For those who question the contract award on the NGAD, know that the downselect process is heavily weighted by past contract performance history. Poor performers suffer serious downgrades on their offerings. What they would look for at Boeing is the most relevant history: performance on the F/A-18 product line and the F-15 product line among others. That work is mostly done by their defense aerospace folks in St. Louis. There probably isn’t much—if any at all—crossover work with their spaceship group (CST-100 Starliner issues) or their commercial aviation group (B737 Max issues). The Starliner was designed in Texas and assembled in Florida. Their commercial jet parts and subassemblies are built all over (including fuselages from Wichita, KS) and integrated in Washington. The last relevant fighter design for Boeing might have been the X-32 which lost to the LockMart X-35. But all of that work was absolutely relevant to any next generation fighter. The AF also looked at the F-35, and I expect that LockMart tried to carry forward design features from the F-22. And judging how well that was accomplished—or not. Lockheed wouldn’t get a free ride in the past performance history either. There’s plenty there to look at. The real issue for Boeing would have been financial stability at a corporate level (running huge losses for the last 5 years) and in corporate governance and culture. Those two might have been their biggest hurdles in this award.
Topic: F 47 Fighter Jet (Read 2069 times)