Lockheed Martin Wins $211Mln for Special Tooling to Hit Production Run Rate

US defense giant Lockheed Martin won a contract worth more than $211 million to manufacture and provide special tooling and test equipment to meet production run rates for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the Defense Department said in a press release.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The total cost of the F-35 program over its lifetime runs as high as $1 trillion, the Government Accountability Office reported citing Pentagon estimates. The F-35 is the Defense Department’s most expensive acquisition program and is more than $200 billion over budget, the GAO reported earlier this year, and will require acquisition funding of $12.7 billion a year, on average, through 2038.

"Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company [of] Fort Worth, Texas is being awarded $211,200,000 for [a] modification… contract," the release said on Monday.

The contract provides for the procurement of production non-recurring special tooling and special test equipment that are required to meet current and future F-35 production rates, the release added.

Work on the contract will be carried out at various locations in the United States as well as at Samlesbury in the United Kingdom, at Turin in Italy and at other foreign locations, the release added.

On Friday, the Defense Department announced that the US Navy had awarded Lockheed Martin with a more than $218 million contract to provide logistics support and sustainment services for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter.

Following a meeting between Trump and Lockheed Martin CEO Marilyn Hewson earlier in January, the company announced plans to reduce the cost of each jet fighter to less than $100 million per airplane.