Boeing has plenty of military work and good prospects, Chris Chadwick, president of the company’s military aircraft sector, said Wednesday. Deflecting punditry suggesting that Boeing was mortally gored by the Pentagon’s recent spate of budget cuts and terminations, Chadwick told reporters in Arlington, Va., that he’s “pretty pleased with the position we’re in.” It looks like USAF will order at least eight more C-17s under the recent war supplemental, and Chadwick expects the KC-X tanker program will be restarted in the next couple of months. A new mobility study may call for more transports, and there could be additional foreign C-17 orders, he said. Chadwick said Boeing won’t be marketing its reduced-signature F-15 “Silent Eagle” or its F/A-18E/F Super Hornet to the eight F-35 partner countries, but anyone else who hasn’t signed up yet is fair game, he said, noting that there have been preliminary talks with Saudi Arabia. “We are working with the US government” to iron out releasability issues, he added. It remains to be seen what will happen to the combat search and rescue helicopter requirement (see above), but Boeing has both the HH-47 and the V-22 to offer. And the company intends to be a big player in unmanned aircraft, a field in which there is “no dominant” company yet, he noted. Boeing is looking ahead to the next round of modernization. “I want my team focused on 2020,” and what the requirements and technological possibilities are in that timeframe, Chadwick asserted.
Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, head of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, warned that Russia would remain an enduring threat to NATO and global security, regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine.