While the Pentagon is temporarily reducing its annual order of F-35s, international demand has been building for the cutting-edge fighters.
Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth is building F-35 Joint Strike Fighters in three versions at its Fort Worth production facility.WASHINGTON — As F-35 joint strike fighters move from station to station along Lockheed Martin’sline, screens display information that includes the jet’s overall sequence number, the military base where it’s headed and the country that ordered it.
In contrast to the U.S. military’s brake pumping, international demand has been building for the cutting-edge fighters.Past up-and-down cycles tied to the ebb and flow of weapons orders weren’t great for retention and workforce morale, so today the company has a strategy of maintaining a stable workforce at the Fort Worth location, around its current level of approximately 18,000.
While some members on Capitol Hill have sharpened their knives to go after the F-35 program, Texas lawmakers from both parties have come to its defense, including Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, who is poised to assume the powerful position of House Appropriations chair if Republicans re-take the majority in the fall midterms.
The U.S. military is still the core of the F-35 program and expected to purchase around 2,500 planes total. Of the 837 planes delivered to date, two-thirds of them have been to the U.S. There are eight partner countries that helped fund the F-35 program from the start: the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Australia, Norway, Denmark and Canada.
It also has advanced sensors that provide superior situational awareness and allow it to function as a critical information center pushing data out to any allied forces in the fight. “They’ll train alike, they’ll fight alike and it’s instant cohesiveness with all those other countries,” McDonald said.
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