P&W similarly also shuttered the engine production line in 2018 I think it was and sold the plant after completing their order of crate engines for the US. Boeing has indicated if production was restarted it would be with a different engine with ~15% more thrust, which would require design changes to the aircraft and a flight certification program beyond recertifying reinstated component production lines and assembly procedures.
Not Renton or Everett. (Pretty sure everyone here knows that those are functionally suburbs of Seattle, and usually get lumped into "Seattle" for where are you from questions)
P&W similarly also shuttered the engine production line in 2018 I think it was and sold the plant after completing their order of crate engines for the US. Boeing has indicated if production was restarted it would be with a different engine with ~15% more thrust, which would require design changes to the aircraft and a flight certification program beyond recertifying reinstated component production lines and assembly procedures.
I still contend that the probability of a restart is very low given the huge cost to get all of the required equipment. As someone pointed out, it seems Boeing does not seem to have excess space so it might be a lot of cost for new infrastructure as well.
However for all of my doubt, there is no other western contenders for the mission profile. They are flying the wings off of the current fleet and given normal timelines to compete a new design effort, there might be a lesser cost in time and money to rebuild the C-17 production line.
I have to wonder if getting the civil air transport companies to take on more government airlift efforts might be as cost effective as trying to rebuild the production lines. While they cannot do many of the tactical missions, the day to day from airport to airport could alleviate much of the pressure on the C-17 fleet.
The good quality commercial heavy lift providers are at, or near, capacity at the moment. Taking on a bunch of strategic DoD missions would require significant expansion, which may not be possible given the availability of aircraft and even if it is would mean undercutting the cost advantage, or walking away from their existing customers.
Were the original C-17 jigs and tooling preserved? If not, then add years to any production timeline, to recreate those. And having worked for Boeing for many years, I suspect that even if the old tooling still exists, they won't be able to resist the temptation to "modernize" the production processes, they've invested a lot of time and $$$ into that general area, and so you can tack on another few years and a whole lot of debugging and troubleshooting...
Didn't Douglas produce C-17 components at the former NAA plant in Columbus, OH? ISTR that when they closed that, the equipment was sold to the PRC for manufacturing civil aircraft but was diverted to military use and McDD got a large fine for violating export regs.
I'm sure a new line can be set up, but there would need to be a very solid business case for it given Boeing's overall slate of problems. I know Boeing has a mod center at the Lelly Field complex in San Antonio, I wonder if C-17 production restart could happen there.
I can appreciate Boeing wanting to move a much as possible out of Southern California, that area is just getting crazy, I'm glad I left there in early 2000.
Although I have no doubt the cost will be exorbitant, the more I read about this, the more it seems like a no-brainer regardless, for the following reasons:
1. There are simply no current production aircraft that can do close to what the C-17 can do with regards to payload, internal volume, STOL, etc.
2. AMC is beating the absolute piss out of their C-17s and if @Moose's anecdote about some examples reaching flight hour milestones 15 years earlier than anticipated is even remotely representative of the overall fleet, that would be extremely detrimental to the US' SAC.
3. The USAF hasn't even defined the requirements for NGAL yet and those seem to be dependent on experimental results from JetZero's BWB Demonstrator, which is a very high-risk program in and of itself.
4. Assuming the 2012 RAND Report is remotely accurate, even the "worst-case" scenario to restart C-17 production (excl. all the cost of purchasing airframes) i.e. the high C-17FE estimate added to the highest increment without any tool retention ($7.54 billion) adjusted for inflation and with a generous safety factor of 1.5 ($16.8 billion) seems like a great value for maintaining the US' SAC, the resulting industrial benefits, and alliances with other C-17 operators.
I could seriously go on about this forever and want to write a follow-up comment with an analysis of alternatives to demonstrate how restarting C-17 production is by far the "least-bad" i.e. best option but should probably sleep soon lol
In any case, if there is anyone here with experience in industry or AMC that disagrees with restarting C-17 production, even at $16.8 billion, please share your reasoning for disagreeing so that the rest of us can ensure that we aren't overlooking any major factors.
No, but a C-17 Restart would not be significantly cheaper than a new design.
Tooling is all gone, factory is all gone, designs might even still be on paper (I would sure hope not), and the whole subcomponent manufacturer ecosystem would have to be recertified.
So the biggest reasons to "just build more C-17s" aren't really all there.
Trying to restart the C-17 production line would be pointless, the only thing that would work is a brand new transport program and that is coming from someone who actually likes the C-17.
Not just recertified; half or more of the components would have to be redesigned because either the original supplier is gone and didn't pass along the tech data, or the old components rely on parts you can't get anymore.
Restarting production isn't "just" flipping the lights back on in the factory and dragging The Tooling!!! out of a warehouse.
They are already upgrading the B-52 to the B-52J giving it new engines and avionics so that it will be in service with the USAF until it hits it's hundredth birthday, which will be a milestone I do not think that there will be another bomber with that pedigree like the B-52 In_A_Dream.
2. AMC is beating the absolute piss out of their C-17s and if @Moose's anecdote about some examples reaching flight hour milestones 15 years earlier than anticipated is even remotely representative of the overall fleet, that would be extremely detrimental to the US' SAC.
Largely because Congress stuffed so many C-17s into the service that they're abused on a daily basis for linehauls between major airbases. They're not designed for that, they're over-designed and over-expensive to be used as U-Hauls.
A 767 freighter could have done most of the C-17's daily takings for the past three decades at half the cost. Instead of spending dozens of billions on reopening the line, start building cheap C-46Bs and keep the C-17s for when you need to move bulk or AFVs.
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A couple things that killed Douglas/Boeing in Long Beach; 1. No new designs (commercial or military) after MD-95/B717: 2. Very, very greedy union, probably the primary reason the site died. Also, the Douglas/Boeing way of incorporating TQM, just remove two layers of management, I'm sure everyone remembers the aircraft sabotage (and arrests) which took place during that time period. No C-17 restart, just do a new cargo jet.
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