Le Bourget, France—Although Boeing has partnered successfully with BAE Systems on building the T-45 Goshawk jet trainer for the Navy, it is “keeping its options open” about how it will approach the Air Force’s T-X trainer aircraft competition, said Boeing Military Aircraft President Chris Chadwick. That includes teaming with other partners, or even a clean-sheet design, Chadwick told reporters here Tuesday at the Paris Air Show. He said he thinks the T-X will be a completely new kind of training system, with far heavier emphasis on simulators and less on airplanes in order to hold down cost and risk. “That’s the future,” he said. (For more T-X coverage from Paris, read Budget Pressures on Future Trainer.)
A three-month continuing resolution that ended in December inflicted less pain on the Department of the Air Force than it had expected, as procurement and construction continue in the new year. The federal government operated under a stopgap spending measure that stretched from the beginning of the fiscal year on…