F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program continues to accrue criticism over cost and schedule overruns and missed milestones, the U.S. Navy is looking to an old standby—the Boeing-built F/A-18 Super Hornet—to plug potential holes in its airborne fleet. The Navy’s unfunded “wish list,” headed to lawmakers’ desks this week, includes 12 Boeing-built F/A-18 fighter jets alongside eight Lockheed Martin F-35Cs. Each purchase would be worth roughly $1 billion for the companies—if Congress decides to fund them.
A great news for Boeing BA -0.33% , whose F/A-18 production line is set to cease production in 2017 if the company receives no new orders. But a decision on whether to spend the company’s own cash on long-lead production materials like titanium will have to be made this summer, before Congress finalizes its fiscal 2016 budget. A strong signal from the Navy and Congress now could play a big role in that decision.
Source of image :http://fortune.com/2015/03/28/us-navy-boeing-fighter-jets/
Republicans in the Senate last week introduced a non-binding resolution to the budget adding an additional $38 billion to the overseas contingency operations (OCO) fund that the Senate Budget Committee had originally seeded with $58 billion. (OCO funds are those designated for ongoing military operations overseas and not subject to sequestration caps) That extra $38 billion in OCO funds dovetails conspicuously with the $561 billion base budget put forth by the Obama administration, which exceeded the defense budget’s $523 spending cap by—wait for it—$38 billion dollars.House Republicans passed a similar budget, with $96 billion set aside in the Pentagon’s OCO fund. These budgets are not the final word on the fiscal 2016 budget, but they are the working blueprint. And though this so-called “sequester dodge” has drawn criticism even from some Republicans on Capitol Hill—Sen. John McCain called it a “gimmick”—they are a clear indicator of which way the wind is blowing. The defense hawks are beating the fiscal hawks in this round of negotiations, and the proposed “dodge”—along with a provision slipped into last week’s Senate budget that could allow for the altering of some sequestration—suggests the Pentagon could get more of what it wants. But the Navy’s vocal support for a batch of new F/A-18s coupled with the fact that the Pentagon may end up with some extra funds provides hope for the Super Hornet. And there’s good reason for the Pentagon to keep the F/A-18 production line going. Sustaining the F/A-18 would keep its cousin, the E/A-18 Growler, alive as well. The Growler, an electronic warfare variant of the Super Hornet built around the same airframe, does a very specific job that many think the F-35 isn
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