Big changes in four years....
Lockheed Martin chairman and CEO Bob Stevens declared, “There is no more affordable alternative capable of performing the mission.” He maintained that if Lockheed Martin can secure the production volume, the acquisition cost of the F-35 will be equivalent to a similarly equipped F-16 Block 60 or F-18 fighter. That would be around $60 million in current dollars.
But the fear of concurrency remains, particularly since there has been no apparent relaxation in the target date of 2012 for initial operating capability (IOC) of the F-35B with the U.S. Marine Corps. The planned IOCs for the U.S. Air Force F-35A and U.S. Navy F-35C are both in 2016, using Block 3 software.