Military officials said they would pay about $3.8 billion for 32 of the next generation of radar-evading planes and additional equipment to manufacture and test them.
It was not immediately clear how much each of the jets would cost. Officials said they would provide more details once the deal was completed.
The F-35 is the most expensive weapons program in history. Difficulties in developing some of its complex technologies have contributed to several years of delays. The Pentagon is slowing work on the program to fix the problems, and it now estimates that the program may cost $396 billion if it builds more than 2,400 of the planes.
The new agreement expands a government effort to get tougher on Lockheed, the world’s largest military company, and other contractors as military budgets tighten. With the agreement, Lockheed will share the costs of fixing the flaws that have been uncovered in the flight tests.
The company will now have to pay 50 percent of the cost of some of the retrofit work. That work is needed because the planes are being built even as all the flight and weapons systems are still being checked out.
Both sides want to complete the agreement before the end of the year to minimize any disruptions if President Obama and Congress cannot agree on a new budget deal and the Pentagon is hit with automatic spending cuts.
“It’s been a long journey, but I’m pleased we’ve achieved an agreement that is beneficial to the government and Lockheed Martin,” said Vice Adm. David Venlet, who runs the F-35 program for the Air Force and the Navy.
The admiral said production costs were decreasing, and the deal would let the program “end the year on a positive note.”
The tensions between the military and the contractor surfaced in attention-getting fashion in September, when Admiral Venlet’s deputy and designated successor, Maj. Gen. Christopher Bogdan of the Air Force, told a military convention that the relationship was “the worst I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in some bad ones.”
General Bogdan, who will take charge of the program when Admiral Venlet retires next week, added at the time, “I guarantee you: we will not succeed on this if we do not get past that.” He later visited Lockheed’s plant in Fort Worth. Top Pentagon and company officials have met to try to improve the relationship.
The F-35 was conceived as the Chevrolet of the sky — a state-of-the-art aircraft that could easily be adapted to three branches of the military. But almost from the start, development of the three versions proved far more costly and difficult than anticipated.
Since 2007, the Pentagon has been buying the jets — so far just for testing and training — under annual production contracts. Government auditors say the first four batches exceeded their targeted costs by a total of $1 billion.
The government’s share of those overruns was $672 million, with Lockheed paying the rest.
As the talks on the fifth batch began last year, Pentagon officials said they would push for a price that they thought the planes should cost. Lockheed officials argued that many of the government’s calculations were unrealistic.
While the price for each plane is gradually coming down, Pentagon officials said it had not dropped quickly enough. They said they would also hold back orders for a half-dozen planes in the sixth batch if Lockheed could not do the retrofit work faster.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/business/us-to-pay-3-8-billion-for-next-lot-of-f-35-jets.html?partner=rss&emc=rss