By Max B. Baker
“With the election now complete, we are working with President-elect Trump’s transition team.,” said Orlando Carvalho, Lockheed’s executive vice president for aeronautics. “We believe that in working with his transition team all the right information will get communicated and they’ll make the right decisions.”
Trump made it clear on a conservative radio talk show last year that he had doubts about the F-35’s performance and its cost. At $379 billion, the F-35, which is built at Lockheed’s plant in Fort Worth, is the country’s most costly weapons program.
After suffering through a rough start, the F-35 program has been showing improvement in recent years. The cost of the jet fighter has fallen to $112 million a copy and Lockheed hopes to get it down to $80 million to $85 million. But last week, the Pentagon said it will need $500 million more to finish the development phase.
“When they say that [the F-35] cannot perform as well as the planes we already have, what are [we] doing, and spending so much more money?” Trump said on the Hugh Hewitt radio show.
The host asked Trump his thoughts on the fifth-generation fighter and the fact that it’s over budget. At the time, Trump responded that he didn’t like what he had been hearing in security briefings.
“I do hear that it’s not very good,” he said. “I’m hearing that our existing planes are better. And one of the pilots came out of the plane, one of the test pilots, and said this isn’t as good as what we already have.” (end of excerpt)
Click here for the full story, on the Star-Telegram website.
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