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The Pentagon is demanding lower prices for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, pressuring Lockheed Martin and engine supplier Pratt & Whitney to go below their most aggressive cost targets. Procurement chief Ashton Carter says he does not expect to pay the projected $92-million average unit cost (in 2002 dollars). JSF procurement “is not happening at that price,” and the Defense Department cannot afford the cost to go higher, ­Carter told the Credit Suisse/Aviation Week 2010 Aerospace and Defense Conference in New York last week. He says the Pentagon can “manage out some cost” from this estimate, produced by the Pentagon’s...

Lockheed Martin expects to learn the outcome of a recent review into its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme around mid-December, as it also starts adjusting to a major shift announced by its main international partner, the UK. The US Defense Acquisition Board met in late November to discuss potential cost and schedule overruns on the F-35, believed to have been outlined during a technical baseline review. With the outcome of their recommendations to be included in the next fiscal year budget, it had been thought that details would not emerge until early next year. "The budget is going to lock...

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works — known for its revolutionary technology work in building the SR-71, F-117 and F-35 — will have a new vice president and general manager. Frank Cappuccio, the unit’s longtime head, is stepping down in June. He led the company’s successful Joint Strike Fighter competition win over Boeing. Al Romig, deputy vice president and deputy director of the Sandia National Laboratories, will join Skunk Works in January and take over from Cappuccio later in the year. Romig’s work at Sandia began in 1979, and he has established strong relationships with customers in the U.S. Energy Department. During...

The costs of the Joint Strike Fighter, the US fighter jet which is to replace the ageing Dutch fleet of F-16s, will be 1.4 billion euros higher than the original estimate. This is an increase of 20 percent over the amount of 6.2 billion euros which the government initially expected would buy 85 JSF planes. Parliament expressed shock at the increase, particularly at a time when the government has announced 18 billion euros’ worth of budget cuts. On Thursday, Defence Minister Hans Hillen wrote in a letter to parliament that the higher costs are partly due to delays in the...

Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) officials said on Thursday they shared Pentagon concerns about cost increases and testing delays that have plagued the development of the F-35 fighter, but said they were making changes to ensure the new fighter remained affordable. "We do believe that we're on a path to achieve the affordable product that's expected," Ralph Heath, executive vice president of Lockheed's aeronautics division told a conference hosted by Credit Suisse and Aviation Week. Heath acknowledged concerns raised by the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, Ashton Carter, who told the same conference on Wednesday that he was unhappy with the state...

WikiLeaks, Weaklings And Weasels Posted by Bill Sweetman at 12/3/2010 10:37 AM CST WikiLeaks cables show that US officials recommended delaying export approvals for a new Raytheon radar in order to undercut the Saab Gripen NG's chances in Norway, before the country's December 2008 decision to acquire the Joint Strike Fighter. The cables were originally reported (and linked) by Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. The original Norwegian decision surprised and puzzled observers, both because of its tough repudiation of the Gripen and because of the $52 million quoted price of the JSF - which was a reach in 2008 and now appears...

Clarity on how many Joint Strike Fighters the Netherlands will buy should emerge in the spring. Dutch defense minister Hans Hillen says the F-16 replacement program -- effectively the purchase of F-35s -- will be part of the larger review of force structure in light of planned reductions in defense spending. For Lockheed Martin the situation going into the review is not ideal. The Dutch are starting to come to grips with the cost implications to them of the big cost increases the core Joint Strike Fighter program is suffering. The latest assessment by the Dutch defense minister is that...

Pentagon procurement chief Ashton Carter says he expects not to have to pay the Pentagon’s estimated $92-million average per-unit Joint Strike Fighter price, and he is “unhappy” with performance on the $380-billion program to date. Carter says the Pentagon can “manage out some cost” from this estimate, which was devised by the Cost Analysis and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office in the Defense Department. Some analysts expect the per-unit price to increase even further from the original $50-million estimate in 2002. The new Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program executive officer, Vice Adm. David Venlet, is “about 80% finished” with a top-to-bottom...

General Electric and Rolls-Royce are fighting a rear-guard action to save the embattled F136 alternate Joint Strike Fighter engine from being canceled by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates as funding threatens to dry up. But even then the program faces challenges on Capitol Hill. The engine program has sufficient funds in place to continue through mid-December, around the same time an emerging continuing resolution (CR) would expire under a congressional deal reached Dec. 1. The short-term extension to the current CR, which expires Dec. 3, would allow the U.S. government to operate at 2010 funding levels until Dec. 18, but...

Pratt & Whitney hopes to sign for a fourth batch of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter engines within weeks, having accepted a government request to negotiate a fixed-price incentive contract instead of the originally planned cost-plus deal. F-35 prime Lockheed Martin signed a fixed-price incentive contract for the $3.9 billion low-rate initial production (LRIP) Lot 4 of the fighter on Nov. 19. This covers 31 F-35s powered by Pratt F135 engines to be procured under a separate contract. Pratt proposed LRIP 4 prices based on a cost-reduction plan targeted on getting the F135 down to the same cost as the F-22’s...

