21 Nov 14. The Pentagon said on Friday it had awarded Lockheed Martin Corp a contract valued at $4.7bn for an eighth batch of F-35 fighter jets that lowered the average price per jet by 3.5 percent from the last contract, and 57 percent from the first batch. The Pentagon’s F-35 program office said the deal includes 29 jets for the United States and 14 for five other countries: Israel, Japan, Norway, Britain and Italy. Once production of those jets is completed, more than 200 F-35s will be in operation by eight countries, according to the office that runs the $399bn F-35 program for the Pentagon. The Pentagon has signed a separate contract valued at $1.05bn for an eighth batch of engines built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp, to power the jets. Pratt last month said the contract would lower the cost of the engines between 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent. The program office said the new contract reduced the cost of the A-model airframe built for the Air Force, without the engine, to $94.8m. The cost of the F-35 B-model, which can take off from shorter runways and lands like a helicopter, would be $102m, without an engine, while the Navy’s C-model or carrier variant would be $115.7m, it said. The Pentagon does not provide detailed cost breakdowns for Pratt’s F135 engine, given the company’s concerns about proprietary data, but U.S. officials have said they expect the cost of the aircraft, with an engine, to drop to about $80 million to $85 million by 2019. Lockheed’s F-35 program manager, Lorraine Martin, said the latest contract showed the company was making steady progress in reducing the cost of the most advanced U.S. warplane. Lockheed and its key subcontractors, Northrop Grumman Corp and BAE Systems Plc, as well as Pratt, are all investing in various measures aimed at simplifying production of the jets and reducing the cost to build and operate them. But the biggest driver in cutting the cost of the planes is the number of jets ordered in any given year. Lockheed had hoped to finalize orders for two dozen more F-35 jets for Israel this year or early next, but Israel may halve that order to around 10 to 15 jets, a cabinet minister told Reuters earlier this week. (Source: Reuters)
21 Nov 14. Sen. Corker: White House ‘Not Really Ready’ on Islamic State Authorization. White House officials “are not really ready” to craft an authorization measure for the Islamic State conflict, says a key senator. Poised to take the Senate Foreign Relations Committee gavel in January, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., would be the Republican senator charged with negotiating an authorization for the use of military force with the White House. But Corker is signaling it might be a while before lawmakers have a chance to take up a new AUMF. “They’re not really ready,” Corker told reporters, referring to the White House. “I think everyone understands they’re not really fully baked on what they want to do both outcomes-wise and inputs-wise. … There’s so much that they still need to decide upon.” One of those issues is whether any draft measure sent to Capitol Hill is narrowly focused on ongoing strikes in Iraq and Syria against the violent Sunni group or a total rewrite of the post-9/11 AUMF, the incoming Foreign Relations Committee chairman said. “There’s so much that they still need to decide upon,” added Corker, who said he had just been on the phone with the White House. Lawmakers from both parties have been calling for a force-authorization measure for several months. President Obama acquiesced to those demands, at least rhetorically, on Nov. 5, saying he wanted lawmakers to debate and vote on a new measure. Republican lawmakers countered by saying Obama should craft and submit a draft to Congress. From there, negotiations among lawmakers and with the White House would begin. So far, the administration has yet to send up any measure. “Although the president has the authority to address the threat from [the Islamic State], he has sa