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Honeywell: Air Force Considers 144 Extra F-15Es
[Defense Daily, Feb. 4, 2004]
By Lorenzo Cortes
Honeywell [HON] believes the Air Force is considering the possibility of having Boeing [BA] produce an extra 144 F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bombers, a Honeywell official said yesterday.
"We're now working with four other countries plus a requirement in the United States Air Force for 144 new F-15s to possibly come into the inventory in the next few years," Mike Garten, vice president of business development for OEM/Space/Technology for Honeywell, said during the company's media day in Washington, D.C.
Garten later told Defense Daily a number of hypothetical possibilities get discussed regarding capabilities and requirements, and the 144 aircraft are presently not in the FY '05 budget request. Garten said it was a proposal that Boeing made to the Air Force.
Boeing would not comment. The Air Force for its part said it is not programming to buy more F-15s. Honeywell produces the advanced display core processor, integrated INS/GPS navigation, air data and digital mapping solutions for F-15E. It also provides engine services and systems, the environmental control systems, auxiliary power, actuators and valves.
Previously, Boeing had outlined plans that included international and attrition buys comprising the majority of F-15 builds in the future. South Korea is the most recent customer, slated to acquire 40 new F-15K fighter-bombers, having selected the K-model over the Rafale offered by France's Dassault Aviation for the $4.5 billion F-X fighter requirement (Defense Daily, April 22, 2002).
The South Koreans could also possibly sign on for a second batch of fighters, but an amount for the second buy is not defined. The F-15T version is competing against the Eurofighter Typhoon offered by the Eurofighter consortium and the Rafale for Singapore's new fighter requirement (Defense Daily, Oct. 14).
Israel, which operates the F-15I, may also order new fighters. Depending on the number of foreign buys for F-15E and its variants, Honeywell could provide systems for 160 new build aircraft.
The Air Force's $296.5 million FY '05 budget request for the F-15E program includes provisions for ongoing modification and development work, allocating $181.6 million for procurement-related tasks and $115.2 million for research, development test and evaluation (RDT&E).
This actually represents a slight decrease from the $322.7 million FY '04 request for F-15E, which totaled $200.3 million for procurement activity and $122.4 million for RDT&E.
The service has also pulled funding in FY '05 from the Northrop Grumman [NOC] ALQ-135, an internal countermeasures management system and from the procurement account for BAE SYSTEMS' ALE-55 fiber optic towed decoy (Defense Daily, Jan. 13).
Another driving factor could be uncertainty over how many F/A-22 fighters the Air Force ends up procuring from Lockheed Martin [LMT]. Presently, the Air Force is operating on a build-to-budget metric, but could end up acquiring 276 aircraft. This is lower than both the 339 and 295 numbers mentioned in the past.
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