F-35 Partner Disputes Trump's Claims That He Secured Big Savings
Source: Bloomberg
The head of BAE Systems Plc, Europe’s biggest defense contractor and a partner on the F-35 fighter jet, has contradicted claims by President Donald Trump that he was responsible for lopping $728 million off the price tag for the Pentagon’s latest warplane order.
The contract’s lower price, valued at $8.2 billion, is due to savings achieved through a long-planned increase in production, Chief Executive Officer Ian King told analysts after releasing the company’s full-year earnings Thursday. On a per-plane basis, savings on the order for 90 of the Lockheed Martin Corp. jets exceeded the $600 million that Trump initially said he had achieved.
“In terms of the projected prices, they were all to do with the ramp-up in rates and were well-advertised,” King said. “But if somebody wants to take credit for that finalization, negotiation, then they can take credit for that negotiation if they wish.”
Trump took on Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson, tweeting that costs on the military program, the Pentagon’s most expensive, were “out of control.” Defense Department officials and Lockheed had been negotiating for more than a year and “were very close on price prior to President Trump’s involvement,” Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer under President Barack Obama, said this month.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-02-24/f-35-partner-disputes-trump-s-claims-that-he-secured-big-savings
Nice to see this making the rounds in a fresh light.
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