The F-35’s unit costs are very much at the mercy of the number built, said Lorraine Martin, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program manager. Some 80 percent of the F-35’s price is “economic quantity” and only 20 percent, at best, are “things I can do to improve efficiency” on the production line, she told reporters during a company-sponsored media event on June 9 in Arlington, Va. The programs of record for the United States, its F-35 partners, and foreign military sales customers now total more than 3,000 aircraft, and a rising number of countries are moving to fulfill those requirements, said Martin. The figure is undercounting some: Korea’s order for 40 is not yet final, and Israel has booked only 19 of the 75 it’s allowed to buy. “Any country using” F-15s, F/A-18s, or F-16s is a potential candidate for F-35, said Martin, and “there are 4,500 F-16s out there” around the world that will eventually require replacement. “We will sell to any country the US government allows us to sell to,” she added, repeating a goal that by the end of this decade, the government and Lockheed Martin plan to get the cost of the F-35 to a level comparable with fourth generation fighters of today.
Anduril and General Atomics will develop their Collaborative Combat Aircraft for the Air Force, beating out Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, the service announced on April 24. But any of the non-selected companies can compete to actually manufacture the eventual design, the Air Force said.