Posted on 03/23/2007 6:19:17 PM PDT by naturalman1975
THE Australian aerospace industry stands to reap about $9 billion from its involvement in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program over the next three decades, according to the plane's US developer, Lockheed Martin. Lockheed F-35 program manager Abhay Paranjape said Australian companies were already earmarked to receive work worth about $5 billion, provided they continued to provide best-value solutions for the project. This did not include work on the fighter's engines, and included no multiplier effect.
The US defence firm has moved from the traditional model of industrial offsets for plane orders to a system of competition between countries for the work on a global basis.
"The US and the other seven participant countries together are planning to procure more than 3000 aircraft," Mr Paranjape said at the Australian International Airshow this week.
"This is a best-value procurement program and it's not based on offsets, so Australia will be able to compete for that volume."
Mr Paranjape said Lockheed had laid out a plan defining when it would start procuring components, how many it would need and the estimated value of the work. He said $9 billion was a rounded total number of all the opportunities and values available to Australia.
Australian companies had already won contracts worth $100 million in the system development and demonstration phase of the program, he said.
Those developmental contracts were worth another $1.6 billion over the 3000 aircraft, as Lockheed began to gear up for production. "So you have $1.7 billion that is in hand if the companies continue to perform and they continue to provide the best value that they've proven they can right now."
The Lockheed executive said there were also strategic second sources that would not be subject to competition and had been selected based on the capabilities of Australian companies.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
It's about Gosh Darn (language changed to protect the easily offended) that we started to throw a bone to our TRUE allies.
I wonder how this made it through the State Department.
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