Drone are no Threat to Boeing Production

Offsetting losses in other manufacturing sectors, the St. Louis economy continues to benefit from military aerospace production dating to the first prototypes that rolled out of McDonnell Aircraft Company hangars in the mid-1940s.

Since then, McDonnell and its eventual corporate partner, the Douglas Aircraft Company, were absorbed by Boeing; aircraft design and technology has advanced in ways the engineers recruited by James S. McDonnell could never have imagined; and the customers for the Boeing F/A-18 fighters are spread across the globe.

Through it all, one constant has remained: A military jet manufactured in St. Louis has yet to fly without a human in the cockpit.

Now, more change is afoot as the U.S. moves steadily toward a point where Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAVs) missions will one day surpass  reconnaissance and combat operations flown by human pilots.

For St. Louis, the gravitation toward a defense system capable of destroying targets from remote locations brings another question into focus: Will the local production of traditional, manned fighter jets wind up as collatoral damage?

A top Boeing official, two key area members of Congress and the analysts are emphatic that Boeing's future here remains solid. UAV production, they maintain, poses no threat to 2,500 local Boeing manufacturing jobs -- the majority of which are dedicated to the assembly of Super Hornets.

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