
The Defense Department late Wednesday forced a $6 billion contract on Lockheed Martin [LMT] for the ninth lot of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, effectively breaking a negotiating logjam but prompting a rebuke from the company contending the agreement was not mutual.Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) Lot 9 came in at $6.1 billion for 57 aircraft, a 3.7 percent reduction from the previous LRIP 8 contract signed in December 2014, according to the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO). The lot price…