Boeing Aircraft Co. has set a Friday deadline for commitments from the Defense Department for additional C-17s, or it will begin informing distributors that the Long Beach plant will be closing, Business Week reported Wednesday.

The report comes just days after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the fight to save the C-17 plant, writing a letter to President Bush urging him to reconsider the cargo jet in his 2008 budget requests.

The C-17 received $542 million in additional funding earlier this year by the Senate Appropriations Committee, as well as a handful or orders from Canadian, Australian and British Air Forces. But the orders apparently are not sufficient for Chicago-based Boeing to maintain the plant. Instead, it plans to begin the arduous process of what is called “breaking the line,” or shutting down the facility, Businessweek said.

On Tuesday, the Governor’s office released a letter to President Bush that warned of tens-of-thousands of potential job cuts and economic losses in the billions if the assembly line is closed.

The C-17 plant, which produces 15 of the cargo jets a year, indirectly employs more than 22,000 people, accounting for $8.4 billion in economic activity nationally, the letter said; some $3.7 billion in activity and 5,700 jobs in threatened in California alone.

The Defense Department originally ordered 220 of the cargo jets, but under new priorities set by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that number has been cut to 180.

Currently, Boeing estimates that the plant has enough orders to keep the plant running until the end of 2008.

The letter from the Governor also noted the strategic benefits of the jet saying that though the C-17 only makes up 55 percent of the military’s cargo air fleet, it has been responsible for more than 80 percent of the workload.

“Discontinuing production of the Air Force’s premier tactical transport aircraft will strain our military’s future airlift capacity at a time when we can least afford such an action,” the letter said.