By BLOOMBERG January 24, 2018 Efforts to improve the reliability of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 are “stagnant,” undercut by problems such as aircraft sitting idle over the last year awaiting spare parts from the contractor, according to the Pentagon’s testing office. The availability of the fighter jet for missions when needed — a key metric — remains […]
By James Marc Leas July 19, 2017 A crisis plagues 976 families in a working-class neighborhood of South Burlington, Vermont. Eighteen screamingly loud F-16 fighter bombers based at Vermont’s main airport are the cause. Worse, the number of families in crisis from this jet noise is set to sharply increase in two years when the […]
By Jon Queally July 10, 2017 There is always another $27 billion lying around, it seems, when Lockheed Martin needs more money for expensive weapons system The nation’s most expensive weapons program isn’t done showing U.S. taxpayers how much it will ultimately cost them, with Bloomberg reporting Monday that the F-35 fighter jet budget is now predicted to jump by […]
By Alex Lockie April 24, 2017 The Government Accountability Office released a report on Mondaywarning the Department of Defense against funding further software updates for the already $400 billion F-35 program until the current software becomes operational. The F-35 is already operational with the Air Force and Marine Corps, but it runs a limited version […]
By Rebecca Kheel April 24, 2017 Delayed testing could add more than $1 billion to the cost of the F-35 fighter jet program, according to a government watchdog. In a report released Monday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommended completing developmental testing before making “significant new investments” in the program. “Cascading F-35 testing delays could […]
By Kyle Jahner Law360, Washington (April 25, 2017, 4:05 PM EDT) — Testing delays for the software for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will tack on at least another five months and $1.7 billion to the price tag of a program no stranger to overruns and delays, a government report released Monday said, as the […]
By Aaron Gregg January 11, 2017 In his first press conference since winning the presidential election in November, Donald Trump again took aim at Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. His latest comments followed a tweet last month about the F-35’s “tremendous cost and cost overruns.” The president-elect said he had asked Boeing to “price out a comparable […]
By Aaron Gregg January 13, 2017 Emerging from a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York on Friday, Lockheed Martin chief executive Marillyn Hewson told reporters that the Bethesda, Md.-based defense giant is close to a new contract deal that would cut the cost of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program […]
January 18, 2017 The chairman of a key subcontractor in the F-35 program told Bloomberg News Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump wants to reduce the cost of the project by at least 10 percent. “We’ve been told through Lockheed that the president has an ambition to reduce the cost of the aircraft by a material […]
By Tom Vanden Brook Jan. 27, 2017 Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has ordered the Pentagon to launch a review on how to save costs on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the Pentagon’s most costly weapons-buying effort in history. Mattis’ memo, sent on Thursday, also calls on the military to determine whether the F-18 fighter can […]