FARNBOROUGH: For the first time at an air show, Raytheon has presented its offering for the replacement of the T-38 trainer here, the T-100. Thanks to the buckets of rain that keep falling we can’t offer you a photo, but we can tell you the plane is here.We understand the company is likely to make the decision about where to build the 70 percent of the program that will be built in the United States by this fall.Where the work gets done is a crucial political and technical issue since the Italian company Leonardo, formerly known as Finmeccanica, currently builds the aircraft. As Northrop Grumman knows all too well, having your offering tarred as “foreign” can be a crippling constraint. Of course, the aircraft is only one component of the training system, which includes twin Honeywell Aerospace F124 engines, a training system developed by CAE, a helmet-mounted display and simulators.
