Spain,
Belgium, Switzerland Poised to Be Next F-35 Buyers
22:19
08.03.2017(updated 02:03 09.03.2017)
At last
week’s Avalon Airshow in Melbourne, Australia, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program
director said the company is looking to ship more F-35 joint strike fighters to
European clients, The Indian Express reported.
“We are
starting to see other customers think about the F-35 being added
to their fleet,” Jeff Babione, an executive at Lockheed, told
reporters in Australia. Finland may be interested in the F-35
as well, an unofficial source told The Indian Express.
“We are
talking to several other countries,” in addition to the 10 US
allies who have already bought or agreed to purchase the joint strike
fighter, Babione noted. Australia, Canada, Denmark, Israel, Italy, Japan, the
Netherlands, Norway, the UK, and Turkey have already entered the cadre of
“global participants,” according to Lockheed’s corporate F-35 website. It
is not clear whether prospective clients were put off by the inability
of Australia’s F-35s to fly through lightning.
Lockheed
Martin argues that increasing the number of global F-35 shipments will
help reduce the cost of the fifth-generation fighter for all parties
involved, due to economies of scale. Babione, adopting the legacy
marketing strategy encapsulated in the phrase “the more you buy the more
you save,” called for the US and its allies to step up their
yearly purchases — to help Lockheed make the goal of an $80
million jet by 2020 a reality.
“It is
actually a very reasonable target,” the F-35 program director effused, “but it
is going to take cooperation in changing the way we buy aircraft.”
Specifically, the company wants lucrative, multi-year government contracts,
which provide steady streams of revenue that Lockheed executives can tout
during earnings calls to shareholders. Lockheed says publicly that
three-year bulk orders can help drive down costs as the manufacturer
will be able to order parts in larger quantities. “Maybe in the
future you are talking about a multi-year [deal] and you could do a five
year multi-year and increase the savings.”
US President
Donald Trump exclaimed in January that the US had saved hundreds
of millions on its tenth order of the joint strike fighters, a
claim for which Trump does not deserve credit, according to some
analysts. During closed-door discussions, Trump said he worked
with Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson to bring the cost of the F-35
down. On January 31, however, Trump spoke from the Oval Office declaring
that, Lockheed is “expanding and that’s going to be a good thing,” adding,
“ultimately they’re going to be better off.”
Trump, a
long-time New Yorker and well-versed in the ways of Wall Street,
surely knows that, from Lockheed’s perspective, selling F-35s at a
lower price means lower revenue, which could damage the company’s net income.
The US is far and away Lockheed’s biggest F-35 client, as the US military
is projected to buy more than 2,000 joint strike fighters,
in addition to the fleet they already maintain. How can the F-35
as a "growth engine" for the company's financial statements
with prices of the jet falling? The question has already been
answered by Hewson: "Increased international demand."
Original
post: sputniknews.com
“We are
talking to several other countries,” in addition to the 10 US allies who have
already bought or agreed to purchase the joint strike fighter, Babione noted.
Australia, Canada, Denmark, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, the
UK, and Turkey have already entered the cadre of “global participants,”
according to Lockheed’s corporate F-35 website. It is not clear whether
prospective clients were put off by the inability of Australia’s F-35s to fly
through lightning.
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