The Boeing Company has over 151,000 employees and conducts business with more than 22,000 U.S. companies in all 50 states.  Last year, Boeing spent more than $32 billion with our suppliers and vendor partners which supported an additional 1.2 million supplier related jobs across the country.  In addition, Boeing and its employees contribute over $70 million to U.S. non profit organizations annually.

Rollover a state on the map below to view The Boeing Company’s impact.

Employee and supplier information is based on end of year 2009 data.

The Boeing Tanker and America’s Critical Industrial Base

The anchor of our national security is America’s competitive aerospace and defense industrial base.  Over time and across party lines, our leaders have deemed this base a “strategic national asset” – an asset unique to this country.  And the global reach of the American designed and produced aerial refueling tanker is clearly part of that advantage. But it is at risk.

More than a mere collection of companies or hardware, this American tanker industrial base that Boeing created is a combination of experienced workers with complex and varied skills – human and intellectual capital.  Combine these with state-of-the-art facilities, tooling and other physical assets, and you have a massive national strategic investment that provides invaluable returns for the country and our warfighters each day.

Boeing is the company that invented boom refueling 60 years ago. And they’ve been improving refueling technology ever since. In all, Boeing has built and delivered over 2,000 of the best aerial refueling tankers in the world. By contrast, Airbus is new to the tanker business and has delivered only a handful of tankers —Boeing has the proven experience America’s warfighters, taxpayers and workers deserve.

A decision to select the tanker offered by Airbus and Northrop Grumman – which has been designed and will be built primarily in Europe – in the upcoming U.S. Air Force tanker competition would dismantle the only existing elements of America’s strategic aerial refueling industrial base. And if this unique American engineering skill set is lost, what choices are left for future presidents? The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) says, “It takes ten years for a degreed aerospace engineer to master the intricacies of aerospace vehicles.”