The Department of Defense awarded Lockheed Martin a contract for 145 F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters worth about $12 billion.
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In late December, the Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin “an unspecified fixed-price incentive (fixed target), fixed-price modification” for a contract to produce 145 F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters. The contract value is worth $11.7 billion.
Essentially, this contract is an extension of the previously awarded F-35 contract. However, for legal and practical reasons, the U.S. military and some other F-35 customers have decided to purchase the F-35, and indeed other aircraft, in bulk rather than all in one contract. I am placing an order with. In fact, this would be highly unrealistic for the US military, which has decided to order approximately 2,500 F-35s of all types for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.
This extension of the F-35 contract highlights one of the F-35 program’s greatest strengths: its international nature. Work on the 145 F-35s will be performed in at least four different countries (United States, Italy, Japan, and United Kingdom) and five different states within the United States (Texas, California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Florida).
Specifically, the original contract extension is for the production and delivery of 145 F-35s from Lot 18 batches. Of these aircraft, the Air Force has 48 F-35As, the Navy has 14 F-35Cs, and the Marine Corps has 16 F-35Bs and five F-35Cs. Additionally, 15 F-35As and one F-35B are for program partners outside the U.S. Department of Defense, and 39 F-35As and seven F-35Bs are for foreign military sales customers.
complex program
As you can see, the F-35 program is a very complex program, involving 20 member states and three variants of the same aircraft: F-35A, F-35B, and F-35C.
The 20 member countries are the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Norway, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Belgium, Poland, Singapore, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Greece, and Romania. Turkey was also involved in the program until it decided to purchase S-400 Triumph air defense systems from Russia, which angered the United States and NATO and led to its withdrawal from the program.
The total number of F-35 orders from these countries is approximately 3,579. In terms of specific aircraft types, the F-35A is the most popular with approximately 2,700 orders, followed by the F-35B with 575 and the F-35C with 340. The U.S. military is by far the largest buyer of F-35s, with a total of 2,456 on order (the Air Force has 1,763 F-35As, the Navy has 270 F-35Cs, and the Marine Corps has 353 F-35Bs). (70 F-35Cs on order). Interestingly, only the US military operates the F-35C, which is designed for carrier operations.
The F-35 Lightning II is the most advanced fighter jet in the skies today, and its stealth characteristics allow it to evade enemy air defenses.
Stavros Atamazoglou is an experienced defense journalist specializing in special operations and a veteran of the Greek Army (575th Marine Battalion and Army Headquarters). He holds a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.
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