The Navy plans to buy the last F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers, a radar-jamming variant, in the fiscal year 2014 budget now very much up in the air on Capitol Hill. “If nothing is done, the last order closes around 2016,” Aboulafia told me. The Saint Louis factory still has some guaranteed work through 2018, building F-15 Eagles for Saudi Arabia, though further F-15 sales are much in doubt. The Hornet/Growler production line shuts down in 2016, however, and the supplier base starts withering well before: Boeing told me they’ll have to make key decisions on long-lead items in early 2014. “When you lose a line,” said Aboulafia, “you almost never get it back.”
That’s why Forbes wants the Pentagon to consider keeping the line — and its options — open. Forbes doesn’t represent Missouri, where the Hornet is built, but his homestate of Virginia builds every Navy aircraft carrier and is homebase to half the fleet, so the he’s profoundly concerned about the aircraft those carriers launch. Once the Hornet/Growler line goes cold, he points out, “the Department will be left with a sole-source tactical aircraft program for the Navy.” In fact, when the F-15 line in Saint Louis shuts down in turn, Boeing will be out of the fighter business altogether, leaving a Lockheed Martin monopoly.
The F-35 is designed to replace the Hornet, the F-15, and a host of other US aircraft. But, as Forbes notes in his letter, the Navy F-35C variant won’t enter service until February 2019 — assuming no further delays. Boeing and its allies have taken repeated shots at the troubled Lockheed Martin program, including in the video above from a would-be Boeing supplier.
Forbes Champions More Super Hornets; F-18 Vs. F-35, Round Two « Breaking Defense - Defense industry news, analysis and commentary