Swedish Saab opened a new 100,000-square-foot production facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, to build the T-7A Red Hawk.
The Boeing-Saab team is producing this new advanced trainer aircraft for the U.S. Air Force. Currently, the tail part of the aircraft is manufactured at Saab's factory in Linköping, Sweden, and then shipped to the United States.
Since the birth of the T-7A, Boeing and Saab have been constantly seeking and developing new production program efficiencies.
The T-7A Red Hawk uses advanced model-based engineering and digital design technology to go from concept to first flight in as little as 36 months. The digital thread, which connects digital information through product design, manufacturing, and inspection, improves engineering quality throughout the process by 75 percent.
In September 2018, the U.S. Air Force awarded Boeing a $9.2 billion contract to procure 351 advanced trainer aircraft and 46 related ground training simulators.
Saab announced in May 2019 that West Lafayette will be the site of its capacity expansion in the U.S. aerospace sector, with construction of the facility beginning in 2020. It was completed on time and on budget and will first produce the fuselage portion of the Saab T-7A Red Hawk trainer program in the United States. It will also support R&D operations in autonomous, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing.