Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman have each received contracts from the Air Force to sustain and modernize the service’s A-10 Warthog fleet. The indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts have a total ceiling of up to $1.6 billion. Under the four-year contracts, the Air Force will be able to assign work on the A-10s—both A and C models—to the three contractors as it wants. In a June 11 release, Boeing noted that it also won the earlier A-10 wing replacement contract, under which the company has been developing 3-D models as the engineering foundation before it begins wing production. Those models, said the company, helped the Air Force “quickly resolve” wing-crack issues that had grounded the Hog fleet. Steve Waltman, Boeing’s director of aircraft sustainment and maintenance, said his company’s A-10 Thunderbolt Life-Cycle Program Support (TLPS) “solution will allow us to provide the timely and critical support the Air Force has come to expect.” Northrop Grumman, in a June 12 release, noted that it would perform Hog work at its facilities in California, Georgia, Illinois, and New York, as well as with several subcontractors around the country. James Cameron, Northrop’s technical services sector president, said, “Our ability to rapidly and effectively reach back across our team and to the broader Northrop Grumman enterprise raises our bar of technical excellence” for the A-10 TLPS.
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.