The US General Accounting Office (GAO) says that the US Air Force should rewrite the procurement plan for the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System (JPATS) to give the taxpayer a better deal and create a more realistic training-aircraft requirement.
The USAF is buying 740 Raytheon T-6A Texan II training aircraft, worth about $4 billion, for the USAF and US Navy. They will replace T-37Bs and T-34Cs now being used to train entry-level student pilots. The T-6A is a derivative of the Swiss Pilatus PC-9 which Raytheon will build under licence in Wichita, Kansas.
The GAO says that the USAF used inconsistent mission-capable rates to calculate the required number of T-6As. The investigative arm of the US Congress also says that the USAF considered an attrition rate that was twice as high as the historic loss rate for trainers.
The GAO also suggests that the existing contract with Raytheon did not take full advantage of the best prices available.
The JPATS competition was fiercely contested by a raft of contenders, over a prolonged period. It remains unclear what impact, if any, the GAO report will have on the US Air Force.
Source: Flight International
