Any day now the U.S. Air Force is expected to release the final version of its request for proposal (RFP) to build a new training jet to replace the decades old T-38. Four teams have long indicated that they will be competing for the contract and now another appears ready to join the fray.

Privately held Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) has partnered with Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) and exclusively told Aviation Week that the team intends to enter the bidding along with the four teams lead by The Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA), Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT), Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE: NOC), and Raytheon Co. (NYSE: RTN).

SNC and TAI have come up with a clean-sheet design at the joint venture’s Colorado shop. SNC is best known for its satellites and spaceplane while TAI has been a vendor to other aerospace giants like Boeing and Airbus.

SNC is owned by husband and wife Fatih and Eren Ozmen, Turkish-Americans who acquired the company in 1994. The company has grown from 20 employees to nearly 3,000, and claims 34 locations in the United States, England, Germany, and Turkey.

TAI is controlled by the Turkish Armed Forces Foundation, a semi-autonomous body established to boost Turkey’s defense industry. The company has built or modified many versions of the General Dynamics/Lockheed F-16 for governments around the world.

The new design, called the Freedom Trainer, is fabricated from composites and uses a Williams International FJ44-4M business jet engine to power the lightweight aircraft. SNC/TAI’s selling points are fuel economy and low cost. The engines, for example, are about half the cost of a high-power military turbofan jet.

The company also says that the Freedom Trainer meets U.S. Air Force training and airworthiness standards and SNC says that the failed coup in Turkey has not affected the partnership.

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