Multiple delays have pushed the full-rate production decision on the T-7A Red Hawk back two years, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report. The assessment is yet another setback for the Air Force’s next-generation trainer aircraft, which has been plagued with issues.
The Boeing-made T-7, intended to replace the aging T-38C Talon, was expected to receive a full-rate production decision in January 2027, according to GAO’s previous Weapon Systems Annual Assessment, released in June 2025. But GAO’s latest assessment, released July 2, said a decision is now likely to come in January 2029. And auditors warned that the program’s significant overlap between its testing and production phases could lead to bigger problems down the road.
“Since our last assessment, the T-7A program reported that it is experiencing significant delays in the completion of developmental testing,” GAO wrote in the report.
Those delays were largely caused by the need to complete additional engineering analysis, fewer aircraft available on a day-to-day basis than expected due to a shortage of maintenance personnel and spare parts, and the T-7’s software taking longer to finalize than originally anticipated, GAO said.
The Air Force said it concurred with GAO’s assessment on the T-7, in a statement to Air & Space Forces Magazine. Delays in completing the developmental testing on the T-7 led the service to revamp its plan, the Air Force said, which resulted in a new date for expected full-rate production.
“The Air Force is executing a phased production start strategy to optimize the programmatic risk of the T-7 against the operational risks of continuing to fly and sustain a 60-year old T-38C,” an Air Force spokesperson said. “This approach presents explicit decision points against verified criteria, which illustrates readiness for future lot buys and manages concurrency risk.”
The Air Force said the T-7 remains on track for its initial operational test and evaluation phase this year.
Boeing deferred requests for comment to the Air Force.
The Air Force plans to buy about 351 T-7s, which are expected to cost about $28 million per tail, to replace the fleet of roughly 476 1960s-era T-38s. The T-38 is outdated and increasingly difficult to sustain, and new pilots cannot learn how to fly modern fighters such as the F-22 and F-35 in them, but the T-7 was designed to teach new pilots how to fly fifth-generation jets.
In 2018, the Air Force awarded Boeing a $9.2 billion contract for the T-7. While it has faced challenges since then including delays, supply chain snarls and design flaws that had to be fixed, work continued. In May, the Air Force issued a Milestone C decision to move the T-7 into low-rate production, and awarded Boeing a $219 million contract to start building the first 14 production T-7s. And in June, Air Education and Training Command qualified its first instructor pilots in the T-7.
But the program’s delays, GAO said, have had consequences to the program’s overall timeline and led to the replan.
Most of the T-7’s developmental testing will now be done by April 2028, GAO said, and lower-priority requirements will be done by May 2029—years after the T-7 entered low-rate production. GAO noted that overlap between testing and production, referred to as concurrency, “often results in cost overruns and schedule delays.”
And another key system-level test, which includes linking the T-7’s ground-based training system with the jet in flight, is now not likely to happen until July 2027, GAO said—more than a year after the low-rate production decision was announced, and almost three years later than originally planned.