Canada's Magellan Aerospace Corp. has commissioned a high-velocity, hard metal machining center to undertake F-35 opportunities. Magellan currently has firm contracts for the multiyear purchase of manufacturing packages for components of the F-35 fighter program for approximately $24.4 million. The company said it sees the potential for future manufacturing packages related to the F-35 Lightning II as increasing over the initial 15 years of the program.

- The Pentagon's chief arms buyer on Wednesday said he is "not happy" with the current state of Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter program and is working with company officials to lower costs. "We have to get costs under control," U.S. Defense Undersecretary Ashton Carter said, adding that prospects for flat overall defense budgets were putting increased pressure on the department to make its weapons programs more affordable. "I'm not happy with the situation we're in now," Carter told an investment conference sponsored by Credit Suisse and Aviation Week, when asked about the Lockheed fighter. He said the new radar-evading...

Rivals Target JSF By Bill Sweetman London With the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program likely to be hit by further delays on top of the 13-month slip in development announced in February, competitors are beginning to see hope for the future despite tight budgets worldwide. The JSF program office canceled an appearance at Defense IQÂ’s October fighter conference here. People talking about other programs, though, were no longer shy about benchmarking their favorite jets against the ambitious U.S.-led project, now five years behind its original schedule with a sixth in the offing. Another conference theme was a broader definition of...

Two of the world's largest military aircraft manufacturers are competing to sell scores of new-generation fighter jets to the Turkish Air Force. The rivals are a U.S.-led consortium that makes the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, or JSF, Lightning II and Europe's Eurofighter consortium, which is marketing the Eurofighter Typhoon. The playing field, however, is unequal as Turkey has already selected the JSF as its next fighter aircraft type and plans to buy about 100 F-35 aircraft worth nearly $15 billion. Many Turkish companies are members of the nine-nation JSF consortium and are producing parts for the aircraft.

The F-35C’s Pratt & Whitney F135 engine, contained in its Engine Shipping System, is too large for the cargo door on a standard carrier onboard delivery plane and for the V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft, the program office acknowledged in a response to a follow-on query from Navy Times. The engine can be broken down into five component parts, but just its power module and packaging alone won’t fit into the COD or the V-22. The JSF Program Office says the V-22 Osprey, like the MH-53E helicopter, can externally carry the F135 engine module, the heaviest of the five components, at least...

An important skirmish in the battle over military spending is taking place in this industrial suburb of Cincinnati. At stake is a program to develop an alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, a stealthy, supersonic jet supposed to be the backbone of the U.S. fighter fleet for the next three decades. For the past four years, Congress has funded the development of the second engine against the wishes of the Pentagon, which maintains that only a Pratt & Whitney engine should be funded. View Full Image Reuters Congress could decide within days whether to fund a second engine for...

Canada's new stealth fighter aircraft will require extensive maintenance, as well as very expensive changes to improve security at the military bases they operate from, according to Defence Department documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen. Critics of the Conservative government's proposal to buy the high-tech Joint Strike Fighters have been warning that the purchase will come with hidden costs that could drive up the price tag far beyond the current estimate of $16 billion. The 2006 Department of Defence report, which looked at next-generation fighter planes as well as the stealth Joint Strike Fighter, highlighted issues that could play a...

Nammo Raufoss AS and the Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation (NDLO) have signed a contract on the final development and qualification of 25 mm APEX ammunition and associated training ammunition adapted to the F35 Fighter. The contract is worth up to NOK 66 million and Nammo will also be providing capital in the amount of NOK 22 million. The contract will be completed by the end of 2012. Several decades' experience in technology Nammo has a long background in the development of aircraft ammunition. Over the last 40 years, both Norwegian and allied fighters have used aircraft ammunition manufactured at Raufoss....

With the development phase of the Lockheed Martin F-35 under close scrutiny by US Department of Defense officials, a long-awaited contract award shows that production costs are falling, while the risks are shifting from the government to the contractor. A $3.5 billion contract awarded on 19 November completes the orders of 30 F-35s from the USA and one from the UK in the fourth annual lot of low-rate initial production, or LRIP-4. Two other deals awarded earlier for LRIP-4 aircraft raise their total cost to $4.6 billion, or about $148 million each. That price includes charges, such as special tooling...

Norwegian media is painting a gloomy picture of the planned procurement of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. This picture is based on unverified information coming from a meeting at the Pentagon last week and the draft of a report that describes the various opportunities for spending cuts throughout the U.S. economy. Now is the time to look at the facts. During spring and summer of 2010, changes were decided in the US-led multinational F-35 program. These changes place a stronger emphasis on testing before full-scale production begins, and this implies that the development phase be extended by 19 months. Costs...