UPGRADES: Lockheed CEO says firm in ‘very active’ talks with DoD on ‘Ferrari’ F-35 with sixth-gen tech.
Lockheed Martin is in “very active” conversations with the Pentagon about the concept of a fifth-generation-plus F-35 that would include some of the technologies the company has developed for its sixth-generation fighter concepts, Lockheed’s chief executive said today.
“There’s a very active engagement at an extremely high level with the Department of Defense, and I expect it’ll be taken to the White House sometime soon, hopefully, to consider this kind of concept,” Jim Taiclet told investors at the Morgan Stanley conference. “We’ve gotten encouraging feedback. … There’s significant interest in the government about discussing aircraft modernization writ large, all the way up to the administration level, the White House level, and we’re in the middle of that with them, and we’re getting heard. We’re hearing back, and it’s pretty active.”
Taiclet first announced what he then called a “Ferrari” version of the F-35 in April, just weeks after Lockheed lost out on the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) contract that went to Boeing’s F-47. At the time, he said that the company could take tech developed for NGAD and incorporate it on the F-35, giving the stealth jet “80 percent of six-gen capability at half the price.”
I dunno. I hear “Ferrari” from a defense contractor and I think “Rolls Royce price.”
