Aviation Week reported that the announced selection by the Indian Navy of a French fighter “is another blow to the future of Boeing’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet assembly line in St. Louis.” The Boeing Company “had already announced plans to wind down F/A-18E/F production in Missouri by 2025, but held out hope that potential orders in India could extend U.S. assembly operations by a year and keep the fighter in production on a new assembly line on the subcontinent.” But India’s Navy announced the selection on Friday of the Dassault Rafale-M “to become its next carrier-based fighter.” Boeing Vice President of Business Development for Air Dominance Programs Bernd Peters said, “So we’ll likely cease production [of the Super Hornet] around the 2025 time frame.”
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Tag: Super Hornet
NASA Completes Super Hornet Tests
ExecutiveGov reports, “NASA Armstrong Research Center has completed complex loads of calibration tests on an F/A-18E Super Hornet aircraft from the U.S. Navy at its Flight Loads Laboratory in Edwards, California.” The testing dealt with the aircraft’s vertical tails, and test engineers activated 84 hydraulic actuators in a total of 87 load cases.
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