Posted on 09/19/2014 11:14:41 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Boeing Co. BA +0.48% , which has built military planes for almost a century, is preparing for the prospect of a fighter-less future.
The steadfast commitment of the U.S. and many allies to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program made by Lockheed Martin Corp. LMT +0.60% is drying up funding for Boeing's fighters. Now, the head of Boeing's defense unit is preparing a road map that would concede the fighter market to Lockheed and pin the business's future on other aircraft, including military versions of its commercial jetliners.
"You have to face reality," Chris Chadwick, president of Boeing, Defense, Space & Security, said of the company's shifting focus in an interview in July.
Boeing's fighters are still heavily used today—its F/A-18 jets have been leading U.S. airstrikes in northern Iraq. But it faces a dearth of new orders. Production of the F/A-18 could end in 2017, while the last batch of F-15s bound for Saudi Arabia are due to roll off the production line in 2019.
The company is considering slowing production to keep the F/A-18 line running a little longer in the hope it can persuade the Pentagon to fund some additional purchases for the Navy. This could also buy time for a handful of potential international customers—notably Canada and Denmark—to decide on planned fighter buys
Boeing has said it may decide by April whether to end F/A-18 production at the St. Louis, Mo., plant that makes both fighters. "We're still solidly behind them," Mr. Chadwick said in an interview Thursday following an earlier report by The Wall Street Journal. He believes the F/A-18 can be sustained through the end of the decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Remember, this aircraft is not designed or intended to be an air superiority fighter.
It's a multi-role fighter-bomber designed to replace the F-16.
Then the geniuses at the Pentagon decided it should also replace the FA-18 in the Navy and Marines and drove up the cost and complexity exponentially.
For it's intended purpose, the conventional aircraft is a great asset...but over-priced. It'll experience a production reduction as a result.
And we'll see clusered drones fill the void.
At 1/4 the price, or less.
Controlled by F-35s.
Exactly right Boeing has know for at least a decade this day was coming. They failed to take advantage of their expertise to enter the market with a low coat fighter for everyone machine.
Lockheed = Cyberdyne Technologies!
Canada is considering a run of the F-18 Super Hornet as an option to the endlessly delayed and ever-costlier F-35.
I would say I am basing it on reports I’ve read over time, and those would be press reports. I realize they can be very prejudicial, so I take them with a grain of salt. I also try to ascertain some value by how a project progresses.
I realize the F-22 wasn’t going to be the end be all be all aircraft, but I did believe it filled an important gap and should have been produced in larger numbers.
Our fearless leaders decided to can the F-22 in 2009. It was done on the basis of the F-35 being a less costly aircraft, and due to come on board in short order.
It’s 2014 now, and the F-35 is still one year away from being delivered. And it isn’t expected to be fully deployed until 2019 or later.
I’ve lost confidence in the program.
I am not an industry insider. As I said, I may be wrong. That’s my gut take on it.
If you have better information, I’d be glad to hear it.
“You actually think Lockheed thinks up a design, puts their own money behind it, goes out and markets it like Boeing does with the airliners?”
Do you think the government does design?
No, they do not. They basically just give a fantasy wish-list and the contractor designs what will make it come true. Sometimes, it is just fantasy.
While design goes on, the government reviews what is happening and asks questions. They just hope they catch any major flaws.
Basically yes the onus is all on the corporations to actually produce this stuff.
Okay, but then the F-22 should have been the F-16 replacement. Shouldn’t it?
That’s what I don’t get. We’ve severely limited our diversity in assets IMO.
“The Navy built their own ships for over a century.”
When the navy yards were “competing” with private yards like Newport News, they couldn’t come close to the quality and price that the private yards offered. The Philadelphia yard, for example, was given contracts (at huge excess costs to the taxpayer) just to keep it open and the government workers employed. Even the bloated defense bureaucracy wanted it closed because it was facing an era of increasingly tight budgets as the Cold War ended.
coat=cost
Please. NASA is a complete failure, taking money better used for defense and private entreprise fund raising, all wannabe business bureaucrats, much corrupt like Rome.
The only good reason for nationalization is the fracking Unions, but Boeing can move to Florida. Marcel Dassault had to let go of the factories to government because the Unions had less power then. He however kept the design bureaus of elite engineers completely family like private.
What we need is less Corporate CEOs in defense and more patriotic billionaires like Howard Hughes. Funny that the arab billionaires finance their direct strategical interests through the spread of islam while our Obama liberal cck sucking billionaires finance illegals and garbage philantropy.
The problem is one of culture. If Boeing had a patriotic culture, they would lobby for it instead of pi$$ing it away.
But they didn't build enough of them for a complete replacement so we have a few hundred F-15c's that'll be around for another couple of decades...along with some newer F-15E's.
And other than the F-22, the F-15 is STILL the best fighter in the world. It's never been beaten.
Not once.
Thank you for the correction Mariner.
Thank you for the correction.
What’s your take on them?
bump
"Boeing" continues to produce fighter jets they acquired from their takeover of McDonnell Douglas.
Now when is the last time Boeing actually made a production fighter? The P 26? The F 15 and F 18 were McDonnell designs from before they were gobbled up by the Creature From Renton.
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