Lockheed Martin has announced that it is willing to lower the price of the F-35 aircraft by more than 10%. The company submitted the bid to the Pentagon for approximately 100 F-35As, priced at less than $ 80 million each. Last September the price was around 89,5 million.
The proposal indicates that the Lockheed Martin company will meet its 2020 revenue targets sooner. The 100 F-35As are part of a block purchase of three jet production batches - around 450 jets in all. The order will include F-35Bs for the Marine Corps, F-35Cs for the United States Navy and a variety of jets for the Allies.
"We currently have a bid submitted to the Department of Defense for 12-14 lots for less than 80 million dollars," company spokesman Mike Friedman wrote in an e-mail to Defense News.
The offer comes, oddly enough, just as the USAir Force is planning to purchase new F-15 Eagle fighters to replace existing F-15s. Lockheed, in this regard, argues that the F-35 is a cheaper alternative to the F-15 Eagle, offering stealth technology and other standard technologies only available on more modern fifth-generation aircraft.
The proposed purchase of three lots of jets simultaneously is aimed at obtaining a better price than annual purchases of only a few dozen jets. A 2018 study highlighted, in fact, that the potential savings, by purchasing multiple lots together, are around more than 2 billion dollars.
Lockheed has delivered more than 385 F-35 to the US Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and American allies.
"With the increase in production, every year we have reduced costs, reduced construction times, improved quality and on-time delivery," said Friedman. "Going on like this, we expect to be able to further reduce costs both in production and maintenance."