F-35 concurrency costs not as great as feared, official says

Lockheed Martin expects concurrency costs associated with the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) to go "significantly downward" with the release of the Joint Program Office's (JPO's) estimates later in the year, a company official told IHS Jane's on 1 February.

The latest cost estimates of retrofitting modifications onto production aircraft already built will be released by the JPO in its Selected Acquisition Report later in 2013, subject to the budget first being finalised, and these will be far less than figures previously reported, Stephen O'Bryan, vice president of F-35 Program Integration and Business Development, said.

By the time that developmental flight testing concludes in 2016, Lockheed Martin will have built 187 F-35 aircraft, of all variants, that will require retrofit improvements to be made. Previous government reports have put the costs associated with concurrency (where system development, testing, and production overlap) at close to USD8 billion.

While Lockheed Martin has seen the JPO's latest estimates for retrofitting these enhancements, O'Bryan declined to divulge any details prior to the report's release except to say that they are much less than figures previously quoted.