As battle lines are drawn in Congress over whether to force Lockheed Martin to make room for Boeing on its winning Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)team, it is likely that the fog of rhetoric will obscure the real issue - that what Boeing needs urgently is not assembly work to keep the rivet guns rattling, but engineering work to keep the computer screens glowing and the company's combat aircraft design skills sharp.
Lawmakers are likely to respond to the defence department's decision to stand by its "winner-takes-all" policy for JSF in two ways: by introducing legislation forcing Lockheed Martin to share work with Boeing, and by adding funding for military programmes that will benefit the losing company. But funds to kick-start replacement of the US Air Force's ageing fleet of KC-135s with 767-based tankers will not provide Boeing with the type of work it needs in the wake of losing the $20 billion JSF development contract.
It is likely Lockheed Martin will see the political and technical advantages of bringing Boeing on to its team as a fully integrated member, involved from design through to production - provided the DoD is prepared to make the appropriate adjustments to its contract - but even that will not preserve the prime contractor skills Boeing honed during the concept demonstration phase. What Boeing needs is another opportunity to compete for meaningful design and development work. Congress would best serve Boeing by urging the Pentagon to press ahead with an achievable unmanned combat air vehicle programme, which would see the early fielding of a survivable surveillance aircraft able to meet the DoD's need for real-time targeting and battle-damage assessment, but able to evolve into an auto-nomous strike weapon system as the still-unproven technology matures. As Boeing is more than airliners, its critical skills run far deeper than rivetting together aluminium. And the industrial base issue raised by the JSF decision is not about jobs, it is about just those skills.
Source: Flight International
