Boeing Unveils Advanced Combat Aircraft Manufacturing Plant

ST. LOUIS—As U.S. military leaders send mixed signals on the future of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, Boeing executives revealed on June 26 that construction had started on a highly secure, 1.1 million ft.² Advanced Combat Aircraft Facility on the southeast corner of Lambert International Airport here.

Company officials cannot identify the product or products that will be manufactured inside the future $1.8 billion complex, or even invoke the terms “NGAD” and “Collaborative Combat Aircraft” (CCA) in responses to questions, said Steve Nordland, vice president of Boeing’s Air Dominance programs.

But clues in Nordland’s responses point to a factory that Boeing is building speculatively to support large, future U.S. air dominance programs in advance of a contract award.

Boeing designed the facility to support only highly classified projects, Nordlund said. The security rules will prohibit Boeing from building aircraft there for foreign customers, he added. That condition appears to rule out a production line transfer or overflow operations for the adjacent F-15EX and T-7A production lines, which are designed to support a mix of domestic and international orders.

Nordland also clarified that building construction has started before Boeing has secured the contracts that would fund the aircraft that would be built inside.

“We’re at risk,” Nordland said, adding the risk includes capitalized expenses and other costs.

The Air Force released a request for proposals (RFP) for the NGAD program in May 2023 to Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. The latter withdrew from the competition by late July. A contract award was scheduled by the end of this month, but the program’s schedule and future are no longer certain.

The U.S. Navy slashed the five-year spending plan for the F/A-XX program by more than two-thirds in the fiscal 2025 budget request. Last week, U.S. Air Force leaders said that spending for the NGAD program is also at risk starting in the fiscal 2026 budget cycle, as budget shortfalls and shifting requirements drove them to think about alternatives.

If Boeing fails to win the contracts, options for repurposing the facility are not clear. The highly secure facility is not optimized to support commercial aircraft manufacturing, Nordland said.

“We’re early enough where [switching the facility to a commercial manufacturing site] is possible, but, to be honest with you, that is not the conversation we’re having internally,” Nordland said.

Boeing offered a group of journalists a distant glimpse of the construction project from the seventh floor window of an adjacent office building. The area is still being leveled and graded before the buildings, infrastructure and parking lots start getting built. A rendering of the planned facility included a parking lot, which visually accommodated at least 610 spaces. For perspective, the manufacturing workforce for the nearby F-15EX assembly line numbers about 600 people.

Nordlund urged Air Force leaders to consider the needs of the industrial base as they make decisions about spending priorities. He cited Boeing’s speculative investment in the new facility here as a key reason.

“It’s very difficult to do [make that investment] at a moment when the Boeing company is where it is. But we’re still doing it. And we have the support for this all the way up to our board,” Nordlund said. “Will we have support of this forever? No, we have to have decisions that are made that continue to move us forward. I think our customer needs to be thinking about the overall industrial base, but we’re trying to do our part.”