Lockheed, USAF to Offer F-16 Base Model With Standardized Price to FMS Customers

Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force plan to offer a base model of the F-16 fighter jet to speed up foreign military sales of the aircraft, FlightGlobal reported Saturday.

The F-16 base model configuration will come with a standard set of avionics, electronic warfare suite, mission systems and other components and a standardized price and will be offered to FMS clients under the potential 10-year, $62B indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract awarded to Lockheed in August. 

“The development of the pricing, and the back and forth with the country on the pricing, and then the actual pricing when we deliver it to them in the form of an offer and acceptance letter, that takes a very long time,” said JR McDonald, vice president of business development at Lockheed’s integrated fighter group. “And, it takes a lot of money to develop those individual contracts for each individual country.”

McDonald said using the same IDIQ contract and offering a commoditized F-16 would help generate savings and save time on the production line.

“It’s a way to streamline contracting, make the pricing as transparent as possible in an [Foreign Military Sales] environment,” McDonald noted.

An FMS client’s request for a specific item and integration of specialty technologies into the fighter jet would be carried out through a separate contract.