Photo: Boeing
Back in 2021, American aerospace company Boeing started rolling out its factory doors something called T-7 Red Hawk. The latest evolution of the company’s T-X concept, the aircraft is the U.S. Air Force’s (USAF) next trainer for the army of fighter pilots.
The Red Hawk will eventually come together in a fleet of over 350 flying machines which will be used primarily by the USAF. Until that time comes though, a lot of testing still needs to be done, not only on the aircraft itself, but on the systems that will go into it as well.
This week, the Air Force announced it is currently putting through its paces a never-before-used version of something called On-Board Oxygen Generation System. OBOGS for short, it is the hardware tasked with producing “an unlimited supply of oxygen for pilots” while they are in the air.
The tests for the OBOGS have been divided into three phases, two of which the Air Force already burned through. In the first one, the tests comprised putting the system through an ordeal in an unmanned altitude chamber. Phase two involved manned and unmanned acceleration testing and manned altitude chamber testing and required the involvement of 10 USAF volunteer pilots, subjected to maneuvers of up to 8.5 Gs.
The final phase of the test will require the system to pass environmental trials and tribulations, and if all goes according to plan, it will then go into the Red Hawk (five of them) for flight testing by the end of the year.
The aircraft is powered by a General Electric turbofan engine capable of generating 17,000 lbf (76 kN) of thrust when using the afterburner. Both the color scheme and the name chosen for the aircraft are a reference to the Curtiss P-40 Warhawks, an almost all African American group of pilots called the Tuskegee Airmen, who flew back in the days of World War II.
This week, the Air Force announced it is currently putting through its paces a never-before-used version of something called On-Board Oxygen Generation System. OBOGS for short, it is the hardware tasked with producing “an unlimited supply of oxygen for pilots” while they are in the air.
The tests for the OBOGS have been divided into three phases, two of which the Air Force already burned through. In the first one, the tests comprised putting the system through an ordeal in an unmanned altitude chamber. Phase two involved manned and unmanned acceleration testing and manned altitude chamber testing and required the involvement of 10 USAF volunteer pilots, subjected to maneuvers of up to 8.5 Gs.
The final phase of the test will require the system to pass environmental trials and tribulations, and if all goes according to plan, it will then go into the Red Hawk (five of them) for flight testing by the end of the year.
The aircraft is powered by a General Electric turbofan engine capable of generating 17,000 lbf (76 kN) of thrust when using the afterburner. Both the color scheme and the name chosen for the aircraft are a reference to the Curtiss P-40 Warhawks, an almost all African American group of pilots called the Tuskegee Airmen, who flew back in the days of World War II.
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