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A decision by South Korea on Wednesday to order
40 F-35s for around $7 billion further lowers the program's cost
and Lockheed sees the per-unit cost down to $80-$85 million by
2019 from the current rate of around $115 million, Jeff Babione,
Lockheed's deputy general manager for the F-35 program told
reporters in Oslo.
Lockheed, engine maker Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United
Technologies Corp <UTX.N>, and other suppliers are investing
heavily to drive down the program's projected $400 billion cost,
making it more affordable for cash-strapped governments looking
to buy over 3,100 aircraft over the next decades.
"The cost reduction will come with the increase in orders,"
Babione told Reuters on the sidelines of a press conference.
"We anticipate that there's a market out there for 4,000
airplanes ... and the biggest risk to cost is if we don't get
the orders we showed. That will significantly erode our ability
to take advantage of economic order quantities and reduce cost."
The F-35 program was set back earlier this year when the
Pentagon grounded its entire fleet after a June 23 fire on an
Air Force F-35A jet, an all new aircraft with advanced stealth
capabilities, improved maneuverability's and advanced sensors.
Lockheed is still investigating the issue and expects to
determine the root cause this month or early October, and sees a
fix implemented on aircraft already in service in early 2015,
Chris Flynn, a Pratt & Whitney vice-president for the F-35
engine program said.
"We understand what fundamentally happened ... and we have
tremendous confidences in the timeline," Flynn said. "We think
it's a fairly straightforward fix."
Though no longer grounded, the fleet of over 100 F-35s already
delivered, flies under restrictions, pending the engine fix.
Lockheed added it was also confident that the U.S. Marine Corps
would declare the first version of the jet combat ready by
mid-2015 and said that beside the engine issue, the integration
of the communication systems and the subtle changes to flight
controls were its main issues.
(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Mark Potter)
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