Boeing nabs whopping $131 billion F-15 deal

WASHINGTON — The US Air Force has awarded aerospace giant Boeing a broad contract for the company’s F-15 fighter jet worth up to $131.2 billion, according to a Defense Department announcement.

The eye-popping sum for the “F-15 Eagle Crest” covers aircraft production, upgrades and sustainment, among other features, for the Pentagon and the jet’s international customers. Work is expected to wrap up by August 2037, Monday’s notice says. The deal was sole-sourced to Boeing, which referred a request for comment to the Air Force. 

“The Eagle Crest contract vehicle is designed to fund actions related to future F-15 agreements and will accelerate delivery of capability to the warfighter by streamlining how the Air Force executes future requirements for both the U.S. Air Force and Foreign Military Sales partners,” an Air Force spokesperson said in a statement to Breaking Defense.

“As an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract, it provides flexibility to support future efforts up to the contract ceiling, while each award remains subject to independent decision-making. The ceiling represents capacity for future needs, not a commitment to spend the full amount. By consolidating these efforts under a single contract vehicle, Eagle Crest will help the Air Force move faster and reduce administrative burden,” the spokesperson added.

Casey Nicastro, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told Breaking Defense that the F-15 deal is “one of the bigger contracts recently awarded” by the Defense Department. While a $151 billion indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) contract was issued last year for the Golden Dome initiative, Nicastro noted that deal included over 1,000 separate awards. 

A somewhat similar award was issued by the Air Force in August 2020 for the F-16, Nicastro observed. That deal was an ID/IQ contract to Lockheed Martin worth up to $62 billion for Foreign Military Sales aircraft, a sizable sum still less than half that for the F-15 Eagle Crest contract awarded Monday. 

“The size of the new contract seems to indicate that the Air Force believes aircraft like the F-15EX will still play a significant role in the future of air combat, even as the service moves towards adopting newer systems, like CCAs [collaborative combat aircraft] and F-47s,” Nicastro said. 

The contract follows a plan unveiled by the Air Force earlier this year to more than double its buy of the F-15’s newest variant, the F-15EX, to 267 aircraft. And it comes as Boeing courts other international customers for the fighter jet, with Israel most recently inking orders for dozens of fresh exports. 

The contract covers nearly all of the F-15’s current operators alongside the US, including Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Singapore. While some countries like Israel are buying new F-15s, others like South Korea are upgrading existing jets. (Israel also operates a legacy version of the fighter.) 

The contract further includes potential Foreign Military Sales work for Indonesia, which previously ditched its bid for the F-15EX, and Poland, which hasn’t announced a decision to buy the aircraft.

Qatar additionally operates the F-15, though the country was omitted from the contract posted Monday. The F-15EX is derived from Doha’s F-15 variant dubbed the F-15QA.

John Ferrari, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former two-star Army general, noted that the contract stretches out over a decade, and that foreign sales are “a big piece of this” since the F-15 is operated by several other countries.

“[M]y guess is that they are trying to lock this in and there is zero downside to a high ceiling, but a big downside to having too little ceiling and running out,” Ferrari told Breaking Defense. 

Boeing is working to ramp up its F-15 production amid climbing demand, but has struggled with setbacks like a months-long labor strike last year. Cascading delays have postponed delivery dates for the Air Force at key installations like Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan.

A recently published Pentagon document, known as a selected acquisition report [PDF], says that F-15EX delays have breached the program’s baseline schedule for full operational capability. The milestone will be delayed about seven months to February 2028, the report says.

The Air Force’s plan to surge its buy of the F-15 will come with its own challenges as well. The expanded order “introduces new cost and schedule uncertainties,” the selected acquisition report says, requiring a “major technical refresh to overcome” diminishing manufacturing sources. That would include “replacing obsolete key systems” like the jet’s radar, engines and electronic warfare suite, “which constitutes a significant redesign effort,” according to the report. 

The document says that the Air Force does not yet have a cost estimate for its expanded buy, and that the program is being re-baselined to account for lost time. The Air Force did not respond by press time when asked for updated cost and schedule projections.