Lockheed Chief Pledges Lower Costs for F-35 Fighter Jet and Add 1,800 Jobs (excerpt)
Ms. Hewson, speaking after a meeting with Mr. Trump at Trump Tower, also pledged to add 1,800 jobs at the Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth location, although she did not provide specifics.
The government’s next contract in the F-35 project would cover 90 planes, compared with 57 in the previous batch. The increase was in the works before Mr. Trump was elected, and other Lockheed officials said the added positions would come as production increases.
“I certainly share his views that we need to get the best capability to our men and women in uniform and we have to get it at the lowest possible price,” Ms. Hewson said of Mr. Trump.
Lockheed Martin depends on the F-35 for nearly a quarter of its revenue. But the cost of building the next-generation fighter jet, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has been a sore point for the Defense Department for years. Mr. Trump has criticized the cost and promised to make changes to the program.
At an estimated $400 billion over 15 years for 2,443 planes — which are being built in different versions for the Air Force, Marines and Navy — the high-tech fighter is by far the military’s largest weapons project, and it is long overdue.
But even before Ms. Hewson’s announcement on Friday, the price of the plane had typically been dropping with each batch produced. In November, days before the election, the Pentagon said it had unilaterally imposed a 3.7 percent price cut on the average cost per plane over those produced in the previous batch after Lockheed refused to agree to that decrease. The contract for the 57-plane batch is valued at $6.1 billion. (end of excerpt)
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