By Andrea Shalal-Esa
NAVAL AIR STATION PATUXENT RIVER, Maryland, Dec 9 (Reuters) - B oeing Co must decide in March 2014 whether to invest tens of millions of dollars to continue production of the F/A-18 fighter jet, a senior Boeing executive said on Monday, underscoring his confidence that sufficient orders would emerge to keep the plane in production until beyond 2020.
"I know where my money is betting," said Mike Gibbons, vice president of F/A-18 Super Hornet and EA-18 Growler programs at Boeing, told reporters after a U.S. Navy ceremony at the headquarters of the Navy's aviation command celebrating the 35th anniversary of the first flight of the original F/A-18 Hornet.
"We have been extremely bullish about how much of a future we think we have on Super Hornet and Growler production," Gibbons said, noting that Boeing recently invested substantial amounts in new tools to reduce the cost of building the airplanes at its facility in St. Louis, Missouri.
The fighter is currently scheduled to end production in 2016. Boeing and its backers have launched a major campaign to press the U.S. military to buy more Super Hornets at a cost of about $51-52 million per plane, including engines, radars and electronic warfare equipment, especially since the Navy's version of the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter will not be ready for combat use on an aircraft carrier until 2019.
Production of fighter jets includes items like titanium that must be purchased well before production begins, which means Boeing may have to pay for those items itself until firm orders come in from the Navy or foreign buyers to ensure that the planes can be built on time.
Boeing is also promoting foreign sales of the warplanes to Canada, Denmark, Brazil, Malaysia, Kuwait and several other Middle Eastern countries, but executives concede that there is no current Navy budget for more planes and several of the foreign competitions have been delayed.
Navy Captain Frank Morley, who runs the program for the Navy, told reporters that top U.S. military leaders would decide the future of the program over the next year.
"There is an ongoing conversation between this building and that building," he said, adding that decisions about more orders would depend on future Pentagon funding levels.
He said the Super Hornet's continued evolution from the Hornet had been "a huge success for the Navy," adding payload, range, and protections to help the plane survive attacks while keeping the program on cost and schedule targets.
The Navy is now considering additional upgrades, including adding form-fitted fuel tanks that could reduce drag and improve the plane's range by up to 130 miles. Gibbons said he considered it a given that the Navy would order more upgrades.