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Civil aviation is beer money to Boeing. They make the brunt of the money in military. That’s also where the margins are. The US government will never let Boein
by ArnoVW 3y ago
Civil aviation is beer money to Boeing. They make the brunt of the money in military. That’s also where the margins are.
The US government will never let Boeing go bankrupt, the impact on their supply chain (specifically nuclear) would be too big. And Boeing know it.
- whiplash451 3y agoThe US gov might force/convince them to split in two then.
- yread 3y agoThey are roughly 40% military, 30% civilian planes and 30% services (maintenance), revenue-wise
- newsclues 3y agoIs 50% of services for the military?
- TrueDuality 3y agoProbably less. A lot of US military groups have dedicated personal for maintaining operational hardware including planes that are cross-trained at these large companies.
- newsclues 3y agoI think you’d be surprised how many civilians work on jets and how many parts the military goes through. Those dedicated personnel interact with contractors and don’t make their own parts.
- londons_explore 3y agoThey were... I'm gonna guess that civilian plane starts tapering off with a reputation for expensive groundings (bad for airlines), and for crashes (means the public is gonna be buying tickets on an airbus given the chance).
- tiahura 3y agoBoeing bonanza leaves rival Airbus in the dust at 2023 Dubai Air Show with three times more aircraft orders https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/16/dubai-airshow-2023-boeing-order-bonanza-leaves-airbus-in-the-dust.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/16/dubai-airshow-2023-boeing-or...
- orwin 3y agoThe commands during air shows are mostly performative. Boeing probably wanted to cater middle east/asian investors in 2023. When Airbus launched the 320neo, they did the same, waiting months before announcing the commands to 'beat' Boeing during the Bourget, even though Boeing had more commands the 5+ following years.
- sofixa 3y ago> Civil aviation is beer money to Boeing. They make the brunt of the money in military. That’s also where the margins are You haven't been keeping track I presume. Boeing is bleeding money on recent military contracts like the Air Force One Replacement or the KC-46, because they're on a fixed price structure and Boeing drastically underestimated the costs involved. So much so that for the replacement of the NEACP ("Doomsday Planes") Boeing withdrew from bidding because they refuse to get into another fixed price military programme, knowing they can't predict costs for shit and will lose a lot of money. They're only interested in costs+ contracts, which nobody seems to be willing to give them.
- 7thaccount 3y agoI wonder why lol. Although I will say that some of the issues that Lockheed Martin has had with the JSF and Littoral Combat Ships is that the military is asking them to build something far too complex. The whole module thing never worked out and that seems obvious. I think instead they should have tried for a couple of specific designs that served specific roles instead of building a single ship or plane that could do lots of things poorly while bleeding too much money. Disclaimer: I'm just guessing at all of this. I'm no expert. Not even an armchair.
- XorNot 3y agoThat's a "fighter mafia" opinion that's not really grounded in reality (the language of "specific designs for specific roles" is from them). The JSF on a per unit basis is now cheaper then some 4th gen non-stealth fighters, and the idea that it does things "poorly" is not supported by reality.
- ramesh31 3y ago>and the idea that it does things "poorly" is not supported by reality. That remains to be seen. Ukraine has completely upended military doctrine of the last 30 years. Dog fights are happening regularly, and air defense has proven to be far more effective than we could have imagined. The F-35 has never been proven in combat, and it's an open question as to whether its' known weaknesses will matter in a high intensity near-peer conflict.
- misja111 3y agoBoeing is not the only company on the US military market. For instance there is also Lockheed.
- hef19898 3y agoAnd Northrop-Gruman. The overlap in the protfolio of those three is limited is limited so.
- andy_ppp 3y agoToo big to fail implies the government should probably break them up then.
- philistine 3y agoAnd they've been shook real bad in the aerospace market with ULA. So bad, it's pretty much a given that Boeing is getting out of the market and selling to Amazon.
- deepGem 3y agoI don't get it. If civil aviation is beer money why build the 747, the most iconic passenger plane to be every built, only surpassed perhaps by the Concorde. Something has changed at Boeing in the last couple of decades, that has changed the trajectory of Boeing leadership leading to quality issues.
