On 26 June 2024 Boeing lifted the lid on what can be considered a bold gamble by the company: a new 1.1 million square-foot factory to support future combat aircraft programmes on which ground was broken at the turn of the year. Expected to be completed in 2026, the USD 1.8 billion (EUR 1.69 billion) factory, which will nearly double the company’s manufacturing footprint at its site near St Louis Lambert International Airport, is intended to revolutionise how military aircraft are designed, built and delivered by Boeing by employing state-of-the-art digital tools and advanced manufacturing techniques.
The most obvious driver for the new facility is the US Air Force’s (USAF’s) Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) programme, for which the air force allocated a total of USD 1.66 billion in its FY2023 budget request and which has an estimated expenditure of USD 11.7 billion earmarked for the years spanning from FY2024 to FY2027. The NGAD programme is expected to cover around 200 manned sixth-generation aircraft to replace the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor air superiority fighter, supplemented by uncrewed collaborative combat aircraft (CCA).
However, while the USAF released a request for proposals for an NGAD engineering and manufacturing development contract in May 2023, with an expected contract award in 2024, that is yet to happen. In July 2023 Northrop Grumman announced that it would not bid for the NGAD contract, effectively leaving Boeing and Lockheed Martin in a two-horse race to fulfil the NGAD requirement.
Further to this, there is no guarantee that NGAD will actually happen, with Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall telling US publication Defense News that, although the USAF is committed to developing a sixth-generation fighter, it might have to opt for a solution that is less expensive than a full-blown next-generation programme. Such doubts make Boeing’s decision to build what is colloquially called the ‘Brownleigh site’ an even higher-stakes gamble.
Speaking to a select cadre of journalists in St Louis on 26 June 2024 that included ESD while overlooking the Brownleigh site, Steve Nordlund, vice president and general manager of Boeing’s Air Dominance business and the site leader in St Louis, declined to be drawn on the specifics of what the site would address. He did, however, say this: “We have dials that we can turn and we’ll see; this is a this is a pretty big moment for the St Louis site. … We have to make some bets, and we’ve listened to our customer and we’re moving forward, and I hope our customer appreciates that.
“This is a pretty big bet for the Boeing company,” Nordlund continued, “especially with where we are right now as a company and, if you don’t think Boeing was committed to the defence business, there’s your answer: it’s sitting right there.”
Boeing, along with other US defence companies, has taken a major financial hit in accepting fixed-price development programmes from the US Department of Defense, most notably in securing the KC-46 aerial refuelling aircraft programme, when it underbid Airbus for the contract and then ran into production line problems. The 2020-2023 Covid 19 pandemic then exacerbated those issues, causing labour turnover, inflation and supply chain issues.
As Boeing prepares for the end of the Super Hornet and F-15 fighter programmes in the next few years, it continues to manage fixed-price contracts for the T-7 advanced jet trainer and MQ-25 Stingray carrier-borne uncrewed aerial refuelling aircraft prograammes. Added to that is the need to deal with fallout from production defects in the Boeing 737 Max 9 airliner programme on the civilian side of the business. Its big bet on the Brownleigh site is thus a high-stakes gamble that could either alleviate or exacerbate its financial stability.
