S. Korea’s F-35 buy: Good news for Cobb, for country, for company

[unhappycamper]

http://mdjonline.com/bookmark/24842677-S-Korea-s-F-35-buy-Good-news-for-Cobb-for-country-for-company



S. Korea’s F-35 buy: Good news for Cobb, for country, for company
March 30, 2014 12:00 AM

Last week’s announcement that South Korea plans to buy 40 copies of the advanced F-35 Lighting II fighter jet came as good news for Cobb County, good news for this country and good news for the plane’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.

It was good news for Cobb because the center-wing assembly of the jet is assembled at Lockheed Martin’s vast aviation plant in Marietta. It’s good news for the country because it lowers the overall per-plane cost of the program, and hence saves taxpayers money. And it’s good for Lockheed for obvious reasons.

About 330 people now work on the F-35 program at the Marietta plant, a number estimated to grow to 1,000 when the program reaches full production late in this decade. A “stealth” coating is applied to parts of the plane, including its doors and panels, at the plant here. The center-wing assemblies, or “boxes,” are then trucked to Lockheed’s plant in Texas where final assembly takes place. It will be flown by the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

~snip~

Meantime, the sales to foreign countries are expected to drop the plane’s per-unit cost from the present $100 million each to $85 million, which in turn could make them more affordable for the U.S. military as well.

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"$100 million each" Really?

Even wikipedia (notoriously low on military hardware) sez:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35

Unit cost
F-35A: US$153.1 million (Flyaway cost, 2013)[6]
F-35B: US$196.5M (flyaway cost, 2012)[7]
F-35C: US$199.4M (flyaway cost, 2013)[7]

This camper sez the F-35 will cost at least $247 million a pop.