The Rockwell Ranger 2000 was a jet trainer candidate for the United States
Joint Primary Aircraft Training System
The Joint Primary Aircraft Training System (JPATS) was an aircraft procurement program of the United States in the 1990s by the United States Air Force and United States Navy, a merger of 1980s era training aircraft programs. The winner was dec ...
proposed by
Rockwell International
Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate involved in aircraft, the space industry, defense and commercial electronics, components in the automotive industry, printing presses, avionics and industrial products. R ...
with assistance from
Rhein-Flugzeugbau GmbH (RFB) in Germany.
Design and development
The United States military issued a
Request for proposal for a jet trainer for use by the
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...
and
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
.
Rockwell responded with the Ranger 2000 two-seat, single engined cantilever monoplane. The design was based on the work of RFB, in particular the
RFB Fantrainer and the prototypes were built in Germany.
The Ranger 2000 was powered by a
Pratt & Whitney Canada JT15D-5C turbofan mounted in the rear fuselage and fed by two air intakes above the wing roots. It used retractable
tricycle landing gear
Tricycle gear is a type of aircraft undercarriage, or ''landing gear'', arranged in a tricycle fashion. The tricycle arrangement has a single nose wheel in the front, and two or more main wheels slightly aft of the center of gravity. Tricycle g ...
, the wing was straight and low-mounted, and the crew of two sat in
tandem
Tandem, or in tandem, is an arrangement in which a team of machines, animals or people are lined up one behind another, all facing in the same direction.
The original use of the term in English was in ''tandem harness'', which is used for two ...
with the rear instructor raised to maintain visibility. Both crew had a Stencel zero-zero ejection seat.
The aircraft first flew on 15 January 1993 at Manching in Germany.
The second prototype was lost in an accident on 25 July 1993.
The first prototype was shipped to Rockwell in the United States but the first flight of the third prototype was delayed until 20 June 1994 for modification, the main change was the move of the speedbrakes from the upper wing surface to the rear fuselage.
The Ranger 2000 did not succeed in the competition, which was won by a variant of the
Pilatus PC-9
The Pilatus PC-9 is a single-engine, low-wing tandem-seat turboprop training aircraft manufactured by Pilatus Aircraft of Switzerland. Designed as a more powerful evolution of the Pilatus PC-7, the PC-9's first flight was made in May 1984 after ...
which became the
T-6 Texan II
The Beechcraft T-6 Texan II is a single-engine turboprop aircraft built by the Raytheon Aircraft Company ( Textron Aviation since 2014). A trainer aircraft based on the Pilatus PC-9, the T-6 has replaced the United States Air Force's Cessna ...
.
Aircraft on display
*One of the Ranger 2000s is displayed at the Tulsa Air and Space Museum.
Tulsa Air and Space Museum – Exhibits
Specifications
See also
References
;Notes
;Bibliography
*
{{JPATS
RFB aircraft
Ranger 2000
1990s United States military trainer aircraft
Single-engined jet aircraft
Low-wing aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1993