Air Force Decision Due Next Week on Big Jet Fighter Deal : General Dynamics’ F-16 Facing Challenge From Northrop F-20
The multibillion dollar competition between the Northrop F-20 and General Dynamics’ F-16 will be settled next week when the Air Force selects a winner to produce 270 of the air-defense fighters, a service spokesman said Friday.
Air Force officials have given few hints as to which way their decision will go despite intensive lobbying by members of Congress, including Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) and Rep. Robert Badham (R-Newport Beach), both longtime F-20 proponents.
Wilson and Badham, who serve on the Armed Services committees in their respective chambers, have pressed Air Force Secretary Edward C. Aldridge and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger for a decision to award the contract to the F-20, according to congressional staffers.
The F-16 is currently the Air Force’s principal multirole fighter.
But over the last half-dozen years, Northrop has spent $1 billion of its own funds--the largest product investment in defense industry history--to develop the F-20. It is now building its fourth F-20.
$4 Billion in Air Force Orders
The award will be worth more than $4 billion in Air Force orders alone. Subsequent foreign orders could substantially increase that total.
If the F-20 wins, it would become a substantial source of new jobs in Los Angeles. The F-20 would require a work force of 7,000 by 1989 at Northrop plants in Hawthorne and Palmdale, a company spokesman said. Additional jobs would open at suppliers.
Northrop currently has 1,600 employees assigned to the F-20 program and, if it wins the award, would double that number within a year.
On the other hand, a loss of the contract would force Northrop to re-examine and likely terminate the F-20 program, which has cost the company about $200 million a year.
General Dynamics, however, would not be as severely affected if it loses because it is already increasing production just to fill existing orders.
