Lockheed Wins JSF Boeing Stays Upbeat After Loss In JSF Competition
Lockheed Martin Lands JSF Prize -- $200 Billion-plus Deal
Stephen Trimble/AviationNow.com
26-Oct-2001 4:30 PM U.S. EDT J
SF Report relayed by Stoney Mayock
The world's reigning attack fighter for the next four decades - the Joint Strike Fighter - will be developed and built by Lockheed Martin as the Pentagon on Friday chose the aerospace giant's more conventional concept in the roughly $200 billion competition with rival Boeing.
The winning team takes an initial $20 billion development contract to refine and field the first fighters in 2008. The contractor also gains a foothold for follow-up production rights for a total of 3,002 aircraft to be ordered by the U.S. and Britain worth roughly $200 billion. More foreign orders might add another $200 billion to the contract over its 40-year lifetime.
"On the basis of strengths, weaknesses and degree of risk of the program it is our conclusion … that the Lockheed Martin team is the winner," said U.S. Air Force Secretary Jim Roche, who briefed reporters at the Pentagon at 4:30 p.m. local time.
Boeing now faces the loss of the largest U.S. fighter program in history, but is unlikely to be completely excluded from the program.
But Pentagon acquisition chief Pete Aldridge refused to officially require Lockheed Martin to partner with Boeing for at least a portion of the subcontracting work.
"It seems unfair to tell the winner that you now must absorb the loser as part of your team," Aldridge said.
It appears, however, that Boeing will lobby Lockheed Martin's team to play a supporting role in the biggest defense prize in U.S. history.
"We're looking forward to the possibility of bringing our capabilities and skills to the Lockheed Martin JSF team," Boeing CEO Phil Condit said in a statement released shortly after the announcement.
Condit also said that Boeing's five-year effort to win the JSF contract was not wasted. "Our JSF program has yielded achievements that we are going to use in many Boeing programs," he said.
Dain Hancock, president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, did not rule out a future role for Boeing on its team. But his rival's involvement must be specifically called for by his customer, the Pentagon, he said.
"If the government believes it's in the best interests of this country ... that some of the technologies Boeing has brought to the table are appropriate, we will do whatever the government asks us to do in that case," Hancock said.
Lockheed Martin is now charged to produce 14 more flying models and seven ground-test vehicles under the initial development contract.
"We fully recognize the huge importance of the task ahead of us," Hancock said.
The first production models under this phase are scheduled to be ready by 2008.
The Pratt & Whitney-powered JSF is designed to assume the bulk of air-to-ground attack missions for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, largely replacing the fleets of Lockheed Martin F-16s, Fairchild A-10s, Boeing F/A-18C/Ds and AV-8Bs, which are jointly produced by Boeing and BAE Systems.
The JSF's three variants are specifically tailored to the needs of its four customers, including Britain's Royal Navy, although the aircraft family shares about four-fifths of its components.
Most analysts think Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin's concept offered a less risky approach than Boeing's bid, while the Boeing team's approach was viewed as more radical.
Chicago-based Boeing's team, which includes BAE Systems and Honeywell, essentially borrows the AV-8B Harrier's already proven vertical lift technology for the Marine Corps variant's key short-takeoff-vertical-landing (STOVL) requirement.
But Lockheed Martin's team, which includes BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman, developed an entirely new vertical-lift capability by engineering the JSF's Pratt & Whitney F119 engine to rotate downwards from the rear of the aircraft, plus drive a lift fan.
Both designs rely on crafty advances in stealth technology and avionics, but some concepts are still unproven.
The Pentagon allowed Boeing's X-32 and Lockheed Martin's X-35 demonstrators to employ a basic airframe and off-the-shelf avionics to prove merely the feasibility of each aircraft, especially the STOVL and carrier-landing capabilities of each design.
The untested manufacturing, stealth and cockpit advances central to the JSF program still worry the auditors of the General Accounting Office, who fear the program may run off schedule and drive up costs if major components don't function as planned.
Initial production was due to begin in about 2005, but could be accelerated as the Pentagon scrambles to meet perceived post-Sept. 11-attack firepower needs in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Even before the United States and Britain began retaliatory airstrikes against targets in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, a panel appointed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had urged that the Navy version of the JSF be rushed to put a radar-evading, "stealth'' warplane on carriers sooner than scheduled.
No orders to speed things up have been received, Aldridge said, but the Pentagon clearly desires a quickened production rate.
"We would like to get this airplane sooner. We'd love to have this airplane today," Aldridge said. "The first delivery will be 2008 … If we can find some way to accelerate that during the [development] period we will do so, but we're going to do this right."
Under current plans, the first operational aircraft is to be delivered in 2009 and enter service with the Marines in 2010, with the Air Force in 2011, and with the Navy and Britain in 2012.
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