combat aircraft

B

OEING CELEBRATED TWO

milestone events on May

4: the o cial opening of its

new service life modi cation

(SLM) facility in St Louis,

Missouri, and the induction

of the  rst high-hour Block II Super

Hornet — an F/A-18E — into this

program. Boeing executives, including

Boeing Defense president and CEO

Dennis Muilenburg and US Navy RADM

Michael T. Moran, the program executive

o cer for tactical aircraft programs,

were present to mark the event. The

SLM facility is a boon for the St Louis

area. Along with new Super Hornet

production and upgrades, it ensures

that jobs are safe through the mid-to-

late 2020s and underscores a signi cant

commitment by the navy to maintain

the Super Hornet’s strike  ghter

supremacy out past 2040. A second SLM

line is being prepared in San Antonio,

Texas, and it will begin receiving aircraft

in 2019 as SLM runs out through  scal

year 2028.

Service life modification

The navy awarded Boeing a $73-million

inde nite-delivery contract on March 1,

2018, to extend the lives of the  rst four of

some 350 F/A-18E/F Block II Super Hornets

from their originally designed 6,000

 ight hours to 9,000 hours. The contract

also included provision to upgrade

the aircraft with new Block III-standard

capabilities. The so-called SLM program

is broadly similar to a traditional service

life extension program (SLEP), but it goes

further, as RADM Moran explains. ‘[SLM] is

a unique modi cation program. Normally,

what we’ve done in the navy is do

structural [work] — what we call a service

life extension program or SLEP — to

extend the life of the airplane. Here, we’re

going to do that, but we are also going

to do material reconditioning of all of

our sub-systems, so electrical, hydraulics.

As Boeing inducts the fi rst Super Hornet into its service life modernization program and opens a

new upgrade facility in St Louis, Combat Aircraft analyzes the latest status of the F/A-18E/F.

REPORT Brad Elward

Many of the Block

III confi guration

modifi cations

originated

in Boeing’s

Advanced Super

Hornet concept

unveiled in

August 2013.

Block III includes

conformal fuel

tanks (CFTs),

which mount

onto the upper

fuselage and add

some 3,500lb of

fuel. Boeing

44 October 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net