Supporting Our Troops
Deliveries continued on the Navy's C-40A Clipper transport, a derivative of the 737-700C, and on Aug. 16, 2006, the EA-18G Growler airborne electronic attack aircraft (a derivative of the F/A-18F Super Hornet) flew for the first time -- approximately one month ahead of schedule. Sept. 25, 2007, Boeing delivered the first production EA-18G Growler to the U.S. Navy, ahead of schedule and within budget.
In 2006, the U.S. Air Force ordered 10,000 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) tail kits for existing 500-, 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs purchased by the Air Force and Navy. In addition, the Air Force ordered more than 400 Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing Systems (JHMCS), expanding production capacity for the second consecutive year.
To prepare for future battle scenarios, Boeing opened the Virtual Warfare Center in St. Louis, Mo., on May 9, 2005. The state-of-the art customer center allows military experts to analyze and take part in simulated battle scenarios in order to develop future systems and platforms. Boeing has provided training to the U.S. Air Combat Command and Training Support Squadron for more than 18 years and in June 2006, received a $46 million U.S. Air Force contract to continue providing these services to the Air Combat Command.
Network-centric surveillance of potential terrorist activity was demonstrated during a real-time demonstration in 2006 to U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence customers. Several Boeing-developed systems and warfighters tracked, collected and broadcasted live video and command and control information from two different unmanned aircraft systems simultaneously to the East and West Coasts.
The same year, Boeing completed a second round of at-sea tests of its Long-term Mine Reconnaissance System, a 20-foot unmanned underwater vehicle designed to be launched, torpedo-style, from submarines to survey underwater objects for up to 60 hours. In addition, on April 12, 2006, Boeing demonstrated for the first time the ability of an AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter to control a UAV weapon payload, using the Unmanned Little Bird (ULB) technology demonstrator (a modified MD 530F civil helicopter), which flew for the first time July 2006.
The newly designed Unmanned/Manned A/MH-6X light-turbine helicopter flew for the first time Oct. 9, 2006, marking a significant milestone in the versatile military aircraft that combines the technologies for A/MH-6M Mission Enhanced Little Bird with ULB.
Other breakthroughs were demonstrated April 18, 2006, when an F/A-18E/F Super Hornet used the Raytheon APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar system to provide targeting coordinates to other aircraft. They were able to send the data to non-AESA-equipped Super Hornets, which successfully delivered four 2,000-pound JDAMs.
The U.S. Army signed a $276.4 million contract with Boeing Rotorcraft Systems on April 9, 2007, for 18 new-build AH-64D Apache Longbow multirole combat helicopters, with deliveries slated to begin mid-2009. In addition, Boeing completed delivery of 5,053 full-rate production Combat Survivor Evader Locator (CSEL) radios to the Department of Defense on April 23, 2007, bringing the total number of radios delivered to 11,436. CSEL is the DOD program of record for Combat Search and Rescue communications.
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