Where will these countries train their pilots, if they are able to
purchase the F-35? The answer is. EGLIN AFB. What does this
mean? There will be a lot of folks from around the world finding out about the
“Emerald Coast”. Enough said.
Lockheed's F-35 fighter attracts foreign
interest
1:21am IST
By
Andrea Shalal-Esa
FARNBOROUGH,
England (Reuters) - More than 25 countries have expressed interest in Lockheed
Martin Corp's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, including Singapore, which is still
evaluating its options, and South Korea, which is due to pick a winner in its
fighter competition by year's end, top Lockheed officials said on
Wednesday. South Korean officials are due to visit Lockheed's Fort Worth,
Texas, production facility and other sites later this year for weeks of
data-gathering, including classified simulator tests, as they weigh the F-35
bid, according to sources familiar with what will be handled as a
government-to-government sale. Lockheed's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is
vying with Boeing Co's F-15 fighter and the four-nation European Typhoon for
the multibillion-dollar 60-jet South Korean order. Lockheed beat Boeing
to win the lucrative Joint Strike Fighter contract in 2001. After years of cost
overruns and technical challenges, as well as a 10-week strike earlier this
year, Lockheed's $396 billion F-35 program is now focused on what officials
describe as normal goals for any new military aircraft: completing development
and testing, starting pilot training and drumming up more foreign orders.
"We're executing to plan, and executing to plan means that we're becoming
predictable," Larry Lawson, executive vice president for aeronautics at
Lockheed, told Reuters during an interview at the Farnborough International
Airshow. "And predictable is a very good thing ... with the amount of
oversight that we have on the F-35 program," he said. Japan's
decision to buy the F-35 last December gave the program a big boost, but U.S.
officials are keen to lock in more customers to help increase the number of
jets being built, which in turn will reduce the price of all planes that are
eventually built. Lockheed had hoped to drive down the price per plane by
quickly ramping up production to around 18 to 20 planes a month. Instead,
production will stagnate at around 30 planes a year for the next few years.
Lockheed officials and F-35 test pilots touted the program's progress during a
media briefing at the air show, where a mock-up of the radar-evading,
single-seat aircraft drew a steady stream of interest from industry executives
and foreign delegations. The program has conducted 595 test flights thus far in
2012, versus the 445 test flights planned, and four more jets were delivered to
the U.S. government this week, bringing the total number of deliveries to 30.
Lawson said Lockheed should be able to complete production of all 30 planes
planned for this year, despite a 10-week strike by 3,650 workers at the Fort
Worth plant and two military bases in California and Maryland.
SOUL-SEARCHING
Lockheed
is building the new warplane for three U.S. military services and eight
international partners -- Britain, Italy, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark,
Norway and the Netherlands. Israel and Japan have also ordered the plane. The
Pentagon restructured the $396 billion weapons program for a third time this
year, postponing production of 179 fighter jets until after 2017, to allow more
time for development and testing, and to reduce the number of needed retrofits.
The move added $1 billion to $6 billion in cost to the program, according to
various estimates, because it eliminated anticipated economies of scale that
were meant to start sharply reducing the cost as production quantities
increased. It also spurred some soul-searching among foreign partners on the
program, including Italy, whose own budget pressures have prompted it to cut
back its planned orders by one-third. However, since then, the U.S. government
and six of the eight partner countries have put jets under contract. Israel and
Japan have also signed agreements locking in their procurements. "That's
the ultimate measure of normalcy," Stephen O'Bryan, vice president of F-35
business development at Lockheed, told Reuters in a separate interview at the
air show. "It's the ultimate measure of confidence in the program."
Italian Air Force Lieutenant General Paolo Civalleri told Reuters at the air
show that his country was satisfied with progress on the plane. "Everybody
is comfortable; the only problem is the budget," Civalleri said. Lockheed
officials declined to identify any of the other countries exploring possible
F-35 purchases, which are handled on a government-to-government basis, but said
they had been engaged in nonstop meetings at the air show. Lawson said the
cooperative nature of the F-35 program, in which eight countries are chipping
in to fund development of the new plane, would be increasingly important in
coming years as budgets in the United States and Europe come under increased
pressure. Lockheed remains in protracted negotiations with the Pentagon about a
contract for 30 more production jets, talks that have been under way since
early December 2011. The two sides remain at odds over overhead costs, with
U.S. military officials asking for thousands of pages of additional
documentation, on top of the 6,000 pages in Lockheed's initial proposal
submitted in April 2011. U.S. officials submitted their first counter-offer in
April 2012. Lockheed officials declined comment on the state of the
negotiations. Navy Vice Admiral David Venlet, who heads the F-35 program for
the Pentagon, did not attend the air show. The four jets delivered this week
will fly to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, where Air Force and Marine Corps
officials are getting ready to start training pilots later this year. "We
will be in full swing by the end of the year," said Marine Corps Colonel
Arthur Tomassetti, vice commander of the 33rd Fighter Wing at the Air Education
and Training Command.
(Reporting by Andrea
Shalal-Esa; editing by Matthew Lewis)