- madhadron 3y agoYes. The merger with McDonnell-Douglas, which resulted in McDonnell-Douglas's leadership getting control of Boeing despite the fact that they had already run McDonnell-Douglas into the ground.
- metalspot 3y ago> Civil aviation is beer money to Boeing This is completely false. For 2022 fiscal year revenue in commercial was $25B vs $23B for defense and losses in commercial were $2.3B vs $3.5B for defense. https://www.boeing.com/resources/boeingdotcom/company/annual-report/2022/Boeing-2022-Annual-Report.pdf https://www.boeing.com/resources/boeingdotcom/company/annual... (Page 58)
- phkahler 3y agoIf Boeing concedes the civilian market, the likes of SpaceX could just spin out an aircraft or jet engine business and compete quite well. How about some engines made with those fancy alloys they've got? Or just a willingness to do an awesome design without all the baggage or need for short term profit.
- hef19898 3y agoThe overlap between space rockets and aircraft engines and airliners either zero so. Also, Boeing isn't buildong aircraft engines.
- chrisco255 3y agoDo you know if they use Rolls Royce engines?
- maxnoe 3y agoShort search turned up at least one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_BR700 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_BR700
- Gravityloss 3y agoRolls Royce is big in big engines. Not so much in smaller single aisle aircraft. Boeing 777 and 787 have Rolls Royce engine options. The Rolls Royce Trent engine family is advanced in having three spools compared to the usual two by competitors.
- trenchgun 3y agoBoeing is toast, both in civil aviation and in the military. They gutted the engineering expertise that would have been needed to be successful. And now they just can't fix it.
- Bowes-Lyon 3y agoIf Boeing’s civilian jets are falling from the skies, I wonder what will happen to its military ones in the coming conflict with China. And if anything nuclear is manufactured to the same quality standards as the 737 Max, then… woe is us…
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoThat's less true than it used to be, due to the unofficial end of cost plus. And Boeing is getting to be a bit of a red flag in procurement circles. More or less all capital-B Boeing programs in the DoD side are - at best - unwell, but "terminally ill" is also making a showing. KC46, SLS, CST-100. There was also the AH-64D/E fictional upgrade kit and bad/counterfeit parts, something repeated on the CH-47 retrofits[1] . . honestly, peel back the skin on a successful Boeing program and odds are you'll see a non-Boeing organization or its remnants (or Phantom Works, or some other little island of competence that's somehow avoided the All Seeing Eye). And this is just the surface stuff. BDS never recovered from the end of cost plus' Glory Days of the GWoT. Fixed price broke a lot of BDS, because no one really has any idea what anything costs, or even how long it takes to do a thing. Sometimes I wonder just how much is left in the core of the org. My first memory of working with Boeing was from 2010, when a government encryption requirement led me down a long and tortured road that ended with me training an entire Boeing team on what PGP was (we still ended up handling virtually all of that in-house, at cost to Boeing, because it took eight months to get an answer to virtually any question, as both call and response filtered through two dozen levels of management emails). More recently the USAF tossed Boeing a softball project to glue wings and a GPS kit to Mk82 iron bombs, but Boeing couldn't figure it out - they had to subcon the job to Kratos (this was in the news, but was also confirmed anecdotally). Similar thing with "avionics updates" for <redacted> - the "update" was just a request that an accurate pinout diagram be sent with the documentation. Again, core Boeing just couldn't manage that without subconning it out; they literally did not know the pin #s on a standard ARINC connector that they were themselves using. Pretty close to an aerospace company needing a subcontractor to explain what the Bernoulli Principle is. I do hope I am wrong about B. It's quite possible I've just had really bad luck when it comes to the division I deal with. But sometimes . . sometimes you wonder, "What . . what if the whole org is like that?" [1] That's a huge theme across multiple BDS divisions and programs, from UAS to F-15 and Super Hornet. I suspect it's also why BGS appears to be made of money.
- nxobject 3y agoWith that in mind, would there be any negative effects to slowly giving Boeing the cold shoulder?