisp, unobstructed view of an annular solar eclipse from space. The spacecraft captured the event in extreme ultraviolet light, revealing the Sun's corona—its wispy, million-degree outer atmosphere—with unprecedented clarity. Unlike observers on Earth, who watched the Moon form a brilliant "ring of fire" across the Sun's disk, Proba-2 documented the eclipse free from atmospheric distortion, providing scientists with raw data on solar behavior that could reshape how we prepare for space weather threats to critical infrastructure. An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly between Earth and Sun but appears too small to completely block our star. This happens because the Moon sits farther along its elliptical orbit, making it smaller in the sky than the Sun. The result is a glowing ring—the photosphere—visible around the Moon's silhouette. While dramatic from Earth, the real scientific payoff comes from space. Proba-2's SWAP (Sun Watcher using Active Pixel System) imager operates at 17.4 nanometers, a wavelength that penetrates the Sun's corona to reveal solar flares and coronal mass ejections in detail. Ground-based telescopes cannot access this information because Earth's atmosphere absorbs ultraviolet light. Why This Matters Now The timing of Proba-2's observations arrives as space agencies worldwide confront an uncomfortable reality: we are ill-equipped for the next major solar storm. In May 2024, a geomagnetic storm rated G4 (severe) disrupted farming equipment GPS across North America and degraded power grid stability. Scientists warn that a Carrington Event-scale storm—possible within the next 12 years—could cause trillions in economic damage. By monitoring the Sun's corona during eclipses, researchers can refine models that predict when and where coronal mass ejections will hit Earth. Proba-2's 2026 data feeds directly into this effort. Proba-2, launched in 2009, represents a lean approach to solar science. The satellite is small—fitting inside a compact spacecraft architecture—yet bristles with sophisticated instrumentation. Its longevity (now in its 15th year of operation) reflects solid engineering and ESA's commitment to sustained solar monitoring. The SWAP imager has been the backbone of ultraviolet solar research for over a decade, making the February 2026 eclipse observations a natural extension of an already robust mission. The Broader Context Solar eclipse observations from space have accelerated scientific discovery since NASA's Skylab era in the 1970s. Modern satellites like Proba-2, SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory), and Japan's Hinode have transformed our understanding of solar dynamics. The February 2026 eclipse is part of a constellation of upcoming celestial events: a total solar eclipse crosses Greenland, Iceland, and Spain on August 12, 2026, followed by another total eclipse over North Africa and the Middle East on August 2, 2027. Each event offers opportunities for both space-based and terrestrial science campaigns. What's Next The data Proba-2 collected during the February 2026 annular eclipse will be processed and released to the broader scientific community, likely yielding dozens of peer-reviewed papers on solar corona dynamics and heating mechanisms. Meanwhile, space agencies are preparing deployment of next-generation solar observatories—including ESA's upcoming Solar Orbiter deep-dive missions and NASA's planned solar probe fleet—designed to get even closer to the Sun and capture phenomena invisible to current instruments. The 2026 eclipse serves as both a capstone to a generation of solar science and a proving ground for the observational strategies that will guide the next decade of heliophysics research.

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