Boeing Says Production Of Super Hornet Fighters Will Cease In 2025 As Company Pivots To New Opportunities

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Defense & Space revealed on February 23 that production of its signature F/A-18 Super Hornet will likely end in 2025.

Shutdown of the line near St. Louis might extend for two additional years if the company wins a competition in India, and upgrades to Super Hornets already delivered will extend for years beyond that.

However, the end of new production for what is widely considered the most successful aircraft in the history of naval aviation is fast approaching.

This is the first time that Boeing Defense & Space has offered a definitive timeline for ending production, and appears to reflect a change in corporate philosophy.

The typical behavior of longtime incumbents on major weapons programs is to squeeze every dollar possible out of a program, even if that means fighting with the military customer on Capitol Hill.

But Boeing, a contributor to my think tank, is taking a different path with Super Hornet. Rather than trying to hang on, it will redeploy the workforce to new opportunities, which include the T-7 Red Hawk trainer and the MQ-25 Stingray unmanned refueling aircraft.

These programs are still in their infancy, and company executives believe they have extensive sales potential beyond their baselines for the Air Force and Navy.

Boeing Defense is pursuing an array of other opportunities, some of which are highly classified. However, the company is signaling that it expects work at its site near St. Louis to remain focused largely on aircraft, including potentially a sixth-generation successor to the F-35 fighter.

The St. Louis complex was headquarters of the McDonnell Douglas corporation, once the largest producer of tactical aircraft in the world, which Boeing merged with in 1997.

Super Hornet was designed by McDonnell Douglas engineers as an evolved version of the original Hornet, but production of the plane did not commence until the same year that McDonnell was absorbed by Boeing.

The Navy subsequently funded an electronic-warfare version of Super Hornet designated the EA-18G Growler as it necked down the types of aircraft in its carrier air wings to a force dominated by St. Louis-built airframes.

All told, the St. Louis site has built over 2,000 Hornets, Super Hornets and Growlers, selling versions of the fighter to Australia, Canada, Finland, Kuwait, Malaysia, Spain and Switzerland.

So shut down of new production is a turning point for St. Louis, where Boeing employs 15,000 workers in the metropolitan region.

The impact on hundreds of companies in the Super Hornet supply chain will be significant. However, it isn’t clear that the workforce at Boeing’s St. Louis locations will be heavily impacted because production of next-generation manned and unmanned aircraft is ramping up.

The St. Louis plant also builds wings for Boeing’s 777X widebody jetliner, and is assembling an advanced version of the legacy F-15 fighter known as the EX. The company has an extensive research infrastructure at the site, and is investing a billion dollars in construction of three new facilities for future testing and production work.

One clear sign that there is life after Super Hornet for Boeing Defense in St. Louis is that the company has been hiring new workers recently—900 in 2022 alone—and expects to continue doing so. Many of these workers are engineers, a clear sign that the company is developing new products and processes.

The decision to go public with a timeline for Super Hornet line closure may be indicative of the new thinking that Boeing Defense & Space CEO Ted Colbert has brought to the enterprise.

Colbert, an engineer, has been charged by corporate headquarters with rebuilding the company’s defense and space business, which has seen a significant erosion of revenues in recent years due to the sunsetting of legacy programs and the failure to secure sufficient new awards.

Colbert needs to turn that trend around, and apparently has decided that revitalizing St. Louis begins with accepting the inevitable and moving on to fresh opportunities.

Thus, while relinquishing new production of Super Hornet is hardly a welcome moment for Boeing Defense & Space, being straightforward about the when and how of the change portends a shift in how the unit operates.

As noted above, Boeing contributes to my think tank.