海军着眼新建工厂，以推出升级版F/A-18E/F“超级大黄蜂”New Facilities To Pump Out Upgraded F/A-18E/F Super Hornets Eyed By Navy

The U.S. Navy is looking for new avenues to bolster its pipelines for major F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler modifications. The prime contractor for that work now, Boeing, is in the process of expanding and reorganizing its production infrastructure. At the same time, the company’s defense business arm is also heavily focused on ramping up output of new aircraft, including the sixth-generation F-47 for the U.S. Air Force and the Navy’s next-generation carrier-based F/A-XX fighter.

Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) is now “conducting market research to determine the industrial base’s existing capability and facility capacity to provide supplemental or secondary Service Life Modification (SLM) turnkey capacity for F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler aircraft starting in FY29 [Fiscal Year 2029],” according to a contracting notice put out earlier this week. “To support long-term strike fighter inventory requirements, the Government is evaluating the availability of additional commercial or second-source depot modification repair overhaul (MRO) capacity.”

Currently, Boeing performs Service Life Modification (SLM) work on Navy F/A-18E/Fs at facilities in St. Louis, Missouri, and San Antonio, Texas. The Navy has its own Super Hornet SLM line, operated in cooperation with Boeing, at the Fleet Readiness Center Southwest (FRCSW) depot in San Diego, California. Boeing conducts additional F/A-18E/F and EA-18G modification work at various facilities, including an additional site in Jacksonville, Florida.

In September 2025, Boeing announced its intention to shut down the SLM line in St. Louis in 2027 and transition at least some of that workload elsewhere, possibly to San Antonio and/or Jacksonville. The company also plans to end production of new Super Hornets in 2027. The EA-18G is already out of production.

The Navy still plans to put most, if not all, of its F/A-18E/Fs – a total fleet of approximately 550 aircraft at present – through the SLM process, and that work is expected to continue in the mid-2030s. SLM extends the service life of Super Hornets from 6,000 to 10,000 flight hours. The jets also receive Block III upgrades, including new wide-area touchscreen multifunction displays, major boosts in onboard networking capability and computer processing power, and an improved avionics suite.

Work is also now underway on a Block II upgrade package for the Navy’s roughly 160 EA-18Gs, which is set to include major improvements to the Growler’s electronic warfare suite.

Overall, “PMA-265 [the F/A-18E/F and EA-18G Program Office] anticipates a maximum SLM induction profile of up to 47 aircraft per year across the industrial base,” according to the recent NAVAIR contracting notice. “Actual aircraft allocation among available sources may vary based on Fleet requirements, aircraft availability, demonstrated performance, schedule, and available capacity.”It is not immediately clear whether the 47-aircraft-per-year target represents a major increase in expected SLM throughput.

Back in 2020, the Navy said its goal was to be inducting 40 Super Hornets into the SLM pipeline annually within three years. There was no indication at that time that this figure included any SLM and/or other upgrade work on its Growlers.

As noted earlier, this all comes amid a shakeup in Boeing’s physical infrastructure driven heavily by the new production demands, including those tied to the F-47 and F/A-XX. Industrial base capacity has been a major talking point when it comes to both of these sixth-generation fighter programs. The Pentagon previously attempted to shelve F/A-XX indefinitely, explicitly over concern about it competing for resources with F-47. Congress subsequently intervened to keep the Navy program going, leading to the contract award to Boeing in September.

Boeing is also now working to ramp up deliveries of F-15EX Eagle II fighters and T-7A jet trainers to the U.S. Air Force, as well as MQ-25 tanker drones to the U.S. Navy. The Air Force notably announced earlier this year that it had roughly doubled the number of F-15EXs it plans to acquire in total.

“Our expansion plans across the St. Louis site triggered the execution of a multi-year strategic plan, requiring the relocation of some work,” Dan Gillian, Vice President and General Manager of Air Dominance at Boeing, had said in a statement accompanying last year’s announcement about plans to move Super Hornet SLM work to other locations. “Given we are already successfully conducting SLM at other locations, this move is logical so we can continue to meet our customers commitments while ensuring we are well poised for future work.”

“Delivering two advanced fighters in parallel was always our plan, and we invested accordingly,” Steve Parker, President and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, said in a statement after the company won the F/A-XX competition. “We are ready and able to build multiple concurrent future combat aircraft franchise programs.”F/A-XX is expected to eventually replace the Navy’s F/A-18E/F and EA-18G fleets, but the first of those next-generation fighters are not expected to begin entering service until some time in the 2030s. As such, Super Hornets and Growlers look set to continue being the primary workhorses of the service’s carrier air wings for years to come.

F/A-18E/F and EA-18G have been key players in the ongoing war with Iran, as well as other recent conflicts in the Middle East. Both types were also part of the larger force package that supported the operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and had been operating in the Caribbean for months beforehand as part of the U.S. military build-up in the region.

In turn, ensuring that there are no major disruptions to the SLM process and other upgrades for the F/A-18E/F and EA-18G will continue to be a priority for the Navy, as underscored now by the recent NAVAIR contracting notice. The possibility of the F/A-18E/F fleet receiving additional significant upgrades in the future, particularly to extend their range, has also been raised in the past. The arsenal of munitions available to the Navy’s Super Hornet is also growing substantially. This includes a still-expanding array of longer-range air-to-air missiles, as well as hypersonic Blackbeard air-to-surface missiles.

Just expanding the Super Hornet/Growler SLM/upgrade pipeline could open up interesting new opportunities for companies beyond Boeing. Northrop Grumman, which lost in the F/A-XX competition, has been involved in Super Hornet production in the past as a subcontractor. The Navy might also be interested in tapping new firms, including ones that are already working to expand their defense industrial presence, rather than long-established prime defense contractors.

“We have worked with the Navy for years to improve SLM while growing in San Antonio and FRC Southwest,” Mark Sears, Boeing Fighters Vice President, also said last year. “Delivering multiple fighters and capabilities from multiple locations is what we do, and we will continue that work on the Super Hornets for the life of the fleet.”

NAVAIR’s recent announcement makes clear that the Navy is still very much in the early phases of determining what, if any, new courses of action it ultimately wants to take regarding SLM and other upgrade work for its F/A-18E/F and EA-18G fleets. That being said, new facilities to support those efforts, potentially with new contractors running them, may now be on the horizon The post New Facilities To Pump Out Upgraded F/A-18E/F Super Hornets Eyed By Navy