LEONARDO DRS T-100 TEAM SPONSORING TUSKEGEE AIRMEN’S NATIONAL CONVENTION
Company Would Build Factory at Home of Legendary Airmen if Awarded Air Force Contract
The Leonardo DRS T-100 Team, which includes CAE USA, Honeywell and Leonardo Aircraft, is sponsoring the 46th Annual Convention of the historic Tuskegee Airmen, the heroic African-American pilots, airmen and support personnel of World War II and their modern-day namesakes.
The team is bidding for the U.S. Air Force T-X pilot training program with its T-100 Integrated Training System, based on Leonardo’s world-class M-346 trainer aircraft. If the team is awarded the program, it will build an aircraft manufacturing facility at the historic Moton Field in Tuskegee, Alabama, where the Tuskegee Airmen originally trained.
“We are proud to sponsor the Tuskegee Airmen’s national convention and look forward to honoring their incredible contributions by building next-generation, American-made Air Force training aircraft right in the shadow of where some of the greatest pilots in history learned their skills,” said Bill Lynn, CEO of T-100 prime contractor Leonardo DRS.
As one of the leading sponsors of the convention, the Leonardo DRS T-100 Team will host the Opening Reception and Heritage Lunch. An exhibit will feature a six-foot model of a T-100 aircraft painted with the famous “Red Tail” color of the World War II aircraft flown by the Tuskegee Airmen from their base in Ramitelli Italy. A T-100 flight simulator will provide attendees with a real-life, hands-on experience of what it is actually like to pilot the state-of-the-art T-100 aircraft.
Leonardo is among the top ten global companies in aerospace, defense and security, and Italy’s main industrial company. The company’s wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, Leonardo DRS, is a prime contractor, leading technology innovator and supplier of integrated products, services and support to military forces, intelligence agencies and defense contractors in the U.S. and worldwide.
The T-100 team has designed, produced, delivered, and continues to operate and maintain integrated pilot training systems around the world.
CAE USA, which has produced some of the most sophisticated simulation-based training systems in the world for lead-in fighter trainer aircraft, is Leonardo’s training partner for the T-100 and M-346 systems and would develop the ground-based training system for T-100 in Tampa, Florida. Teammate Honeywell would build the F-124 engines, the most customer-proven propulsion engine for modern pilot training with more than one million flying hours, in Phoenix, AZ.
