{"id":2431,"date":"2013-10-31T11:20:11","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T17:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=2431"},"modified":"2013-10-31T11:20:11","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T17:20:11","slug":"more-super-hornets-in-the-pipeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/more-super-hornets-in-the-pipeline\/","title":{"rendered":"More Super Hornets in the pipeline?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Tim Logan, St. Louis Post Dispatch
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the St. Louis area\u2019s biggest assembly lines may be getting a new lease on life.<\/p>\n

The Navy is considering buying 36 more F\/A-18 Super Hornets, according to a notice posted this month on a federal procurement website. That move would sustain 5,000 jobs building the fighter jets at Boeing Co. in Hazelwood and suppliers around the St. Louis area for at least an additional 18 months.<\/p>\n

The Super Hornet is the Navy\u2019s premier fighter jet, but it\u2019s nearing the end of its production line as the service begins to shift over to Lockheed Martin\u2019s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Navy\u2019s last order is set to be made in the current fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, 2014, with the last plane due for delivery in 2016.<\/p>\n

But amid Pentagon budget cuts and delays to the F-35 program, Boeing has been pitching the Super Hornet as a cheaper and more reliable alternative. And it appears the Navy may be listening.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the Naval Air Services Command quietly posted a \u201cpre-solicitation\u201d\u00a0notice on a federal contracting website<\/a>, declaring its intent to \u201csolicit and negotiate\u201d a fixed-price contract for 36 more F\/A-18 Super Hornets and E\/A-18 Growlers. At $55 million per plane, the contract would cost roughly $2 billion.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

But it\u2019s far from a done deal. The Pentagon\u2019s 2015 budget, which will detail its purchasing plans, isn\u2019t due out until February and must then move through Congress, said Todd Harrison,\u00a0senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment<\/a>s. He saw the notice as a way for the Navy to keep its options open.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis notice coming out now just means that this is something under consideration,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s an indication that the Navy is at least considering the possibility of buying more Super Hornets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boeing took a similar stance, calling the notice \u201ca formality to keep the door open to potential future buys.\u201d A Navy spokeswoman did not reply to written questions Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Boeing\u2019s Hazelwood-based Defense, Space and Security division has a lot riding on the final decision.<\/p>\n

The F\/A-18 is the most-advanced military jet Boeing assembles, and it supports thousands of jobs both in manufacturing lines and elsewhere in the company.<\/p>\n

Prolonging the Navy contract by even a year would also increase the likelihood of landing foreign orders \u2014 such as Brazil\u2019s plan to purchase a fighter jet \u2014 that could extend production event further. And some defense experts warn against letting the Super Hornet line go dark and focusing all U.S. fighter jet production in one program with the Joint Strike Fighter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not an easy decision,\u201d Harrison said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s going to have long-lasting implications.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Navy is not the only air fleet that\u2019s deciding what to buy.<\/p>\n

The South Korean Air Force also continues to weigh a fighter jet purchase that it postponed last month. The company\u2019s Defense Ministry had planned to spend $8 billion buying 60 Boeing-built F-15s, which were far cheaper than the F-35. But it put off the deal at the last minute over concerns that the older jets wouldn\u2019t have the capabilities Korea needs to counter North Korea. Now the country is reported to be considering splitting its purchase across several planes.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0an interview with Bloomberg News<\/a>, a Boeing executive said this week that his company would be open to that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it turns out a split of 40 F-15s and 20 F-35s is the right answer, then, of course, we will want to participate in that,\u201d James Armington, vice president for East Asia-Pacific business development at Boeing\u2019s defense unit, told Bloomberg. \u201cWhatever the requirement is determined to be, whatever the need is determined to be, we definitely want to participate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Tim Logan, St. Louis Post Dispatch click here for original article One of the St. Louis area\u2019s biggest assembly lines may be getting a new lease on life. The Navy is considering buying 36 more F\/A-18 Super Hornets, according to a notice posted this month on a federal procurement website. That move would sustain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[169],"class_list":["post-2431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-boeing"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Four_Super_Hornets.jpg?fit=1960%2C3008&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2431"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2434,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431\/revisions\/2434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}