Boeing nabs $2.4 billion deal for more F-15EX fighters
WASHINGTON — The Air Force on Tuesday awarded Boeing a roughly $2.4 billion contract to produce a new batch of 22 F-15EX fighter jets, narrowly meeting a deadline to disburse reconciliation funds.
Despite headwinds like inflation and a 2025 strike that stopped work at Boeing’s F-15 production line, the Air Force said in a press release that the service struck an agreement that managed to preserve all 22 aircraft planned for the jet’s seventh production lot.
“Lot 7 reflects a disciplined approach to executing available resources while balancing the realities affecting defense production,” Brig. Gen. Timothy Helfrich, the portfolio acquisition executive for the Air Force’s Fighters and Advanced Aircraft Directorate, said in the release. “The team remained focused on affordability, production continuity and delivering the aircraft needed to modernize the U.S. Air Force’s fighter fleet for the threats we face today and into the future.”
The contract was issued on the same day that the Navy picked Boeing to build the service’s sixth-generation F/A-XX fighter jet, which was first reported by Breaking Defense ahead of a formal announcement. Boeing beat out Northrop Grumman for the $20 billion deal to develop the aircraft, cementing the aerospace giant as the sole provider of the Pentagon’s sixth-gen fighters for the foreseeable future.
The F-15EX award, for its part, came with some urgency. The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill provided billions of dollars for F-15EX procurement through what’s known as the reconciliation process. The Pentagon was permitted to spend reconciliation funds over several years, but was required to contract work out by Oct. 1 — the start of fiscal year 2027 — or face an 8.3 percent cut.
In its release, the Air Force said that the contract “preserv[es] the buying power of congressionally provided reconciliation funding and sustain[s] F-15EX production.”
Boeing in a press release said that the award brings the total of F-15EX jets under contract with the Air Force to 120, roughly half of a planned fleet of 267 aircraft. The Air Force’s FY27 budget also requested F-15EX funding through the normal budget process, rather than relying on reconciliation funds once again.
“Boeing is committed to delivering this critically important aircraft to the U.S. Air Force, which will strengthen the nation’s ability to project power and stay ahead of emerging threats around the world,” Christina Upah, Boeing’s vice president for the F-15 program, said in its release.
The F-15EX is a modernized version of the legacy F-15 featuring a new electronic warfare suite and updated radar, among other features. Boeing has struggled to ramp up output of the fighter amid schedule setbacks, and is aiming to increase production to two aircraft a month.
A recently published Pentagon document, known as a selected acquisition report [PDF], says that F-15EX delays have breached the program’s baseline schedule for full operational capability. The milestone will be delayed about seven months to February 2028, the report says.
The Air Force’s plan to surge its buy of the F-15 “introduces new cost and schedule uncertainties,” the selected acquisition report says, requiring a “major technical refresh to overcome” diminishing manufacturing sources. That would include “replacing obsolete key systems” like the jet’s radar, engines and electronic warfare suite, “which constitutes a significant redesign effort,” according to the report.
The document says that the Air Force does not have a cost estimate for its expanded buy, and that the program is being re-baselined to account for lost time. Breaking Defense has asked the Air Force for an updated baseline.