Forum: General F-35 Forum

Boeing Lobbies for $2 Billion in Jets as Lockheed Delayed
Roxana Tiron | Bloomberg

"Boeing Co. (BA) is pressing U.S. lawmakers to back production of as many as 37 additional Super Hornet fighter jets valued at about $2.5 billion, as the Pentagon delays Lockheed Martin Corp.’s new F-35.

Boeing is lobbying for a $60 million increase in the Navy’s fiscal 2013 budget for advance purchases of materials to keep building F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets beyond 2015. The money would avert a shutdown of the fighter’s assembly line and may help reduce a shortage in jets the Navy needs, according to a document the company distributed on Capitol Hill."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-2 ... layed.html

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Fighter market is not monopolized yet.

Sounds like Boeing is getting desperate to keep the almost obsolete SH assembly line from shutting down.

Because spending 70 million per plane on an obsolete aircraft is so worth it right?

Last year the Navy was ordered to do an analysis of it's fighter inventories to see how significant the capabilities gap would be in case the F-35 was delayed. Anyone know,the results of this study? Do they really merit new buys of old technology instead of,spending,to,keep,existing jets in flyable condition for a smaller expenditure until the F-35 comesonline?

Instead of spending money to buy old tech, or spending money to keep old tech flying... how about spending that money to speed up JSF development?

SpudmanWP wrote:

Instead of spending money to buy old tech, or spending money to keep old tech flying... how about spending that money to speed up JSF development?

Nope. That would make sense. Wink

Or, how about the US "spread the wealth" so that both Boeing and Lockheed remain in the fighter market?

Boeing isn't going to keep its fighter capability out of the goodness of its own heart, thus it is logical to expect them to try and pitch their aircraft and get sales.

What I don't understand is why the USAF / USN are willfully restricting themselves to a single fighter company. This fact is even more fantastical given the current track record of Lockheed Martin.

It is probably true that any of the three companies, including Northrup, would have struggled mightily to achieve the original goals of the JSF program. But, keeping the three companies alive gives the government the ability to:
A) keep the companies honest by threatening to take the next program from their competitors
B) run multiple fighter programs simultaneously. I doubt that Lockheed / Boeing will retain the ability to simultaneously develop two planes at the same time. While Lockheed achieved that, for a time, with the JSF and the F-22, the results have been clearly suboptimal, and even then the planes were at two different stages of development.

If in 3 years the USAF wanted a replacement for the F-22 and the USN wanted a replacement for the A-6, they would probably be forced to go to different companies, just because of the lack of development talent.

SpudmanWP wrote:

Instead of spending money to buy old tech, or spending money to keep old tech flying... how about spending that money to speed up JSF development?

That too.. any retrofit fixes required down the road are. Going to cost much less than a brand new SH.

Maybe Boeing should invest into a next gen F18. Call it the Super Duper Hornet.

[quote="handyman"]Maybe Boeing should invest into a next gen F18. Call it the Super Duper Hornet.[/quote
They did come up with the International SH Roadmap configurationbut they wanted prospective customers to foot the bill. If the biggest SH user wasn't interested, not likely anyone else would be.

svenphantom wrote:

Because spending 70 million per plane on an obsolete aircraft is so worth it right?

I'm not so sure it is obsolete yet, maybe 5 or 10 years down the road it will be. Though saying that if it were to go up against modern SAMs i'm not sure it'd fair to well. Shall we say semi-obsolete if that makes any sense?

I do like the Super Duper Hornet idea, guess that might be what they'll call the one they're trying to flog with the weapons pod things.

arkadyrenko wrote:

Or, how about the US "spread the wealth" so that both Boeing and Lockheed remain in the fighter market?

Boeing isn't going to keep its fighter capability out of the goodness of its own heart, thus it is logical to expect them to try and pitch their aircraft and get sales.

What I don't understand is why the USAF / USN are willfully restricting themselves to a single fighter company. This fact is even more fantastical given the current track record of Lockheed Martin.

It is probably true that any of the three companies, including Northrup, would have struggled mightily to achieve the original goals of the JSF program. But, keeping the three companies alive gives the government the ability to:
A) keep the companies honest by threatening to take the next program from their competitors
B) run multiple fighter programs simultaneously. I doubt that Lockheed / Boeing will retain the ability to simultaneously develop two planes at the same time. While Lockheed achieved that, for a time, with the JSF and the F-22, the results have been clearly suboptimal, and even then the planes were at two different stages of development.

If in 3 years the USAF wanted a replacement for the F-22 and the USN wanted a replacement for the A-6, they would probably be forced to go to different companies, just because of the lack of development talent.

The 4G fighter era were more prosperous, as there were more military aircraft companies at the time.

Everyone is [Link pending approval] and it's a crippler, not likely to improve in our lifetimes. Some governments are under pressure to drastically reduce air forces and/or look to 100% unmanned options, like them or not. This will place even more pressure on the big players to generate mission rates on overtaxed airframes and budgets in a time of need.
The Super Hornet can be a force -multiplier, bringing buddy refueling to nations that do not currently even posses a refuel capability. We know the drain a lack of those capabilities places on sustained combat ops. The Super is a "relatively" inexpensive multi-role weapons system, available with an advanced coupled crew concept and the F model can be delivered wired for conversion to the electronic warfare role, as the RAAF has chosen to do with a dozen or so airframes, for about $35 mil. This allows countries that would never have considered an EW option, a chance to take some load off those few, with it.
The -35 is going to be a great [Link pending approval] and these other weapons systems paired with Situational awareness provided by our big eyes in the sky are still an extremely formidable force into the near future.
Cheers

Forum: General F-35 Forum

Boeing: F-35 delayed? Buy more F/A-18s