F-35 costs will fall as orders rise

Senior executives at Lockheed Martin Corp. says they were working hard to reduce the cost of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the Pentagon's biggest weapons program, but ultimately needed bigger order volumes to make the program affordable.

"Volume will ultimately drive the affordability of this program," Lockheed Chief Operating Officer Chris Kubasik tells reporters, adding that recent foreign orders for the radar-evading warplane from Japan and Norway had given the program some "positive momentum."

Lockheed submitted a proposal to build 60 of the planes for South Korea, Kubasik says, noting that winning that order would further help lower the price of the airplane.

Lockheed Chief Executive Bob Stevens said the company was "fully dedicated" to lowering the cost of the F-35, but told Reuters that it was not clear that Lockheed could meet the Pentagon's expectation of an 18% price cut from the fourth to fifth batches of production planes.

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