The Air Force has awarded Boeing a sole-source contract with a $131.23 billion ceiling to produce, modernize and sustain F-15 fighters for U.S. and foreign customers through 2037.
Designated F-15 Eagle Crest, the Aug. 24 award lets the Air Force place orders over time rather than buying a fixed number of aircraft at signing. Orders may run through Aug. 24, 2031, with an option to extend to 2036. The framework rolls new production, upgrades, retrofits, sustainment and depot support into a single contract for the Air Force, the Air National Guard and foreign buyers.
The contract also covers work to stand up organic depot maintenance, so Air Force depots can perform their own heavy overhauls instead of relying solely on Boeing. Boeing will perform the work in St. Louis. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity.
The award does not commit the government to spend the entire $131.23 billion; it caps what the Air Force may order over the life of the contract. Only $343,740 in fiscal 2026 for research, development, test and evaluation funds was obligated at award.
The notice does not include an order for any jets. For comparison, when the same office awarded Lockheed Martin a 10-year, $62 billion contract for new F-16 exports in August 2020, it issued a $4.94 billion order for 90 jets the same day.
The Aug. 24 notice says the contract involves foreign military sales to Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia and Poland. Indonesia and Poland do not currently fly the F-15.
Israel is already buying F-15s from the same St. Louis line. The F-15EX Modernized Selected Acquisition Report issued with the fiscal 2027 budget says a Dec. 29, 2025, agreement covers 25 F-15IA aircraft, with an option for 25 more, at $8.58 billion. The report says that the buy “stabilizes the lower-tier supply chain and extends the active manufacturing life of the F-15EX production line.”
The same report raises the U.S. F-15EX buy to 268 aircraft through fiscal 2031, up from a baseline of 98, and says the larger buy will force a refresh of the radar, mission computer, electronic warfare suite and engines.
The report also says the program will miss its July 2027 full operational capability date, or FOC, after a 15-week strike at Boeing’s St. Louis plant from Aug. 4 to Nov. 17, 2025, “compounded by the prime contractor’s subsequent failure to meet production recovery goals.”
The mitigation steps include “a re-evaluation of the FOC definition,” meaning the service is weighing a change to how it measures the milestone it is about to miss.
Michael Scanlon is a defense journalist covering air and space warfare. A former U.S. Air Force A-10 crew chief, he has supported land and sea programs for the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.
Read the full article here
