Report: Next-Gen Air Force Trainers Have ‘Serious’ Flight Concerns

The three-part, 7,000-word investigation from digital news site Breaking Defense includes interviews with officials from the Air Force and Boeing—as well as unnamed government sources and people familiar with the T-7 program—who paint conflicting pictures of the aircraft.

Summary in:

https://www.flyingmag.com/air-force-t7-trainer-flight-concerns/

Breaking defense 

https://breakingdefense.com/2026/06/inside-the-t-7-red-hawk-read-our-three-part-investigation/

Among the findings of the report, which was written by Michael Marrow: 

• The Air Force has assessed sustainment of the aircraft as “high risk.”
• Internal Air Force documents say Boeing’s failure to provide certain data on the aircraft amounts to “non-compliance” on the part of the company.  
• The plane currently cannot fly in the rain, and the program has struggled with a ground-based simulator.
• …

presents it in three parts:

• Part one of the project covers the basics of how we got here, while laying out some of the major concerns shared by sources about the state of the program.
• Part two focuses on the back and forth between the Air Force and prime contractor Boeing over the data rights to the project, and how that could potentially sabotage sustainment plans going forward.
• Part three looks at a previously unreported agreement that could see the service and Boeing make a “horse trade” over data rights for an unrelated program, with the Air Force picking up the tab for buying the T-7’s engines.