Lockheed gets fat contract for F-35 fixes

Posted on: Oct. 7th, 2005 || Source: dfw.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

The Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. a $6.5 billion contract Thursday to pay for the additional work required to solve early problems with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Congress appropriated funds in the fiscal 2005 defense budget to pay for additional design and engineering work needed to cut weight from the next-generation fighter jet so it would be able to meet performance requirements.

As early as mid-2003, less than two years after the F-35 development contract was awarded to a team of companies headed by Lockheed, engineers designing the aircraft realized that the short-takeoff-vertical-landing aircraft, the most complex of three versions, was likely to be nearly 3,000 pounds too heavy to meet key performance requirements.

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