Nossa a Boeing adora pressão, só falta jogar a mãe no meio para ganhar algum contrato. Ou melhor, melar um contrato do concorrente. Achei esse texto que mostra mais uma pressão da Boeing. (apesar da data do texto)
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Boeing Pitches Sixth-Generation Aircraft Strategy
Hornet It’s budget time, and Boeing must be smelling blood, because they’re going for what they think may be the most vulnerable of the Pentagon’s aircraft programs, the Lockheed Martin-built F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Boeing says it’s got a nifty plan to offer something just short of a fifth generation aircraft– a souped-up Super Hornet — to tide everyone over till it can build a sixth-generation fighter.
This would allow the Pentagon (and foreign militaries) to skip the fifth-generation F-35, which has many shortcomings, according to Boeing (the biggest apparently being that’s it not built by Boeing):
What sixth-generation fighter you ask? I’ll get to that later. This is Boeing’s sales pitch, as Aviation Week reports:
The idea is that customers could buy 4.5-generation Super Hornets (perhaps 4.75-generation with the planned extra forward stealth and extra range of Block 3 aircraft) and then switch to a new, sixth generation faster than if they bought the fifth-generation Joint Strike Fighter. To be available circa 2024, the sixth-generation aircraft would feature a combat radius of more than 1,000 miles and stealth against a much wider spectrum of radars.
"The [Navy] C-version of the F-35 doesn’t buy you a lot that the Super Hornet doesn’t provide," says Bob Gower, Boeing’s vice president for F/A-18 and EA-18G programs. "Our strategy is to create a compelling reason for the services to go to the next [sixth] generation platform. How do you bridge F/A-18E/F to get us there? We want to convince customers to stay with [Super Hornet] a few years longer — by adding advanced capabilities and lowering price — so that they can get to the sixth generation faster. If you go to JSF first, it’s going to be a long time."
Another part of Boeing’s argument is that the "Navy is comfortable with the Super Hornet against the highest [enemy] threat through 2024, with the [improved] capabilities we have in the flight plan," Gower says. "The ability to counter the threat gets you to about the point that [Boeing's] sixth generation is available."
There’s a few problems with this marketing campaign. Actually, there are many problems.
The Super Hornet may be a fine aircraft, but if you kill the F-35, you’ll have a lot of explaining to do to all the international partners that have invested in it and planned their Air Force modernization around it. That includes the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Australia and Turkey. Oh well, allies, schmallies. We’ll always have the coalition of the willing.
More important, where the heck is this sixth generation fighter? Did I miss something in the budget cycle? The article quotes the Boeing official as saying: "The U.S. Air Force and Navy are now talking a lot more about where they need to go with sixth generation to get beyond JSF. It could be unmanned, but I think you will see a combination of missions — some manned, some unmanned."
Talk is cheap, aircraft are expensive.
As far as I can see, Boeing is pitching one real aircraft and one imaginary aircraft, and hoping that this equals up to one developmental aircraft. Actually, if you weight the imaginary aircraft as a zero, a real aircraft as a one, and a development aircraft as a .5, Boeing might have a point. Maybe it’s a wash?
Anyhow, all I know is that a sixth generation aircraft ain’t going to happen by 2024."
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/01/boeing-pitches/