ROME\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The head of Italy’s association of defense firms has launched a\u00a0blistering attack on the U.S. and Lockheed Martin, accusing them of\u00a0breaking promises made to Italy about workshare on the F-35 program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guido Crosetto, the head of Italian aerospace and defense industry\u00a0association AIAD, said the U.S. “had not honored promises” made since\u00a0Italy joined the program, hurting Italian firms as well as threatening\u00a0the livelihood of Italy’s fledgling F-35 maintenance center.
In June 2002, Italy became a Level 2 JSF partner by committing to invest\u00a0$1 billion in the program’s system development and demonstration stage.
Rome currently plans to buy 90 aircraft. In return, Italy was told its\u00a0workshare would likely reach around 65 percent of its investment.\u00a0“Today we are at less than 20 percent,” said Crosetto.
Crosetto, who was a government defense ministry undersecretary between\u00a02008 and 2011, said if Italy falls behind on F-35 workshare, political consequences would follow.
“Back then, I staked my reputation in parliament by talking about the\u00a0jobs and technology Italy would gain through choosing the F-35 program,”\u00a0he said. “How easy will it be to defend these choices in parliament now?”
Over recent years, Italy’s spending on the F-35 program has come under\u00a0fire in parliament from politicians who consider the money better spent on schools and healthcare, forcing the government to agree to funding\u00a0cuts. With elections possibly due this year, tensions over the program\u00a0could return.
Crosetto said Italian firms had been shut out from a global competition\u00a0last year for maintenance contracts on the F-35<\/p>\n\n\n\n
program.
In November, deals were awarded to repair 65 of a possible 774\u00a0repairable items on the aircraft for the period 2021-2015, with 48 going\u00a0to the UK, 14 to the Netherlands and three to Australia, making up eight\u00a0percent of the total items to repair.
“Small Italian firms were excluded because the competition favored\u00a0large companies,” said Crosetto.
As it won the lion’s share of contracts, the UK ministry of defense said\u00a0in November that its F-35 maintenance site in Wales would consequently\u00a0become “a global repair hub providing maintenance, repair, overhaul and\u00a0upgrade services for F-35 avionic and aircraft components.”
It added, “Over the lifetime of the programme, components for hundreds\u00a0of European-based F-35 aircraft will be serviced and maintained in North\u00a0Wales.”
Meanwhile, Israel also has won the right to build its own F-35\u00a0maintenance hub.
Work on the two hubs follows on the heels of Italy’s decision to open\u00a0its own maintenance hub at Cameri in nothern Italy, on the site of the<\/p>\n\n\n\n
final assembly line where it is turning out F-35s for its own air force.
Italy has to date rolled out six F-35s at Cameri, with the first four\u00a0flying to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona to take part in pilot training\u00a0and two deploying in December to its Amendola Air Base \u2014 the first Joint\u00a0Strike Fighters built outside the US to become operational.
In 2014, Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, the F-35 program head, designated Cameri\u00a0as a center for heavy airframe maintenance, meaning changes or repair to\u00a0the body of the aircraft, including replacement of a bulkhead or the\u00a0fixing of a wing.
“Italy was chosen from among many countries as a maintenance hub for all\u00a0the F-35s flying in Europe, including the US aircraft flying here,” said\u00a0Italian defense minister Roberta Pinotti at the time, adding that the\u00a0decision was an “extraordinary result.”
Cameri has been tasked with airframe maintenance, while the UK is\u00a0touting its North Wales hub as an avionics and components repair center,\u00a0suggesting UK work will not overlap with work at Cameri.
But Crosetto disagreed, claiming the ramping-up of maintenance work in\u00a0the UK could damage Cameri and represent a broken promise by the U.S.
“The original idea was to offer all types of maintenance at Cameri, that\u00a0was the proposal made by the U.S. government and Lockheed Martin to me\u00a0when I was in office,” he said. “To me the UK and Israel hubs are a\u00a0violation of that,” he added.
Carlo Festucci, the general-secretary of AIAD, added, “Italy invested in\u00a0Cameri with the idea it would do everything and was given the idea by\u00a0Lockheed Martin that it would be the only hub in Europe.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Local companies want more business in jet maintenance, per agreement with the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":29274,"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":7,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3345],"class_list":["post-15761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"VAQO6K47V5BF7MAE3SXC2OAOWM","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2017\/02\/10\/italy-s-defense-industry-chief-attacks-f-35-broken-promises\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n