We’re going to see those orders pick up. We would think significantly. The same is true with the Patriot air defense system. Again, those are GEMT (ph) missiles, that we supply for that. Those are in short supply today. So again, a big ramp there. But you’ll also going to see other weapons systems come into play, specifically around countering the unmanned air vehicles. And we have systems today like the Coyote, which is very effective in terms of short range, dealing with these unmanned air vehicles. So again, I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you’re going to see a benefit of this restocking. On top of what we think is going to be an increase in DOD top line. Again, as we continue to replenish war stocks and also replenish some of the fleet in Pacific.
So that’s SM2s, SM3s, and other munitions that are really a huge part of this backlog that we’ve got today.
Kristine Liwag: Thanks, Greg. And how do we think about the margin profile of these incremental opportunities? Are these new contracts margin accretive?
Gregory J. Hayes: I would no — actually, I wouldn’t say they’re margin accretive, nor would I say they’re detrimental to margins. These are going out at kind of normal cost type programs, right? So you’re talking about margins 10%, 11%, 12%. And again, these are well known in terms of the cost of these systems. We’ve been producing them for years. So we know what the costs are. And again, I think — again, it’s helpful to overall margins, but it’s not hugely accretive. Again, I think Neil 10 to 12 was kind of kind of the sweet spot.
Neil G. Mitchill: I think that’s exactly right. These are mature programs that we’ve got a lot of history on. It’s all about getting the supply chain ramped up to deal with the increased production that we expect.
Kristine Liwag: Great. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Akers of Wells Fargo.
Matt Akers: Hey guys, good morning. Thanks for the question. I guess maybe just to clarify, the section 174, the $500 million benefit is part of that recovery from the 2022 payment. And I guess, how should we think about that sort of carrying forward that benefit into 2024?
Christopher Calio: Thanks. That’s a good question. Yes, some of that is, in fact, the recovery of the 2022 overpayments, if you will, we were able to file our tax return on a basis that assumed deductibility of these cost plus R&D contracts. What will happen though is it’ll be a little bit of a headwind next year because we’ll get a little bit more cash back this year in the form of making lower estimated tax payments. And then next year, we’ll start to bake that into our next year’s estimated tax payments and filing. So that’s how that’ll play out. If you kind of look at it over a multi-year period of time. It’s about 40% of what we previously were deferring and amortizing. So if you kind of stretch that through 2026, that’s about $1.7 billion of incremental goodness in free cash flow over that period.
Matt Akers: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Doug Harned of Bernstein & Company.
Doug Harned: Good morning. Thank you.
Gregory J. Hayes: Good morning.
Doug Harned: Chris, when you talked about the — on the GTF on the project visits, I mean, 35 days sounds like a very short number. When you look forward, before you would talked about removal to return time of 250 to 300 days, kind of a peak level of AOGs in H1 of 600 to 650. Now that you’re looking at this process in more detail. Can you give us a sense of how any of that may have changed? And then also, if you’re unable to do the replacements of discs and fibers and so forth, in the short term, presumably, that’s an earlier revisit than you would have liked before. How does that affect your customers and the way you’re thinking about the economics.
Christopher Calio: Yep. Good questions, Doug. So the reason I mentioned the early, very early sort of handful of project visits and how we’ve done on turnaround times is honestly just to show, people that we are incredibly focused on taking minutes, hours, days out of this. And that can translate to the larger scope shop visits that we’re going to face. And the organization’s incredibly focused on literally every gate, within that process, including taking time out of the test cell process. But right now, Doug, those key assumptions that you just laid out the wing to wing 250 to 300, the PKOGs, those are the assumptions, those are what’s baked in to the financial impact that we talked about here. And we’re doing everything that we can to go, improve upon those.
And as I said earlier, MRO output to us is the linchpin on that. And so I — that’s kind of where the organization’s focus is, Doug, and that’s where we’ve got to get better each and every day. To your point about, the new full life discs, yes, our plan today is to put those in, at OE first, in the first quarter of the year and then starting an MRO in the second quarter of the year at each of these shop visits, to the extent that the ramp up and the output isn’t where it needs to be on those. We’re not going to waste the induction slot. Doug, the engines will come in, they’ll get an inspection into your point. They’ll have to then come back in at a 2,800 to 3,800 cycle re-inspect, depending on the thrust of the engine, which is why it’s so critical for us to continue this, ramp up in powdered metal forgings.
So that when the engines leave the shop for these visits, they have got the longest time on wing, they can have and we don’t see these back in our MRO shops during this period just because it’ll add just more congestion.
Doug Harned: Then if I may, one of the frustrations that I’ve heard out there is, you’ve taken the original tranche, the first tranche off in September, but airlines haven’t seemed to be somewhat in the dark on the next set of engines that need to come off-wing and when that impact will, what is taking so long and being able to, help them know exactly what the impact and timing will be.
Christopher Calio: We’re actually having those discussions, Doug. I’ve been part of many of them, again, customer-by-customer looking at their engines by serial number. Again, because you’ve got to look at the cycle times on those and bounce them off against the fleet management plan. So it is, it’s a rigorous thorough process, but we’re having those conversations with customers. So they understand their specific impacts. As we said back, on the September call, the lion’s share of these incremental shop visits that we’re going to have the 600 to 700 in that ‘23 to ‘26. But two-thirds of those are ‘23 and relatively early in 2024. That’s what causes that bow wave, Doug, that peak of 650 AOGs. And I think we talked earlier about when we’re going to, provide some of those service bolt-ins and the ADs that are going to follow on. So that — those communications are happening, you’re going to see that impact early in ‘24.
