Lockheed Wins $242M for Obsolescent F-35 Electronics

Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $241,765,645 modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00019-13-C-0008) for procurement of diminishing manufacturing sources electronic components.

The modification will support aircraft production through Lot 15 for U.S. and international facilities for the F-35 Lightning II aircraft.

Work will be performed in Burlington, Vermont (98 percent); and Fort Worth, Texas (2 percent), and is expected to be completed in December 2018.

Fiscal 2014 aircraft procurement (Air Force, Navy); fiscal 2015 aircraft procurement (Marine Corps.); Foreign Military Sales and international partner funds in the amount of $181,516,494 are being obligated at time of award, $148,737,805 of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.

This contract combines purchases for the Air Force ($118,880,338; 49.17 percent); Marine Corps ($43,311,316; 17.91 percent); Navy ($30,091,791; 12.45 percent); Foreign Military Sales customers ($23,053,873; 10.93 percent); and the international partners ($26,428,329; 9.54 percent) under the Foreign Military Sales program.

The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting authority.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Pentagon’s Defense Acquisition University defines “diminishing manufacturing sources” as the “the loss or impending loss of manufacturers of items…. that endanger a weapon system's or equipment's development, production, or post-production support capability.”
In other words, these are parts that are obsolete to the point of going out of production, forcing the Pentagon to buy as many as possible before production is actually halted.
These contracts are awarded several times a year, as the F-35’s electronic components, designed in the 1990s, reach the end of their production life.
This adds to the program’s cost, as hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each year to buy obsolescent components that will have to be replaced sooner rather than later if the aircraft is to live up to its billing.
A similar contract, worth $93.8 million, was awarded on July 6, 2016, so just in the past month the cost of these obsolescent parts has totaled $335.5 million – one-third of a billion dollars.
This contract also once again raises the question of why Navair and the Joint Program Office parcel out these contracts in small amounts rather than award a single, large contract.
The answer, as always, is this is done to make them less noticeable, since there is no other reason for this contract sprinkling of contracts.)

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