Northrop Grumman, EL SEGUNDO: Northrop Grumman Corporation has been awarded a $3.2 billion multi-year contract by The Boeing Company to continue its production work on the F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft, the U.S. Navy's frontline carrier-based strike fighter. Of this amount, approximately $650 million is funded for fiscal 2005.
As the principal F/A-18 subcontractor to Boeing, Northrop Grumman produces the center/aft fuselage and twin vertical tails and integrates all associated subsystems at its El Segundo facility. The company delivers these fuselage shipsets to Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems facility in St. Louis, Mo., for final assembly.
This is Northrop Grumman's second multi-year production contract for the Super Hornet program. It covers procurement of 210 shipsets at the rate of 42 during each of the fiscal years 2005-2009. Additionally, the contract provides the flexibility for the Navy to increase that quantity by as many as six per year. Deliveries will begin in 2006.
“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.”
Of the 210 shipsets being produced, 56 are earmarked for the EA-18G, an electronic-attack variant of the F/A-18 that is expected to begin replacing the Navy's venerable EA-6B Prowler aircraft by the end of the decade. Northrop Grumman also is principal subcontractor for the EA-18G and, under a separate contract, is the airborne electronic-attack system integrator. In March 2005, Northrop Grumman delivered the first center/aft fuselage section for the EA-18G.
The F/A-18 program accounts for more than 1,400 jobs at Northrop Grumman in El Segundo and approximately 10,000 additional jobs at hundreds of other companies in California. Northrop Grumman has delivered more than 1,700 shipsets since the original F/A-18 program began in the 1970s, and its work is expected to continue into the next decade on the Super Hornet and the EA-18G.
