Lots More

Boeing awarded a $3.2 billion multi-year contract to Northrop Grumman to continue production work on the F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft. The Super Hornet is the Navy's frontline carrier-based strike fighter, replacing the F-14 Tomcats which are being retired.

"This award reflects the confidence of the Navy and Boeing in Northrop Grumman's role as a systems integrator," said Gary W. Ervin, sector vice president of the Air Combat Systems unit in the company's Integrated Systems sector. "In order to meet our customers' expectations, we never stand still. New technologies and processes are regularly introduced on the production line so we can continue to improve our performance."

Northrop Grumman is the principal F/A-18 subcontractor to Boeing. The company produces the center/aft fuselage and twin vertical tails and integrates all associated subsystems at its El Segundo facility before delivering them fuselage to St. Louis for final assembly at Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems facility.

This is the second multi-year production contract for the Super Hornet program. It pays for 210 aircraft total, at the rate of 42 per fiscal years 2005-2009. The Navy has the option to ask for up to six more per year. About $650 million will be used for fiscal year 2005, with deliveries beginning in 2006.

56 of the 210 shipsets being produced are destined to become EA-18Gs, an electronic-attack variant of the F/A-18 that is should replace the Navy's aged EA-6B Prowlers by the end of the decade.

Northrop Grumman is principal subcontractor for the EA-18G and is the airborne electronic-attack system integrator under a separate contract. Northrop Grumman delivered the first center/aft fuselage section for the EA-18G in March 2005.

More that 1,400 Northrop Grumman jobs in El Segundo depend upon the F/A-18 program, along with another roughly 10,000 jobs at related companies in California.  The company has delivered more than 1,700 shipsets since the original F/A-18 program began in the 1970s. This contract extends the work through fiscal year 2009.

FMI: www.northropgrumman.com