DUBAI, UAE—Boeing had a good week. It needed one. The Dubai Air Show opened with a whopping win for the company’s commercial business: a $52 billion purchase of widebody airliners from Emirates, followed by other orders, including a rebuy of 737 Maxes by Ethiopian Airlines. And on the defense side, NATO announced yesterday that it would buy six Boeing surveillance aircraft, the E-7 Wedgetail, marking another international win for the program.
That all came just weeks after the company told investors that its defense business was proving harder to turn around than expected amid high-profile program delays and losses on fixed-price contracts. At the air show, Boeing is showing “what we’ve done, what we’re doing better, and how we get those capabilities that our customers need on time and at the right price,” said Vince Logsdon, VP of global business development at Boeing Defense, Space, & Security.
Aiming to boost its revenue in the Middle East, Boeing showed off a host of aircraft at the air show’s static park: the KC-46A tanker, F-15EX fighter, T-7A pilot training system, and the CH-47 Chinook and AH-64 Apache helicopters.
The KC-46 is Boeing’s attempt to capitalize on “significant interest in more tanking capability” in the region, Logsdon said. Boeing is still fixing problems with the tanker, which entered service with the U.S. Air Force four years ago. Two of the program’s six “Category One deficiencies” involve the plane’s Remote Vision System, which allows the boom operator to see the boom through a video feed.
But before Boeing could sell new tankers to Mideast countries, it would likely compete against Airbus’ A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport, or MRTT. The company will also be up against Airbus in a competition to provide the U.S. Air Force with its next tranche of tankers after Lockheed Martin dropped out of its partnership with Airbus to build tankers for the service.
Boeing is also pushing Mideast countries to place new orders for its F-15 fighter, which is flown by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Qatar. The company also advertised its new T-7A Red Hawk trainer at the show, which Boeing hopes will garner customers from the Middle East “soon,” said Donn Yates, Boeing’s executive director of Air Force fighter and trainer programs.
Looking beyond the Middle East, Logsdon said European countries are interested in new aircraft as well as modernizing the equipment they have. NATO allies agreed this summer to raise their goal for military spending to 2 percent of national GDP. The company’s small-diameter bombs have been sent to both Ukraine and Israel. Boeing hasn’t decided if it’s going to increase production of these bombs.