Sourced : Aviationweek
Βy Lara Seligman
Donald Trump left the collective defense community quaking in its boots last week after he threatened to cancel Boeing’s new Air Force one. Now he’s going after another massive aerospace firm, slamming Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) for “out of control” costs.
“Look at the F-35 program with the money, the hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said on Fox news Dec. 11. “It’s out of control.”
If the president-elect is looking to cut costs or send a message to defense contractors, the $100 million-a-copy JSF is a huge target. The program has succeeded in bringing costs down for the past few years, but is still haunted by a critical cost breach in 2010. The Pentagon’s most recent estimate pegs the cost to operate and sustain the F-35 fleet over its 60-year service life is just over a trillion dollars.
Trump also appeared to double down on his recent proposal to ban defense contractors from hiring former Pentagon acquisition officials, criticizing the industry’s revolving door.
“The people that are making these deals for the government, they should never be allowed to go to work for these companies,” Trump said on Fox. “You know, they make a deal like that and two or three years later, you see them working for these big companies that made the deal… they should have a lifetime restriction.”
Trump first floated the potential lifetime ban during a rally in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, last week, according to Reuters.
Trump’s remarks come just days after Northrop Grumman named recently retired Gen. Mark Welsh, who served as U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff last year when it selected the company to build the next-generation stealth bomber, to its board of directors.
There are rules restricting what government employees can do if they move to industry, but they do not prohibit Welsh from joining Northrop, says Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek. Welsh had no involvement in the source selection process for the new bomber or the decision to award the contract to Northrop, she stressed.