LMT news - for those with vested interest

[Scooterd]

2:30 PM ET 12/28/2021
The Pentagon has awarded Lockheed Martin a $49 million contract to design and develop a new F-35 stealth jet variant for an unnamed ally."Lockheed Martin Corp, Fort Worth, Texas is awarded a $49,059,494 cost-plus-incentive-fee-contract that provides engineering and other related activities in support of the design and development of a Joint Strike Fighter aircraft variant tailored for an unspecified Foreign Military Sales customer," the Department of Defense announced Monday.

[fenders53]

Thanks. That is almost a small contract for them. Defense aeronautics contracts are just enormous. One F-35 costs about $80M and $36,000/hr to fly with maintenance costs included.

[Scooterd]

(12-28-2021, 04:49 PM)fenders53 Wrote: Thanks.  That is almost a small contract for them.  Defense aeronautics contracts are just enormous.   One F-35 costs about $80M and $36,000/hr to fly with maintenance costs included.

All in increments. : Love the yearly defense budget passages. This last one was the largest in history.
Closest to monies in the bank I've found for investments. Have been invested in LMT for decades,
Provided me the opportunity to retire early.

[fenders53]

(12-28-2021, 05:05 PM)Scooterd Wrote:

(12-28-2021, 04:49 PM)fenders53 Wrote: Thanks.  That is almost a small contract for them.  Defense aeronautics contracts are just enormous.   One F-35 costs about $80M and $36,000/hr to fly with maintenance costs included.

All in increments. : Love the yearly defense budget passages. This last one was the largest in history.
Closest to monies in the bank I've found for investments. Have been invested in LMT for decades,
Provided me the opportunity  to retire early.

I am a 34yr military retiree and these numbers still never stop taking my breath away.  I maintained a motorpool with 18 howitzers and the 100 combat vehicles that went along with that.  It wasn't cheap by any means but everything combined was about the cost of one fighter jet. 

Fly an F35 20 hrs a month for a year, (which I doubt they do). You just paid for another jet in maintenance costs. Drones and missiles start looking cheap.

[Scooterd]

(12-28-2021, 05:27 PM)fenders53 Wrote:

(12-28-2021, 05:05 PM)Scooterd Wrote:

(12-28-2021, 04:49 PM)fenders53 Wrote: Thanks.  That is almost a small contract for them.  Defense aeronautics contracts are just enormous.   One F-35 costs about $80M and $36,000/hr to fly with maintenance costs included.

All in increments. : Love the yearly defense budget passages. This last one was the largest in history.
Closest to monies in the bank I've found for investments. Have been invested in LMT for decades,
Provided me the opportunity  to retire early.

I am a 34yr military retiree and these numbers still never stop taking my breath away.  I maintained a motorpool with 18 howitzers and the 100 combat vehicles that went along with that.  It wasn't cheap by any means but everything combined was about the cost of one fighter jet. 

Fly an F35 20 hrs a month for a year, (which I doubt they do).  You just paid for another jet in maintenance costs.  Drones and missiles start looking cheap.

3rd Generation Vet here as well..

Semper Fi

- Scoot

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. -John 15:13

[crimsonghost747]

This is a bit confusing indeed. It is a pretty small contract, yet still talks of a new type of a F-35.

Maybe this is for the UK? They have been planning on sticking the Meteor missile into their F-35s sometime towards the middle of the decade, which would fit nicely into this time frame.

Or then it's the sneaky Canadians. Sneaky since they actually haven't announced that they are going with the F-35 yet. But it could very well be that the decision has been made and the contracts have been signed, and they are waiting for who knows what political thingy to pass before making the official announcement.

[fenders53]

Reads like an introductory design phase project of course. Obviously somebody with deep pockets, and it's a short list of countries we are going to allow access to our modern jet tech. May well be the UK.

[cemanuel]

Fly an F35 20 hrs a month for a year, (which I doubt they do). You just paid for another jet in maintenance costs. Drones and missiles start looking cheap.

And that's without considering the costs of training a pilot. Last I recall from reading it, this was well over $1m each and it's likely gone up.

Agree that for LMT $50m is basically a budget rounding error. But the language implies this could be the lead-in to something more substantial.

[Kerim]

(12-28-2021, 05:27 PM)fenders53 Wrote: Drones and missiles start looking cheap.

Welp, LMT makes those too.