SHAH ALAM: More life for the Hawks. It appears that BAE Systems has demonstrated its Hawk trainers has a service life of 50,000 hours. The demonstration of the structural life of the Hawk was done in Australia by BAE Systems.
The release from BAE Systems:
A Hawk aircraft, the advanced jet trainer used to prepare Australian pilots for life in a fast jet cockpit, has completed the equivalent of 50,000 ‘flying’ hours as part of a major structural testing program in a joint project involving BAE Systems and DST Group.
The world first test program was conducted at DST Group’s Fishermans Bend facility in Victoria where for 14 years a Hawk air frame was subjected to the range of loads that it would experience in actual flight, simulating real life fleet usage based on projected operational requirements.
The 33 Hawk aircraft operated by the Royal Australian Air Force have a clearance of 10,000 flying hours – 50,000 flying hours of structural testing is five times the current clearance of the most modern Hawks in air forces across the world and more than ten times the current flying hours on most of the Australian fleet.
Based on current usage, the fatigue life remaining in the Hawk airframe would allow the aircraft to continue operations well into the late 2040s.
BAE Systems Australia Director Aircraft Sustainment and Training Andrew Chapman said:
“The Full Scale Fatigue Test is a hugely important achievement for the Australian Lead In Fighter program and was made possible by the collaboration of a small dedicated team across many thousands of kilometres.“The Hawk is the world’s most successful and proven military aircraft trainer, built on more than 35 years of fast jet training experience.
“The 2019 completion of Hawk (LIFCAP) upgrade ensures the aircraft is freshly updated and available for service in the RAAF for many more years.”
Will this have any effect on RMAF Hawks? I dont think it will make much difference anyway even it was likely that RMAF would have been made aware of the experiment being conducted in Australia. As you are aware RMAF wants to divest itself of the Hawk fleet by 2025 (if its possible) with the much delayed upgrades not funded even in the next RMK.
Anyhow any plans to retain the Hawks will undoubtedly involved acquiring more airframes – especially the 108s – as the current numbers are unsustainable in the long term.
— Malaysian Defence
View Comments (95)
@ marhalim
" The next generation Hawks (120, 127 and 128) feature a new wing, forward and centre fuselage, fin and tailplane.The aircraft have only 10% commonality with the existing first generation aircraft. The new variants also have four times the fatigue life of the original aircraft. "
Our hawks are not the next generation version. So those tests are not applicable to TUDM hawks.
breaking news
Seems like one of TNI-AU T-50i has crashed just now?
Hopefully the pilots are safe.
Reply
No lah just skidded, both pilots ejected
....
"first generation plane" means,what? hawk T1? Mk 50s?
@ dundun
Basically all hawks before mk120. that includes ours, indonesians, oman, uae, t1s etc.
http://www.saairforce.co.za/the-airforce/aircraft/40/hawk-mk-120
And there was even an upgrade to the next generation hawks with a new cockpit and wing. Up till now there is no takers for this concept.
https://www.malaysiandefence.com/advanced-hawk-takes-to-the-skiesfirst-test-flight/
How about Advanced/ Combat Hawk, last time BAe n HAL developed for IAF last time with improved avionic and performance...another choice for RMAF..
I thought Leonardo wanted to offer the M346 FA for our old Aermacchi?
Won't that be a better solution then we can retire and sell the Hawks?
Whatever it is, the hawk has too low performance to be able to become our LCA while as it is perfectly suitable for LIFT.
What we require right now is 1 type of jet that could fulfill both the LCA and LIFT requirement without much compromise while doing both tasks.
For the LCA task, we need a moderately supersonic capable aircraft so that we could do Quick Reaction Alert taskings.
For LIFT we need a trainer that could seamlessly transfer student pilots to operational aircrafts.
Right now the platform that is in the sweet spot for both LCA and LIFT taskings is the TA/FA-50 Golden Eagle.
IMHO the M345 & M346 combo is the best fit platform for our LIFT & LCA requirements. We can save cost by trading in the old MB339s, there is redundancy with twin engines, SG is already using them so they must have seen the pros vs others, and with more availability of M346s early on we still have the opportunity to sell the Hawks before their value drops to junk. The plane is fully wired in all purposes as a high end fighter with a wide upgrade path, and curiously have an LO upgrade kit with RWR & MAW to make it 'stealthy' so the LCAs could stand a chance in a 5th gen air fight. It has battlefield system redundancies and yet designed to have economical running cost so for us with stingy bean counters, it is perfect since we already would know how much exactly it would cost to run & maintain them before buying. Best of all, Italy seems open to non-monetary trade deals as with Israeli purchase of their M346s. So if we play it right, we could give them something they need (like maybe 1million latex gloves or condoms? ;-) ).
What trainer to buy depends in part on what MRCA will be bought. The more compatible they are, the easier it is for the pilots to train
That I think is part of the reason for the holdup