WASHINGTON — It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s the T-7A Red Hawk and it’s the name of the Air Force’s next-generation training jet, the Air Force’s top civilian announced Monday.

The name pays tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black military aviators who flew during World War II as part of the Army Air Corps, the precursor to the U.S. Air Force. The Tuskegee Airmen were known as Red Tails" due to the red paint applied to the tails of their aircraft.

Acting Air Force Secretary Matt Donovan announced the new designation during a keynote speech at the Air Force Association’s annual conference, accompanied by retired Col. Charles McGee, a P-51 Mustang pilot and one of the members of the Tuskegee Airmen who flew more than 400 combat missions during World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

After unveiling a red-tailed mockup of the T-7A, Donovan noted that the Red Hawk would be a “staple of a new generation of aircraft” for the Air Force.

In addition to the Tuskegee Airmen, “the name is also a tribute to the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, an American fighter aircraft that first flew in 1938 and was flown by the 99th Fighter Squadron, the U.S. Army Air Force’s first African American fighter squadron,” he said.

Last year, Boeing won the $9.2 billion contract for the T-7 program — formerly known as T-X — after submitting a bid that shaved about $10 billion off the Air Force’s initial estimates.

US Air Force awards $9B contract to Boeing for next training jet Boeing’s award for the T-X trainer program marks the third major victory by the company in about a month.

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Boeing attributed the low cost of its T-X designs to its use of digital engineering. Paul Niewald, the company’s chief engineer for the T-X program, told reporters in May that technique reduced the manual labor needed to produce and manufacture the aircraft by 80 percent. It also created such precise digital models for its trainer that the sections of the jet could be locked together without using shims to fill in the gaps, he said.

Since winning the contract, multiple senior Air Force leaders have expressed optimism about the T-7 program.

Earlier this year year, Air Combat Command head Gen. Mike Holmes said that the service is beginning to explore whether it can buy additional trainer aircraft for missions such as red air or light attack. Will Roper, the service’s acquisition executive, also sees T-7’s use of digital engineering as a model for the Air Force’s future fighter program, also known as Next Generation Air Dominance.

The US Air Force’s radical plan for a future fighter could field a jet in 5 years The U.S. Air Force is seeking rapid-fire plane production as it tries to surpass the capabilities of near-peer competitors like Russia and China.

The indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract allows the Air Force to buy up to 475 aircraft and 120 simulators, although the current plan is to buy 351 T-7 aircraft, 46 simulators and associated ground equipment.