Spain unveils plan to replace F-5 jets with SAETA II trainer

Spain unveiled the industrial blueprint for its next generation of fighter pilot training on April 28, 2026, as an Airbus-led consortium presented the full programme structure for the Spanish Air and Space Force’s new Integrated Combat Training System — a contract awarded in December 2025 that will retire the country’s aging F-5 fleet and replace it with a locally customized variant of a Turkish-built jet.

The programme, designated ITS-C in Spanish military nomenclature, centers on a fleet of 30 aircraft based on the HÜRJET advanced trainer developed by Turkish Aerospace. Under a co-development agreement between Airbus, serving as prime contractor, and Turkish Aerospace as the aircraft manufacturer, Spain will receive the jets in a nationally customized configuration designated SAETA II — a name that carries deliberate historical weight, echoing Spain’s earlier indigenous jet trainer programmes. The deal covers the entire advanced training pipeline for Spanish fighter pilots, from aircraft delivery and avionics integration through to a comprehensive suite of operation and maintenance services stretching across the programme’s operational life.

Spanish national industry holds a 60 percent participation stake in the programme — a figure the government and Airbus both highlighted prominently during the presentation. That level of industrial return is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate procurement strategy designed to ensure that Spain builds and retains the technical competence to manage, sustain, and evolve the system independently, without dependence on foreign partners for every subsequent modification or upgrade. Marta Nogueira, Head of Business Spain at Airbus Defence and Space, framed it directly: “As a result of this national programme, Spain achieves three strategic milestones: we ensure technology transfer in key areas, we obtain a deep-reaching industrial return, and, above all, we provide the programme with the strategic sovereignty and independence necessary to manage the sustainment and any future evolution of the system.”

The Spanish companies integrated into the programme read like a who’s who of the country’s defence electronics sector. GMV handles the inertial and GPS navigation system and the mission computer. Sener provides the datalink. Aertec supplies the remote interface unit. Grupo Oesía is responsible for the audio management system. Orbital delivers the VMDR mission recorder. Indra — one of Spain’s largest defence electronics companies — integrates the Identification Friend or Foe system. Beyond avionics, Spanish industry also handles the manufacture of primary structural parts, electrical wiring, and the design and construction of the conversion centre where the aircraft will receive their Spanish-specification modifications.

The physical home of the programme’s training infrastructure will be the Fighter and Strike school Training Centre at Talavera la Real Air Base in Extremadura, in western Spain. Airbus will lead a redesign of that facility to accommodate both the new aircraft and a ground-based synthetic training environment developed in collaboration with Indra. The simulators will be state-of-the-art — a phrase that gets overused in defence announcements but carries genuine meaning here, since modern fighter pilot training relies on high-fidelity simulation for a growing share of the syllabus, reserving actual flight hours for the scenarios where nothing else will do.

The programme unfolds across two distinct phases with a delivery timeline that runs to 2035. The first phase begins in 2028 with the delivery of an initial batch of 21 aircraft. One of those first jets will be designated as a prototype for Airbus to use in integrating the next-generation avionics package and mission equipment that will define the SAETA II configuration. Simultaneously, development and manufacture of the ground-based training system will proceed in parallel, with that synthetic training infrastructure scheduled to enter operation during the 2029-2030 academic year.

The second phase brings the full fleet to Spanish standard. All 21 aircraft from the initial batch, plus the remaining nine on order, will undergo conversion to the complete SAETA II specification. The simulators will receive a corresponding update to match the final aircraft configuration. Deliveries of the completed SAETA II variant, together with its ground-based training system, run from 2031 through 2035 — a timeline that gives Spanish industry years of sustained work and gives the Air and Space Force a clear horizon for full operational capability.

Spanish Secretary of State for Defence Amparo Valcarce underlined the programme’s domestic economic dimension at the presentation, noting that “it is a project that mobilises our industry, generates knowledge, employment, and opportunities throughout the entire value chain.” Valcarce also made the strategic argument explicitly, saying the project “strengthens our strategic autonomy by allowing us to design, integrate, and evolve our own capabilities, reducing critical dependencies.” That language — strategic autonomy, reducing dependencies — runs through European defence policy discussions with increasing frequency, and Spain is putting real programme structure behind the rhetoric.