WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0The Pentagon has awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.3 billion contract for advance work on\u00a013 F-35s added to an 11th batch of joint strike fighters during budget negotiations last year, according to the program office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The contract includes six Marine Corps F-35Bs, three Air Force F-35As\u00a0and four Navy F-35Cs, according to an\u00a0announcement Monday. Work will be completed in December 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because the 13 aircraft were not expected when contract negotiations began, no money was initially included for long lead work, according to the joint program office. The Pentagon asked for two F-35s over the planned buy in its fiscal 2016 budget submission, and Congress added 11 more aircraft in the omnibus spending bill \u2014 a total of 13 extra jets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
The money will go toward adding the 13 F-35s\u00a0into the production schedule of the other aircraft appropriated in FY16, which are included in the 10th low-rate initial production lot, according to the JPO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lockheed is still waiting to finalize\u00a0negotiations\u00a0for the ninth and 10th batches of F-35s, valued at about $16 billion total. JPO Chief Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan told reporters recently that he expected to finalize the ninth low-rate initial production contract with Lockheed by the end of March, with the 10th following a few months later.\u00a0But negotiations on both\u00a0are still ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 13 aircraft were not expected when contract negotiations began, so no money was initially included for the long lead work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":82461,"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":[7,33],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1820],"class_list":["post-39380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-home"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"XCC5WKADORBIBB65AXTPNMDHLY","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2016\/05\/03\/lockheed-martin-gets-1-3-billion-for-f-35-plus-ups\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n