$90M to Boeing for APG-79 “New Capability”

APG-79 usage concept(click to view full) Boeing subsidiary McDonnell Douglas Corp. in St. Louis, MO received a $90 million modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00019-04-C-0014) for “the procurement of a newly developed, additional capability for the AN/APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar.” Work will be performed in El Segundo, CA (95%) and St. Louis, MO (5%), and is expected to be complete in September 2011. The Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, MD issued the contract. Raytheon’s APG-79 will equip the new F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet Block II aircraft and the derivative EA-18G “Growler” electronic warfare aircraft; its AESA design offers a number of new possibilities including simultaneous air/ground scans, wide-angle ground scans, electronic jamming functions, high-bandwidth communications, and probably a few more that the government prefers not to talk about yet. Our top bets re: the “new capability” in question would be the “big SAR” wide angle surface scans that will now be part of the production F-35 Lightning, or limited electronic warfare capabilities.