WASHINGTON, the USA (BulgarianMilitary.com) – Lockheed Martin received a $22.7 billion contract, under which the company is to supply 255 F-35 Lightning II fighters for the three branches of the U.S. military and its allies as reported in a U.S. Department of Defence contract announcement on Wednesday, learned BulgarianMilitary.com

The scope of the contract includes supply of 106 F-35s for the United States (64 F-35As for the Air Force, 26 F-35Bs for the Marines, and 16 F-35Cs for the Navy. The rest 149 aircraft under the contract will be received by international programme participants (71 F-35As and 18 F-35Bs) and customers under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) process (60 F-35As).

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The initial instalment, which will be received by Lockheed Martin upon signing, amounts at $6 billion.

The announcement also says that the U.S. aircraft will be from production lot 12. The production lot for the F-35s intended for the international participants and FMS buyers has not been specified in the announcement.

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The works under the contract, which are expected to be completed in March 2023, will be carried out at several locations, and the biggest part of them (57%) will be undertaken at Fort Worth, Texas.

The award comes after negotiations between the Department of Defence and Lockheed Martin for lowering the price of the aircraft. In September 2018, the two parties signed a landmark deal and this lowered the price of F-35As procured in low rate initial production (LRIP) lot 11 to $89.2 million, dropping below $90 million for the first time, and 5.4% better than the previous production lot.

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The September deal saw the unit prices of the short-take-off vertical-landing (STOVL) F-35B drop 5.7% to $116 million, and the carrier capable F-35C’s 11.1% to $108 million.

The deliveries under the September agreement are scheduled to start next year.

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The F-35 Lightning II of Lockheed Martin is a family of single-seat, single-engined, all-weather stealth multirole fighters. The fifth-generation combat aircraft is developed for ground-attack and air-superiority missions. Its main models are three: the F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variant, the F-35B short take-off and vertical-landing (STOVL) variant, and the F-35C carrier-based catapult-assisted take-off but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) variant.

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Source: FlightGlobal, Wikipedia