Boeing Team Delivers 1st Block II Super Hornet Flight Trainers to US Navy

ST. LOUIS. – Boeing [NYSE: BA] and teammate L-3 have delivered four Block II F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Tactical Operation Flight Trainers (TOFT) to the U.S. Navy and declared them “Ready for Training.” Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana, Va., has two of the trainers, and two are located at NAS Lemoore, Calif.

“These are the first Block II TOFTs, the new generation of trainers,” said Steven Dent, F/A-18 Training Systems manager for Boeing. “The Boeing/L-3 team is able to offer a high level of aircraft concurrency with these new devices.”

The newly installed Block II TOFTs reflect the upgrades made to Block II F/A-18E/F Super Hornet aircraft, including advanced sensors, avionics and the APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar, which Boeing has been delivering to the Navy since 2005. The team completed installation and on-site testing of the TOFTs earlier this month. The current contract calls for six more trainers, in total, to be delivered to NAS Oceana and Lemoore. Boeing expects to deliver the next two trainers in March 2010. A potential follow-on contract calls for up to four additional trainers.

“The Navy final evaluation went very well,” said Rick Mason, training system project manager for the Naval Air Warfare Center’s Training Systems Division in Orlando, Fla. “The Boeing/L-3 on-site team was very productive and got us that much closer to the finish line.”

The TOFTs, which L-3 assembles, integrates and tests at its facility in Arlington, Texas, are composed of an instructor/operator station, which establishes the scenarios and training missions, and both forward and aft crew stations, each with its own visual system. One brief/debrief station serves every two TOFTs. The Boeing/L-3 team is using three Block II TOFTs in Arlington to test software and architectural upgrades for future trainer development.