WASHINGTON — Boeing expects to deliver the U.S. Air Force’s next F-15EX Eagle II fighter by the top of November, nearly a 12 months after the corporate originally planned and 4 months behind its revised estimate.
This F-15EX, the third Boeing has up to now produced for the Air Force, took its first two flights on Oct. 27 at Boeing’s St. Louis, Missouri, factory, the corporate said in a social media post.
Rob Novotny, Boeing’s director of F-15 business development, said in a Thursday interview with Defense News that production for the fourth F-15EX is complete, and its delivery will follow shortly after the third.
But Novotny also acknowledged Boeing’s F-15EX production has not been as quick as the corporate wanted, and that the Air Force has expressed its displeasure with the pace and production problems.
“Briefly, we missed our mark,” said Novotny, a former F-15 pilot, wing commander and brigadier general for the Air Force who joined Boeing in April. “The federal government knows once they thought they were going to get them and the way hard we’re working to get it to them, and so they know that we’ve been late. Those conversations are never fun.”
Those aircraft are the primary two F-15EXs Boeing produced as a part of lot 1B, which follow the 2 lot 1A test aircraft delivered to the Air Force in spring 2021. F-15EXs include multiple upgrades over previous versions of the fourth-generation fighter, including advanced avionics and improved electronic warfare capabilities.
The F-15EX can also be expected to have the opportunity to hold as much as 12 air-to-air missiles, greater than some other Air Force fighter.
Deadlines
Problems with the F-15EX’s production and quality caused the delivery schedule to slide over the past 12 months. The Government Accountability Office said in a weapons system assessment report earlier this 12 months that Boeing originally expected to start out delivering the primary of six lot 1B aircraft in December 2022.
Boeing missed that deadline, GAO said, mainly on account of a supplier’s quality problems with a critical part within the fighter’s forward fuselage that’s mandatory for flight safety. GAO addedthat the Defense Contract Management Agency found Boeing mis-drilled holes to put in the windscreen on 4 fighters on account of a faulty tool.
In that report, GAO said Boeing had since shifted its plans and expected to deliver the third F-15EX in July 2023, and the fourth a month later.
A November delivery date, as Boeing now expects, would represent an extra four-month delay from that the majority recent goal.
Novotny said Boeing’s shift to a brand new manufacturing approach to construct F-15EXs, called full-size determinant assembly, was harder than expected and contributed to delays.
That approach, which Boeing already utilized in production of business aircraft, takes advantage of contemporary manufacturing processes corresponding to 3D drawings and the automated drilling of holes in components. It is meant to supply more precise and accurate holes so parts will be easily fastened together without using shims or match drilling.
But getting the tooling and other quality measures right, particularly with a workforce that was using this method for the primary time, “took us lots more learning than we thought,” Novotny said. “We form of blew through a few of our timelines on the manufacturing process.”
Boeing said in a follow-up email that after a redesign of the F-15EX’s forward fuselage, the corporate moved assembly work from South Korea to St. Louis. While the corporate is working on refining this assembly process, the corporate noted, the change cost it time on the lot 1B aircraft.
Novotny noted Boeing has learned lessons from the early days of using this manufacturing approach on the F-15EX, which the corporate will use on the following lot of fighters. The corporate is starting to comprehend the advantages that this approach, together with digital engineering, can yield, he added, and is now producing F-15EXs faster.
Novotny said Boeing’s schedule estimates going forward can be more accurate, but noted the availability issues from subcontractors presented a challenge.
“If a supplier is late, I can’t deliver a completely assembled F-15EX because I’m waiting on a [stabilizer] actuator,” he said. “The delay is an aggregate of a wide range of challenges that our entire global supply chain [has experienced].”
“The availability chain realities of today’s world are running on a razor’s edge, and our defense-industrial base has been running on a razor’s edge,” he added. “After I aggregate the whole lot of a supply chain over a two- or three-year period to construct an F-15, mild perturbations can have significant ripples two years down the road.”
More fighters
Novotny said the fifth and sixth F-15EXs are actually undergoing final assembly and needs to be on the ramp in just a few weeks. The third through sixth Eagle IIs are slated to go to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida to proceed operational testing, he added.
The ultimate two fighters for lot 1B, which can be the primary combat-coded aircraft, needs to be finished after the vacations, Novotny said. The Air Force will receive them by the top of the primary quarter of 2024, after which they’ll go to the Air National Guard, he added.
Boeing has revamped the leadership of its F-15 team, each on business development and program management, aiming to “usher in latest eyes on this system,” Novotny said. Around the identical time as he joined Boeing, the corporate also brought on a brand new vice chairman, Mark Sears, to oversee its fighters, including the F-15EX.
Boeing has also drawn its F-18 and F-15 production teams more closely together, Novotny noted. The 2 fighters are still manufactured on their very own lanes, he explained, however the “strategic merging” allows more data and lessons to be shared between programs.
“We’re finding commonalities between what’s a really mature and successful F-18 line, and porting those over to the F-15EX line, which is latest,” Novotny said. “We’re seeing our quality assurance team sharing quite a little bit of lessons learned on Hornet that work in Eagle.”
A few of those production suggestions the Hornet team suggested have already resulted in additional quickly accomplished tasks, Novotny said, and he expects more improvements will proceed.
“We’re done making excuses,” Novotny said. “We’re done with apologies. We wish to start out delivering for the warfighter; we’ve at all times delivered for the warfighter. … I’m confident we’re going to get going heading in the right direction.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.