Partnering nations in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program have agreed to provide $400 million in unspent funding to assist with the continued development of the aircraft, the Air Force general in charge of the program said Wednesday.
Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan told the House Armed Services Committee’s aviation panel that the money had been budgeted into the nations’ accounts but had not been spent. Their agreeing to provide the funds will help offset costs for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
“What we are going to do with that money is we are going to use it in development to offset what the services would have to pay over the next five years,” Bogdan said. He did not say which countries were involved in the $400 million. The funding allows him to reduce his developmental funding requests from the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps by the same amount over the next five years, he told the committee.
There are seven international partners at varying tiers of investment and on the F-35’s development, including the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Turkey. Some of them, such as Italy, Canada, and Turkey, are taking a second look at their participation and may at least delay their plans to buy the fifth generation aircraft.
Bogdan said those postponements could promote the unit cost of the F-35s for the United States and other partnering nations to increase by two to three percent in the short run. He said those countries are pausing to see how some of the program’s technical challenges are being overcome.
Some of that increase could be dampened by other purchases of F-35s through the foreign military sales program. Israel and Japan have lined up to buy F-35s, and South Korea announced Monday it would purchase 40 of the stealth fighters (
Defense Daily, March 25).