Richard Aboulafia, vice-president of analysis at Teal Group, calls the KAI/Lockheed T-50 Golden Eagle the “most capable” option – but also probably the most expensive to buy and operate. Lockheed declines to discuss prices, but Aboulafia estimates the T-50’s flyaway cost will be $26 million per aircraft. Currently built in South Korea and flown by that country’s air force and that of Indonesia, the T-50 was designed specifically to train fifth-generation fighter pilots, Lockheed says. “A student doesn’t need extensive training in the operating squadron to learn high-speed manoeuvring” after flying the type, it adds.

The T-50, which has been in service since the mid-2000s, can reach Mach 1.5 and pull 8g, Lockheed says. The type’s single General Electric F404 engine also has an afterburner. “If the [USAF] has the budget, and they want [pilots] to [transition] easily into an F-22 or F-35, the T-50 is the choice,” says Aboulafia. He estimates the least expensive option, at about $21 million each, is the BAE/Northrop Hawk ­advanced jet training system, which is derived from a aircraft model originally introduced in the 1970s. “If you want to put a pilot in the air and give him good cockpit training at the lowest cost, [the Hawk is] the way to do it,” says Aboulafia.

“It’s an impossibly high base year, with production having more than doubled in half a decade. The industry is running the risk of creating a bubble, and a balance needs to be struck,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at Teal Group Corp., Fairfax, Va. “The industry could be building for a colossal burp after watching costs and rates rise as new planes are produced.”  There also is increased competition from composites, particularly with Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.  Aboulafia said the battle  of raw material suppliers is a back-and-forth process, with aggressive marketing from competing sectors.  “The Rolls Royce receivership in the 1970s was due to its use of composites in its engine. It became the watchword for overreach,” he said.  Composites have been used on business jets, but all except one failed, Aboulafia noted. The jury is still out on the latest release, which will be Montreal-based Bombardier Inc.’s  Learjet 85.  “Companies are naturally drawn to the innovation story, but it is easy to oversell technology. This is the oversold nature of the composite revolution,” Aboulafia said.

Richard Aboulafia, aviation consultant with Fairfax, Va.-based Teal Group, said that partnerships between Western and Chinese aviation companies have tended to unravel over time because of intellectual-property issues.

But divisions within the Republican Party threaten the plan, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at the Teal Group, an aerospace analysis group in northern Virginia. In past years, Republicans would push for defense spending and Democrats would resist, he said. Now much resistance is coming from the cost-cutting wing of the Republican Party, along with Republicans who oppose military interventions abroad.

Aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia said airports like Santa Monica  are a draw for business jets for the same reason they’re an annoyance to neighbors. “They’re centrally located. That’s valuable land, and it tends to be in the middle of expensive housing, too. Inevitably you’re going to see more conflict like these arise,” Aboulafia told KPCC.