The unit price of the Hawk is astounding – very close to the delivery price of a F-16 Block 50! It is easy to see why the USAF has stuck with the updated T-38C – an aircraft which is more than capable of the advanced training needed for the F-22 and upcoming F-35.
The sad truth is that the Hawk is very close to the end of its production run and BAE Systems is deteremined to get out of the airframe manufacturing business. Buying British doesn’t save jobs in this case – it only extends them by a matter of months.
The UK would have been well advised to enter into the Eurotraining partnership, or even to have relegated training to the United States.
I doubt it. The Hawk production line is more or less sold out till about 2010-2011 with the UK, Indian and Bahraini orders. Then it (Hawk 128 and T45) is in contention for UAE, Saudi, Singapore, Brunei, Greece, Malaysia, Thailand, Israel and Indian Navy requirements which add up to about 250 aircraft, if they just win 30% (much less than in the past) then they’d have another 3-5 years of production to about 2013-2016. Also you are misinformed about BAe getting out of the airframe business. Actually they are starting a major expansion in Unmanned airframes. And about the price: The Indian (I’ll admit not a 128) Hawk costs about 15 Million Pounds. With the high US-Dollar exchange this is about 28 Million Dollars. This includes the cost of licence production for example. But of course they are not cheap. BTW the air force is being pushed by senate to look at T50 and T45 to replace the T38.
Personally, I was hoping for the M-346, or possibly the T-50 (it would have made a great aggressor aircraft for DACT), but in reality, the Hawk was the only politically acceptable choice. Much like the ill-advised Lynx purchase, it is another blind political decision, buying British instead of buying the best, which of course would have been built in the UK anyway.
I doubt a full licence manufacture for just 28 frames! Besides technologies developed for the 128 have filtered into BAe’s UAVs and potentially their new UCAV technology demonstrator. I think Hawk 128 was the only correct choice.
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