WASHINGTON \u2014Lockheed Martin is nearing a deal with the Defense Department on the tenth batch of F-35s, company CEO Marillyn Hewson told President-elect Donald Trump during their second meeting on Friday.
“I had a very good conversation with President-elect Trump this afternoon and assured him that I\u2019ve heard his message loud and clear about reducing the cost of the F-35,” she said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But just days later, Trump fired out a tweet that seemingly called for an upgraded F\/A-18E\/F Super Hornet, with a smaller F-35 buy in the realm of possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!” he tweeted on Dec. 23.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Since then, the president-elect has softened his rhetoric on Boeing\u2019s Air Force One offering \u2014 his initial weapons program of choice for expressing displeasure with the defense industry \u2014 and repeatedly slammed the F-35 costs while expressing interest in the Super Hornet. During his first press conference of the new year, he told reporters to expect “big things” for the F-35 and F-18 programs, adding that he would “get those [F-35] costs way down.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump hasn\u2019t been the only government official taking a tough approach with Lockheed in recent weeks. Frequent F-35 critic Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Hewson on Jan. 10 chiding the CEO for recent schedule slippage and cost overruns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“If the Lockheed Martin Corporation has new initiatives that are \u2018ready to deliver\u2019 to reduce F-35 program costs, I expect you to detail your plans for accomplishing this objective to the committee as soon as possible,” McCain wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Outgoing Pentagon weapons tester Michael Gilmore fired his own parting salvo earlier this week, his final report on the F-35 program. The scathing 62-page document contends that the JPO\u2019s belief that it can end developmental flight test as early as February 2018 with only a $532 million cost overrun is overly optimistic. Instead, Gilmore\u2019s office predicts testing will extend to July 2018, and cites the Pentagon\u2019s Cost Assesment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office\u2019s estimate of $1.125 billion needed to complete the development phase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lockheed Martin is nearing a deal with the Defense Department on the 10th batch of F-35s, company CEO Marillyn Hewson told President-elect Donald Trump during their second meeting on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":25353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":37,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[7,37,8],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3384],"class_list":["post-13912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-breaking-news","category-congress"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"3OZLFYXXAZBUVPH67GF6HICCBU","arc_canonical_url":"\/breaking-news\/2017\/01\/13\/lockheed-closing-in-on-f-35-deal-ceo-tells-trump\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n