F-35 Fighter Jet Price Drops Below US$100 Million A Piece

The next lot of F-35 aircraft (LRIP 10) reflects a $728M reduction in the total price when compared to Lot 9 and marks the first time the price for an F-35A is below $100M.

A Lockheed Martin statement said over the weekend that this lot includes 90 aircraft total - 55 jets for the U.S. services and 35 jets for international partners and foreign military sales customers.

“The bottom line is unit prices, including jet, engine and fee for all three variants. went down,” the statement said.

The F-35A unit price in LRIP-10, including aircraft, engine and fee, is roughly seven percent lower than the previous LRIP-9 contract. Over the past two procurement lots (LRIP-9 and 10), the price of the F-35A has dropped 12 percent.

"The LRIP-10 contract is a good and fair deal for the taxpayers, the U.S. Government, allies, and Industry," said Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, F-35 Program Executive Officer. “We continue to work with Industry to drive costs out of the program.”

Deliveries of 90 aircraft begin in early 2018. To date, more than 200 operational F-35s are operated by eight different nations including Australia, Italy, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom and United States. In total, the F-35 program today plans to produce more than 3,000 aircraft with approximately 600 of those aircraft presently planned to be procured by America’s international allies.