Lockheed Martin has announced finalizing pricing on a long-delayed, three-year order for up to 398 F-35 airframes worth $30 billion, while admitting falling short of the company’s 2022 delivery goal.
The signing of the three-year contract completes a three-year-long, marathon negotiating process between Lockheed and the Joint Program Office (JPO), but still leaves questions hovering around the final price of each of the three variants as annual production volume begins to decline.
The final price tag on each variant will remain a mystery until the JPO completes a separate round of contract talks with Pratt & Whitney, the F-35 engine supplier, a Lockheed spokeswoman says.
The F135 engine generally consumes about 18-19% of the overall flyaway cost of the F-35A. If that trend remains consistent, the cost of an F-35A ordered in Lot 15 would rise to about $82-83 million each, reflecting a 5-6.5% increase over F-35A flyaway costs in Lot 14. Lockheed says the airframe will cost about $69-70 million each during the new, three-year ordering period.
Costs are rising as annual production declines over the three-year period, with 145 aircraft ordered in Lot 15, 127 in Lot 16 and 125 for Lot 17.
The Lot 15 aircraft is expected to be the first model to receive a new computer processor under the Technical Refresh-3 upgrade program, but company officials have said they expect the new hardware will not affect the overall price of the aircraft.
Lockheed once planned to deliver 151-153 F-35s in 2022, but that estimate was revised downward after the company delivered three more aircraft than expected in 2021. Lockheed then announced a new goal to deliver 148-153 F-35s in 2022, but ultimately fell short by seven.
Lockheed halted deliveries after Dec. 15 due to a grounding order following the crash of an F-35B during a post-production check flight in Fort Worth. Lockheed instead delivered 141 F-35s in 2022, falling one aircraft shy of its production record set a year before.
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