WASHINGTON — After years of struggles on the T-7 Red Hawk program, Air Force officials in January 2025 decided to take a different direction, implementing a new strategy called “active management” that offered prime contractor Boeing a series of financial incentives in exchange for meeting certain goals.
A year later, the Air Force and Boeing are discussing a new expansion, one that the service has internally assessed could cost taxpayers over a billion dollars, according to previously unreported Air Force documents viewed by Breaking Defense.
Under an Air Force document known as a second Memorandum of Agreement (MOA 2) — dated December 2025 and signed by Air Force and Boeing officials — the service would provide millions of dollars in new incentives for Boeing. The company would offer concessions of its own, including $50 million to buy spare parts for the Red Hawk and a nascent design for a system that can automatically avert ground collisions.
But one key provision would change how the government buys the training jet’s engines, removing Boeing from the process and contracting directly with engine-maker GE Aerospace. While the plan would help break a logjam between the two companies, a separate internal Air Force presentation viewed by Breaking Defense shows it could come with an “additional” taxpayer cost of up to $1.5 billion.
