By Marina Malenic

PARIS–An expected decline in U.S. demand for new military aircraft and the Pentagon’s commitment to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program are forcing Boeing to seek friendlier shores for new tactical aircraft customers.

“We’re seeing a flattening of the defense budget, but we see a lot of opportunities for us internationally,” Jim Albaugh, president and CEO of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, told reporters here ahead of the Paris Air Show.

Albaugh said his division has increased foreign orders from 5 percent of its sales five years ago to 16 percent this year.

“We think we can easily grow that to about 20 percent in the next five years,” he added.

Company executives say they are particularly optimistic about future sales of its tactical aircraft. For example, a new stealthed-up F-15 fighter jet, the “Silent Eagle,” is being marketed as an alternative for countries that are unable to afford Lockheed Martin‘s fifth generation F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, heavily pushed by the Pentagon to its allies as the premier next generation fighter jet.

Asked whether it was accurate to market the updated F-15 as an F-35 alternative, Albaugh said the exportable versions of the F-35, which Washington dumbs down to varying degrees for each of its foreign customers, offers a comparable level of stealth to the new F-15 in some respects.

“We are not trying to say that this is an airplane that has full-aspect stealth capability,” Albaugh said. “It doesn’t. But from a front-radar cross-section, it has all the stealth that has been approved for export by the U.S. government.

“We think it gives customers an alternative,” he said.

Brazil, Denmark, Greece, India and South Korea are known to be shopping for new fighter jets.

Without naming any specific customers, Albaugh also said he anticipates robust international sales of the F/A-18 Super Hornet, another alternative to the F-35. Company executives say a new multi-year production contract with the U.S. Navy remains highly desirable but, in the meantime, they expect foreign sales to sustain the line.

“On the Super Hornet, right now, we can see an international marketplace in excess of 250 airplanes,” Albaugh said.

Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va., questioned that projection.

“The Super Hornet has a strong chance in India and a respectable chance in Brazil,” Aboulafia said via e-mail. “There are few other markets where it has more than an outside chance.”

He added that Boeing has a good possibility of getting Silent Eagle contracts from Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Singapore.