By Nigel Pittaway
CANBERRA, Australia — The head of the F-35 International Joint Program Office told Australian officials that a block buy across low rate initial production lots 12, 13 and 14 is still possible despite the US services not being able to fully participate.
US Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan was in Canberra to testify at a Senate inquiry into Australia’s purchase of 72 F-35A aircraft to replace its F/A-18A/B Hornet fleet. Prior to the Senate hearing and on the eve of the release of Australia’s defense white paper on Wednesday, he briefed Australian reporters on the Joint Strike Fighter program.
The US has told the program office that it cannot participate in a block buy of jets until at least LRIP 13.
“There is a way that you can start a block buy for the partners and the FMS [Foreign Military Sales] customers in [LRIP] Lot 12, and have the US services join in Lot 13,” he said.
“You won’t get quite as much savings but in fact, most of the savings in that scenario falls to the US services, because they didn’t come in early. So for the partners it’s still a good value proposition and we are still pursuing it.”
Bogdan said the estimated cost to the partners and FMS customers would be between 5 and 10 percent cheaper than aircraft in LRIP 11, despite the delay in US participation and more than US $2 billion in savings across the 14 customers.
“That is a lot of money to save, if you’re going to buy airplanes anyway,” he added.
Read the full story at DefenseNews