MILAN\u00a0\u2013\u00a0The CEO of Italy’s Leonardo has denied reports that the firm’s M-346 jet is too pricey to compete in the U.S. T-X trainer contest, pointing fingers at another supplier for driving up the cost.
Asked about the split with Raytheon at a press conference in Milan on Wednesday, Leonardo CEO Mauro Moretti said, “The problem with Raytheon was not (our) price, because Raytheon checked it against a U.S. benchmark and our prices were lower.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moretti suggested Raytheon did have a problem with conditions set down by Honeywell, which provides propulsion for the jet, which was renamed the T-100 for the bid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Raytheon could not get what they wanted with Honeywell on the engines,”\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The DRS-led T-X team will be supported by CAE USA in the design and development of the T-100 ground-based training system (GBTS) and Honeywell will continue to provide twin F124 turbofan propulsion engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moretti was bullish about the aircraft\u2019s prospects, despite losing Raytheon as partner, claiming “There is no other competitor.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The T-50 trainer proposed by Lockheed Martin was “not competitive,” he said, while the clean-sheet design pitched by Boeing and Saab would not be ready until 2024, by which time the USAF\u2019s current generation of trainers “will be falling apart,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The only mature system with maximum performace is ours,” he said, adding, “We are not going to lose this because we are lacking Raytheon.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moretti said that it was time Italy sold a defense product in the U.S., given Italy\u2019s long history of buying U.S. products, from the AV8 jump jet up to the F-35. “We can not only buy U.S. products and not be able to sell a single product,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Air Force is expected to buy 350 T-X aircraft and plans to down-select to a single vendor this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking on Wednesday, Moretti also attacked the Canadian government\u2019s decision to buy 16 C295W aircraft from Airbus for search and rescue missions, calling it “astonishing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leonardo has challenged the award in Canadian federal court, arguing its losing contender, the C-27J, cost less and was better suited to the mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moretti claimed Airbus had unjustifiably been deemed the winner thanks to “added services that were not part of the bid.”<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Leonardo’s Mauro Moretti has denied reports that the firm\u2019s M-346 jet is too pricey to compete in the U.S. T-X trainer contest, claiming its partnership with Raytheon fell apart because of issues between Raytheon and engine manufacturer Honeywell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":44156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":7,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[7,46,11],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3345],"class_list":["post-59477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-europe","category-global"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"YENUUTOOSNBIJLXKYBCUPL7OIQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2017\/03\/16\/leonardo-ceo-raytheon-honeywell-impasse-to-blame-for-t-x-breakup\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n