The US Air Force (USAF) is attempting to retire its entire fleet of Beechcraft T-1A Jayhawks, including 101 T-1As used by its Air Education and Training Command (AETC), by 2026 to save money as part of the command’s undergraduate flight training transformation.
The effort, not previously disclosed, will also allow the service to further invest in acquiring Boeing’s delayed T-7A Red Hawk trainer, which may not reach initial operational capability until the early 2030s.
AETC spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Cody Chiles tells FlightGlobal the USAF plans to divest 43 T-1As in fiscal year 2024 (which ends in September), 41 T-1As in FY2025 and the remainder of T-1A fleet in FY2026.
The USAF has 178 T-1As, it says.
“Divesting manpower and funding from legacy training platforms, such as the T-1A, will allow AETC to invest future funding into modernised training platforms, such as the T-7A Red Hawk,” Chiles says.
The USAF uses the T-1A – a military variant of Beechcraft’s twin-engined Hawker 400 – to train students selected to fly airlift and tanker aircraft.
The AETC and the 19th Air Force are leading the newly-revealed plan to divest the entire T-1A fleet, even though the service’s FY2025 budget request revealed no such effort. That request only proposes retiring 21 T-1As based at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida dedicated to Combat Systems Officer training.
Congress has been informed of the AETC’s intention for the USAF to divest the entire fleet, Chiles says. “Headquarters Air Force, AETC and 19th Air Force officials worked closely with legislative liaisons and Congress to conduct the appropriate notifications and ensure we are in full compliance with the National Defense Authorization Act.”
USAF representative Ann Stefanek confirms the service has a “tentative plan” to divest the full Jayhawk fleet and could propose the retirements in its FY2026 budget request.
Such a request would mark the command’s third attempt in recent years to divest Jayhawks.
In its FY2023 budget, the air force asked to retire 50 T-1As. Congress pushed back, saying the jets could not be retired until the USAF implemented its new undergraduate pilot training scheme – known then as “UPT 2.5” – across the service and until it submitted a date for the T-7A’s full operational capability. The T-7A is primarily intended to replace the USAF’s Northrop T-38C Talons.
The air force made a similar request in its FY2024 budget, proposing retirement of 52 T-1As. Congress again intervened. Lawmakers required the secretary of the air force to first certify the “full, fleet-wide implementation” of the AETC’s new training curriculum and to send Congress a written assessment of how the retirements and the new curriculum would affect pilot training.
Stefanek confirms that in April air force secretary Frank Kendall sent letters to members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees certifying completion of full, fleet-wide implementation of the new UPT curriculum.
The secretary also sent a report accompanying the letters saying “the planned retirement of the T-1A aircraft does not have an impact on pilot production rates, nor does it negatively affect ongoing programmes and initiatives of the air force to accelerate the rate at which pilots complete training”, Stefanek says.
If rapid divestment is approved, the AETC and USAF would be without a dedicated aircraft for specialised undergraduate training of pilots destined for airlift and tanker assignments, and those training to fly command, special operations and intelligence-gathering aircraft. Combat Systems Officer (CSO) students who go on to fly fighters, bombers, tankers and special-operations aircraft would also be without a CSO-dedicated aircraft for live-flying training. These are the two primary roles T-1As have performed for the USAF since becoming operational in 1993.
Asked if the logic behind divesting T-1As has to do with airframe or structural problems, Stefanek says: “There are not structural issues with the T-1”.
The aircraft that could replace Jayhawks in live-flying roles, the T-7A, is three years behind schedule, due to achieve initial operational capability in spring 2027. But some bases do not expect to begin replacing their T-38Cs with T-7As until 2032 or 2033, the USAF has recently said.
Chiles says the AETC plans to replace the live-flying training done in Jayhawks with virtual-training equipment and other unidentified aircraft.
“Air force fundamental training previously completed in the T-1A will transition to other airframes or simulator and training devices to support the future of all Undergraduate Flying Training (UFT) requirements”, Chiles says. “AETC intends to maintain the quantity and quality of its CSO training at NAS Pensacola via T-96 simulators and aircrew training devices, and will continue to conduct live flying in the [Beechcraft] T-6A Texan II trainer aircraft.”
