Grumble...
Once again the Navy is having training jet problems...
The Navy lifted an operational pause on the its T-45C Goshawk jet trainer fleet last week, after grounding the entire fleet on July 10 following an engine malfunction.
The grounding marked at least the second such pause the fleet has implemented this year, and the third since October 2022, according to a tally by Navy Times.
Full article, HERE from Navy Times.
This is NOT a new issue, and it comes down to the Adour engines from Rolls-Royce, provided by BAE. It's also NOT a new issue for the Brits either.
In written evidence to the UK government’s Defence Select Committee on January 11, the firm said the problem meant the Hawk T2 training aircraft fleet would only be able to fly half of the hours contracted to train Royal Air Force (RAF) fast-jet pilots. In its written evidence, BAE Systems said: “On March 25, 2022, Rolls-Royce reported that significant technical issues had been found in the Low Pressure Compressor (Module 01) of the Adour Mk 951 engine. The result was that the 4,000-hour planned design life of each engine was reduced to a clearance of 1,700 hours.
Full article, HERE from Key Aero in 2023.
I can't help but wonder how much the salt water corrosion has played into these problems, especially for the Navy. Training aircraft are crucial to the student aviator pipeline, and loss of aircraft and/or training cycles due to operational groundings aren't good either for progress, morale, or peace of mind in a new aviator.
As good as simulators are these days, they still do not replace butt in the seat, flying the aircraft, pulling Gs and watching the world spin around you.
When you're already sweating out a hop, the last thing you want is to be worried about the engine quitting, or not being able to fly for a month. Once you get in a 'flow', you want to keep going.
And cutting engine availability in half is going to hurt, not only in costs, but in availability of flyable aircraft. This could also back the 'pipeline' up, causing students to spend months in what are called 'pools' doing effectively nothing but sitting around waiting.
Not good, especially in the austere budget cycle all the services are in right now!
The fact that none of the leadership has spoken up on an ongoing problem like this shows how little we can trust flag officers and those desperate to retain retirements/promotion opportunities. An issue like this should have media and congressional attention focused on it, until the members of Congress knew they would not be able to walk in public until the problem was resolved satisfactorily.