Chris Pocock has been covering the defense beat for AIN for over 30&nbsp;years. He is a British citizen and a graduate of the University of Cambridge. Chris worked in the air cargo business for ten years before becoming a full-time writer in 1983. He subsequently edited two air cargo journals before becoming AIN’s Defense Editor. He retired from that position in 2018, but still contributes to the publication. Chris has written extensively on aerial reconnaissance, including four books on the history of the U-2 spyplane. He also lectures on this and other topics related to intelligence-gathering in the Cold War.

Defense Correspondent

Chris Pocock

The unit price of the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter has fallen again in the latest production lot to be agreed, but is still well above $100 million. Lockheed Martin announced this week an agreement signed with the Pentagon for 43 airframes in the eighth low-rate initial production lot (LRIP-8). The company said that the average cost for the airframes is 3.5 percent lower than in the LRIP-7 contract signed last year, and 57 percent lower than the first LRIP-1 airframes.

 


Negotiations for the separately procured F135 engines are conducted separately with Pratt &amp; Whitney and are running behind the airframe agreements. A deal for the 36 engines needed for LRIP-7 was concluded only last month. If the average cost of those powerplants ($18.8 million) is added to the unit costs specified this week for the LRIP-8 airframes, the result would be about $113 million for an F-35A, $120 million for an F-35B and $133 million for an F-35C. However, that calculation overestimates the cost of the F-35A/C versions and underestimates the cost of the F-35B with its more expensive STOVL powerplant. P&amp;W has declined to disclose the breakdown of the engine cost by F-35 variant.

 


LRIP-8 will include the first F-35As for Israel (two), Japan (four), two more each for Norway and Italy, and 19 for the U.S. Air Force. The UK will receive four F-35Bs—its first operational aircraft—and the U.S. Marine Corps will get six, plus a single F-35C, with three more F-35Cs going to the U.S. Navy. Deliveries will begin in the early spring of 2016.

 


Lockheed Martin noted that it will be responsible for any cost overruns on the LRIP-8 contract. It will return 20 percent of any underruns to the U.S. government. A "concurrency clause" requires Lockheed Martin to share equally with the government any changes arising from the ongoing system development and demonstration phase. A total of 115 F-35s have been delivered to date, including test aircraft.

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