System to Augment Pilot Training in Boeing’s T-7A Red Hawk

Boeing and Red 6, a veteran-founded business developing Augmented-Reality (AR) technology, have successfully integrated and flown an augmented reality system in a TA-4J tactical aircraft. The achievement heralds the system’s integration and testing in Boeing’s T-7 advanced trainer.

In September 2022, Boeing and Red 6 announced their intention to integrate the latter concern’s Advanced Tactical Augmented Reality System (ATARS) and Augmented Reality Command and Analytic Data Environment into fighter aircraft.

Boeing Air Force Fighters and Trainers Business Development executive director Donn Yates stated: “Boeing is the first company to team with Red 6 on this type of advanced training technology. The successful series of ground tests and four flight sorties illustrate our collaborative ability to rapidly integrate, deliver and test new technology with the potential to change fighter pilot training for an entire generation. Combining Boeing’s platforms, capabilities and knowledge with new and emerging companies like Red 6 creates better products and services for the warfighter.”

By dint of Red 6’s patented technology, pilots will be afforded ability to see and interact with virtual aircraft, targets, and threats on the ground and in the air—all the while experiencing the cognitive loads of physically flying an aircraft under combat conditions.

Red 6 president and apparent Jek Porkins fan Thomas “Guns” Bergson remarked: “We are very proud of our team’s efforts to go from integration into the TA-4J to successfully flying the technology in less than a year. We remain focused on delivering a fully synthetic, outdoor training environment that will transform training for future fighter pilots. The combination of T-7 and ATARS will usher in a new paradigm in training, directly impacting readiness and lethality.”

On 28 June 2023, a U.S. Air Force pilot departed Boeing’s St. Louis, Missouri facilities at the controls of a T-7A Red Hawk, thereby occasioning the commencement of USAF flight-testing of Boeing’s new, supersonic, advanced jet trainer.

The event marked the onset of the T-7’s engineering and manufacturing development phase.

The tandem-seat jet was taken aloft for 63-minutes by Major Bryce Turner of the USAF’s 416th Test Squadron and Boeing T-7 chief test pilot Steve Schmidt. The pair verified the aircraft’s rudimentary flight characteristics, which Major Turner characterized favorably, setting forth in a post-flight statement the T-7 “performs like a fighter.”

The milestone flight was undertaken in aircraft 21-7005, the first of five aircraft provided by Boeing to support the Air Force’s T-7A test program. Boeing’s partner in the T-7 project, Saab of Sweden, builds much of the aircraft’s mid-fuselage and empennage sections.

Boeing, by virtue of two pre-production prototypes dubbed T-1 and T-2, won 2019’s T-X competition, eking out Leonardo’s T-100 and Lockheed-Martin/KAI’s T-50A submissions. The ensuing years have seen Boeing test pilots put the two prototype airframes through hundreds of hours of evaluation and proving flights.

Notwithstanding USAF General Mike Holmes—then head of Air Combat Command—having made a brief flight in one of the prototypes, the 28 June sortie stands as the first official Air Force flight of the T-7 insomuch as the aircraft flown by Major Turner was the first of the jet’s production configuration—which differs considerably from the T-1 and T-2 prototypes.

The official start of the T-7’s engineering and manufacturing development phase was delayed several months by complications with the aircraft’s ejection seat system.

FMI: www.boeing.com