Lockheed Lowers Price on F-35 Fighters, After Prodding by Trump
fter weeks of pressure from President Trump, Lockheed Martin agreed on Friday to a somewhat larger price cut on its F-35 fighters than it had on the last few orders, and finally brought the cost of the main version below $100 million for each jet.
The Pentagon will buy 90 of the radar-evading planes under the new contract for $8.2 billion.
The F-35 is by far the Pentagon’s largest program; it has plans to eventually build more than 2,400 of them for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, and hundreds more for allies. Mr. Trump began to criticize the much-delayed project shortly after he was elected and met with Lockheed’s chief executive, Marillyn A. Hewson, twice to try to bring down the price.
Officials with the military and with Lockheed said the president’s intervention helped speed up the negotiations and contributed to the cost savings.
Lowering the price of the Air Force version to less than $100 million is a long-awaited milestone for the program, which began 15 years ago as a way to create a versatile but relatively inexpensive fighter compared with the more acrobatic F-22
. Lockheed has built around 200 of the planes so far, including a version for the Marines that lands and takes off like a helicopter and a Navy model that flies from aircraft carriers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/...35-fighters-after-prodding-by-trump.html?_r=0