The South Korean military will purchase 40 F-35 fighters from defense contractor Lockheed Martin for about $6.8 billion, and a major part of the production will continue to be in Marietta.
A spokesman for the defense contractor said the deal announced this week is good news for the Cobb County plant, even if the facility will not be increasing its payroll to accommodate the new order specifically. Among other work, the plant builds the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s center wing assembly, a massive internal skeletal structure.
Spokesman Jeffrey Rhodes said the Lockheed Martin plant already expects to have more workers by the end of the year as part of its goal to build one center wing assembly every business day, or 20 a month, by the year 2018. The plant currently employs about 6,200 workers, including 330 on the F-35 program.
Rhodes said the production goal takes into account additional orders for the F-35. South Korea becomes the third country to order the fighter as is, following Israel and Japan. The U.S. military and eight other countries have invested in the plane’s development directly to tailor fighters that fit their specific military needs.
The South Korean military announced last November that the radar-evading F-35 was the only aircraft that will meet its needs. Lockheed Martin had competed against Boeing’s F-15 Silent Eagle and Eurofighter’s Typhoon fighter jet for the contract.
Another Lockheed Martin spokesman said the plane costs about $98 million to build, a figure that does not include the engine.
The Marietta plant produces the center wing assembly for three versions of the F-35. The assembly is then then shipped to Fort Worth, Texas, where the plane’s production is completed. The Marietta plant also supplies the stealth coating on the fighter’s horizontal and vertical tails.
In addition to building the wing assembly for the F-35, the Marietta plant builds the C-130J cargo plane, modernizes the Air Force’s C-5 airlifter and builds wings for the P-3 Orion patrol aircraft.
The Wall Street Journal reported South Korea had originally planned to purchase 60 planes but the initial order was trimmed to 40 because of budget constraints. The same report said orders for the F-35 have fallen off.
Steve O’Bryan, Lockheed’s vice president for business development, told the WSJ the company is confident it will sign new contracts.
Shares of Lockheed Martin traded as high as $162.09 on Wednesday before ended the day at $159.64, down 93 cents.
