Continuing our digital transformation with the F-15EX

As I watched the F-15EX make its first flight today and progress toward delivery to the U.S. Air Force, I couldn’t help but feel humbled. Humbled to work alongside the Air Force, who is a pioneering partner with us as we change how we approach our work. Humbled to work alongside innovative teammates who are constantly striving to find newer and better ways of doing things, because we are committed to delivering the best to our customers – today and tomorrow.

The F-15EX was born from that unwavering, customer-first mindset. We started by listening to the Air Force’s need for a ready-now replacement for the retiring F-15C and began imagining where they might need to go over the next several decades. But the rapid evolution of technology, and the increased use of disruptive technologies by America’s adversaries, made identifying every future need incredibly difficult.

We ended up on a fundamentally different path. Rather than zero in on what capability we needed to deliver, we started thinking holistically about how we do it – how we design, build and test in a way that customers can derive the most value from our platforms for decades to come.

We established global partnerships, we invested in digital design and manufacturing technologies, and we prioritized open systems architectures over proprietary systems. In doing all of that, we found we could create the most digitally advanced, easily produced and easily sustained aircraft and systems ever built – starting with the eT-7A, which we are designing and building in a totally different way.

Before cutting any metal, we created hundreds of digital aircraft, significantly reducing fabrication cycles. Digital “twins” flew thousands of hours in a virtual environment – long before first flights of the physical aircraft. And once the eT-7A is fielded, the digital backbones will provide flexibility and adaptability for decades to come. 

We took that same thinking and applied it to the F-15EX – incorporating digital design and manufacturing into the airframe, as well as open systems architecture and a digital backbone to incorporate not just the latest offensive and defensive systems, but to allow for the rapid testing and fielding of whatever comes next. All the while never losing focus on how the Air Force will sustain and operate the fleet throughout its life.

General C.Q. Brown, Jr., Chief of Staff of the Air Force, said it best, “If we fail to adapt to the changes in the strategic environment, a large and growing body of evidence suggests that we risk losing in great power competition.”

Our call to action is clear. Both our customers and those of us in industry must operate at the speed of relevance. We must continue challenging ourselves on “the how.” How do we design platforms to be more modular and adaptive so that our customers can keep ahead of emerging adversaries and evolving threats? How do we develop software that can be modified and scaled to meet quickly changing requirements? How do we use digital tools to improve quality and shorten production cycles?

Every day, I am truly in awe of my Boeing teammates. They, like me, are honored to work in service to our nation’s warfighters and allied partners, are humbled by that responsibility, and stand ready to support whatever lies ahead.  

Transformation is the imperative. How we get there is up to us. #TeamBoeing is ready.