Budget cuts could reduce F-35 orders for four years

http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/04/15/5741078/budget-cuts-could-trim-17-f-35s.html



Budget cuts could reduce F-35 orders for four years
By Tony Capaccio
Bloomberg News
Posted Tuesday, Apr. 15, 2014

The Pentagon will cut 17 of the 343 F-35 fighters it plans to buy from Lockheed Martin in fiscal 2016 through 2019 unless Congress repeals automatic budget cuts, according to a new Defense Department report.

The move would save about $1.7 billion from $45.5 billion in planned spending for the F-35, the costliest U.S. weapons program, which escaped the initial impact of sequestration last year because production was already funded.

The F-35, which is being developed and built at Lockheed’s aeronautics complex in west Fort Worth, currently costs $100 million per plane. That price is expected to drop to about $85 million in 2019, or about $75 million in today’s dollars, as production increases, Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, F-35 program manager at the Department of Defense, said in March.

The new report spells out an array of cuts that would hit other projected purchases, from air-to-air missiles made by Raytheon to aerial refueling tankers from Boeing Co.