PARIS — Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) is no longer competing for the Navy’s new training jet, Breaking Defense has learned, leaving the service with one true competitor: Textron Aviation Defense with its M-346N trainer.
“With great respect for the Navy and PMA-273, SNC could not responsibly bid the UJTS [Undergraduate Jet Training System] program under the current contract structure,” SNC said in a statement to Breaking Defense today in response to questions about whether it formally bid on the program by the Oct. 30 deadline. “We do remain committed to naval jet training and stand ready to re-engage if the approach is revisited.”
Textron Aviation Defense, the only known major competitor to SNC, confirmed to Breaking Defense that the firm submitted its offering of the M-346N to the Navy. Barring a reopening of the competition or a surprise entrant, it appears the de facto winner will be the M-346N.
A spokesperson for Textron told Breaking Defense in an email today that the firm is “ready to support the U.S. Navy and its future training needs.”
The field of competitors for the UJTS program had already narrowed in recent months, after Lockheed Martin announced in April it would not submit its offer of the TF-50N with Korea Aerospace Industries for the program. Similarly, Boeing announced in June it also would no longer participate in the competition. Then in September, Breaking Defense reported that Northrop Grumman was dropping off SNC’s bid, which was based around a clean-sheet design known as the Freedom. (Stavatti Aerospace, a group that regularly claims to have aerospace designs for every Pentagon contract, said on Oct. 30 that it submitted a bid on UJTS.)
The Navy plans for the UJTS to succeed the service’s T-45 Goshawk fleet that first entered the Navy’s fleet in the early 1990s to train both Navy and Marine Corps aviators for jet carrier aviation and tactical strike missions. The program office for UJTS told Breaking Defense today that the service stuck to an Oct. 30 deadline for requests for proposals for the program from industry — itself an extension from a previous RFP deadline of June 30.
The service also revealed it is slightly pushing back the timeline for awarding a contract on the closely-watched program.
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While the Navy last said in a September request for proposal (RFP) that it planned to award a contract for the program by June 2027, the service is now estimating it won’t do so until sometime between July and the end of September 2027. That’s not the first time the award date has been pushed back, and the service originally planned to make a selection in March 2027.
“The Government is in source selection with the intent to award the UJTS procurement in 4QFY27,” the office said.
While the T-45 lands on aircraft carriers, the Navy shared in a March RFP that it won’t require the new trainer jet to do so. The Navy also said it isn’t requiring the new aircraft to support field carrier landing practice (FCLP) to touch down, which seeks to simulate a carrier landing on an airfield runway.
Rather, the aircraft must support FCLP to wave off, and the Navy said in the notice that industry should share “unique aircraft simulation capabilities” to train aviators for carrier landings.
UPDATED 7:10 p.m. EST: This story has been updated with comment from Textron Aviation Defense.
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