Italy, Turkey Picked For F-35's European Maintenance

By GILLIAN RICH, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Lockheed Martin's (NYSE:LMT) F-35 jet will provide "hundreds of billions of dollars" in maintenance work worldwide in the next 50 years, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan in a Reuters report.

Italy and Turkey were selected Thursday to do maintenance in Europe. Italy will do heavy maintenance on the fighter plane in Europe, with Britain as the backup.

Turkey will deal with heavy maintenance on the F135 engines, which are made by United Technologies' (NYSE:UTX) Pratt & Whitney unit, with additional sites in Norway and the Netherlands to open in the next two to three years.

With development and productions costs totaling $400 billion, the F-35 is the most expensive weapons program ever. The Pentagon also estimates costs to operate and maintain the F-35 could reach $1 trillion during the fleet's life cycle.

But in September, the Government Accountability Office warned sustainment costs could be even higher and quoted a defense official calling the current sustainment strategy "not affordable."

The GAO also estimates that annual operational and support costs for the F-35 will be $19.9 billion (in 2012 dollars) during the fleet's peak years, 79% higher than costs for other aircraft like the F-15 and F-16.

But the overseas orders that Lockheed needs to help offset a slowdown in military spending at home have been lagging. For example, Rome originally ordered 131 jets in 2012, then cut its order to 90. And opposition in Israel is growing over the size of a second batch of F-35s due to range, payload and maneuverability concerns.

This thing is embarrassing. Its become nothing more than a way for the government to transfer money to its buddies, while screwing over the budget, citizens, and military. They're using a plane to steal billions from the America people.

The best thing to do would be to just cancel it, but it doesn't seem like they even care about the product. They just care about how much money they can pump into it. Its garbage and the whole project is harming this country.

Fixed it for ya, rest is spot on.

Yes this will be well over a trillion dollar program over its life.

Brilliant move on LM, the more fingers in the pie the harder it is to kill.

Is it true they will all be based at Elmendorf?

Unfortunately most of what is written about the F-35 cannot take into account the full spectrum of what it will bring to the table over time due to the nature of its capabilities. Is it expensive, yes, but will it ensure we have the capabilities we need in a future peer to peer conflict to win? I would argue that it has more capability than anything else available out there. When countries like Israel back out or reduce interests based upon performance etc it is primarily because they have been told they cannot have the same capabilities on their export variant as we have and cannot get authorization to put their own "in house" equipment on it. It is their way of gracefully putting pressure on the system. As far as performance, take the F-35 with an internal (key word) combat load (Smart weapons, A/A load out) and compare it to a late block F-16 with a combat load or a F/A-18. The only way the latter two aircraft compare would be in Air Show configuration (slicked off). There would be even less of a comparison in range.

The F-35 is here to stay and it will be something to be proud of once it matures.

Don't think so, believe I heard Eielson on the news.

Solves that pesky warm fuel problem .

Spoken with the carefully chosen words of someone who is working on the program.

Does it promise unprecedented capabilities? Yes.

Have those capabilities been realized? No. In fact, from what I have read, it has failed every design criteria, from RCS, to Em sustained g-capability, range, affordability, maintainability, commonality, and survivability.

Key words: "peer to peer" conflict. The Air Force seems intent to prepare for the worst-case scenario involving China and Russia.

But what is the likely scenario? Third-world crapholes involving jihad.

In a world with limited budgets, you have to get the most bang for the buck.

IF the F-35 ends up meeting its design criteria, it could be the "most bang per aircraft."

But arguably the most bang for the buck is 4.5+ generation aircraft which, while not as capable per aircraft, gives more overall capability because you get more airframes.


Lockheed has a long history of politically-involved aircraft production. This is just one more example.

You have to prepare for both - third world and peer-to-peer.

Unfortunately, the F-35 has arguably limited capability for the 3rd world, specifically, CAS.