Hawk Jet Trainer
First flown in 1974 and created by Hawker-Siddeley, the Hawk jet trainer has been the mainstay of the British trainer fleet for that entire time and has seen successive upgrades to keep it at the forefront of training plane technology since. Replacing the Folland Gnat in service, the Hawk was actually brought into service not just as a trainer but also an affordable light combat aircraft. Not commonly known, the Hawk can equip weaponry and during the Cold War, was kept as a hasty move to put more aircraft into the air. Their role would have been to stay away from the primary "furballs" of dogfights and launch missiles from afar, using the radars of more dedicated combat aircraft like the Tornado F3 to target for them. Thankfully, such a desperate tactic was never required against the Soviet Unions swarms of jets and they settled in to become the UK's most iconic trainer.
If this had happened though, the Hawks can be equipped with a compatible radar, 30mm ADEN cannon pods and even Sidewinder missiles.
However in its training role the Hawk was to prove a world leader in terms of capability. Capable of accepting many different components to account for decades worth of aircraft, many generations of British pilots can all trace their skills to this little gem of a plane. Capable of Mach 0.88 that can increase to Mach 1.15 when in a dive, it can also train for supersonic flight along with heartpounding turns with its rather impressive +9G turning allowance. To give a manner of comparison, the frontier fighter jets like Typhoon, Rafale and F-22 Raptor are also limited out at +9G.
It should come as no surprise then that the Hawk was selected as the plane for the famous Red Arrows, the RAF's premier display team. While they will be discussed in more depth later on, they have made the Hawk into an icon with their distinctive red colouring...so much so that the black Hawks in training often tend to get surprised looks. Not many see them looking like that.
However, these jets can be seen everywhere. They have been the UK's most successful jet aircraft since the legendary Harrier with many countries adapting them for their own use. Against its rival, the French Alpha-Jet trainer, the Hawk battled for export sales over many decades and solidly won most of them, bringing money into the UK from sales and economic production boosts. It continues to sell to this day and as of current over 900 airframes have been constructed. Countries using them include the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Finland, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Zimbabwe and even the United States themselves uses a modified version called the T-45 Goshawk. In addition to that, many countries have also used the Hawk throughout history.
The Hawk continues to sell in its new "T2" version, with Saudi Arabia and Oman looking to repurchase the new one. The United States with it's T-X jet trainer program also lists the Hawk T2 as one of the potential outcomes.
In the past, present and into the future, the Hawk continues to be a lasting and reliable jet trainer for the UK...alongside a powerful economic success for the UK's industry.