Navy close to multiyear deal on new fighters

[unhappycamper]

Navy close to multiyear deal on new fighters
By Andrew Tilghman and Philip Ewing - Staff writers
Posted : Friday May 14, 2010 17:40:16 EDT

The Navy is close to striking a deal to lump together all the fighter jets it plans to purchase over the next several years into a single large buy, in a victory for aerospace giant Boeing.

The Department of the Navy told Congress on Friday it plans to use the “multiyear authority” it was given if it could show that buying many planes together over several years would lower their costs. So the Pentagon will begin bargaining with Boeing to buy the rest of the F/A-18 Super Hornets and E/A-18G Growlers in its program of record — some 124 aircraft — which guarantees work for Boeing until 2015.

The arrangement could mean the Navy pays about $500 million less for the planes than if it had continued buying batches every year on its current schedule, which calls for ordering sets of new fighters until fiscal year 2013.

Top Defense Department acquisition officials told lawmakers about the deal in a letter Friday.

“The Department of Defense is taking essential steps toward a multi-year (contract) for 124 F/A-18 E/F and EA-18G aircraft,” two top Pentagon officials wrote in a letter Friday to the Senate. “The Navy is in receipt of a viable offer from the F/A-18 prime contractor and is actively pursing award of the (F/A-18 multiyear contract) to achieve substantial savings.”



unhappycamper comment: New F/A-18s cost $100 million each, but it's still cheaper than the $243 million that F-35s cost. Of course our current adversaries don't even have Piper Cubs, but that's another story.....

[MadHound]

1. Plenty of money for planes, ships, missiles, and other accoutrement's of war

A pittance for the rest of us.

Sad, pathetic.