The Air Force will not buy new F-16s despite purchasing fewer F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, Secretary Michael Donley said yesterday.
“The SLEPs and modifications we’re looking at for the F-16s will be more cost effective than buying new F-16s,” Donley told an audience at the Air Force Association’s Breakfast Program in Arlington, Va. “It’s a more cost effective approach for us going forward.”
SLEPs, or Service Life Extension Programs, are attempts to extend the life of a system, in this case, the F-16.
Donley said the service has “made a commitment” to modernize 350 F-16s, which are developed by Lockheed Martin [LMT].
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last week the Pentagon would slow F-35 procurement to “complete more testing and make developmental changes to minimize concurrency issues before buying in significant quantities,” according to a 15-page Defense Department budget summary (Defense Daily, Jan. 27). Details of the revised F-35 buy are expected to be revealed later this month when the FY ’13 DoD budget is released.
Lockheed Martin’s F-16 business has been predominantly to foreign customers as the United States hasn’t been delivered any F-16s since March 2005, according to a company spokeswoman. Lockheed Martin currently has a backorder of 76 F-16s to be delivered to Morocco, Egypt, Oman and Iraq, with the last jet scheduled to be delivered in the first quarter of 2016, the spokeswoman added.
Lockheed Martin is conducting a full-scale durability test on the F-16 for the Air Force and, once the results are in, it will be able to determine what needs to be done to bring them up to the level the Air Force wants them, according to the spokeswoman.